Finance Committee Meeting 2009

• Board Meeting Date: 9/15/2009
• Description: Finance Sub-Committee Meeting September 15, 2009
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

Water Project Construction Program—Project Data
Applicant: Colorado Water Conservation Board
• Project Name: ISF Engineering and Technical Project Type: Stream and Lake
Support Services Protection Technical Services
County: Statewide Drainage Basin: Water Source: N/A
Statewide Drainage Basins
Total Study Cost: $50,000 Funding Sources: CWCB
CWCB Investment: Interest Rate: N/A Term: N/A
$50,000
This project entails the continued implementation of a statewide engineering, technical, and
support services program to help address consulting engineering and other technical service
needs of the Colorado Water Conservation Board's Instream Flow and Natural Lake Level
Program.
The fund will be used to retain consultants, temporary employees and others on an as-needed
basis to perform engineering, technical and data support services for the protection of the
Board's decreed instream flow water rights, and for providing(1) technical and scientific bases
for new appropriations, and (2) technical analyses related to the acquisition of water rights for
• instream flow use.
The CWCB relies upon sound technical investigations to appropriate, acquire, and protect
instream flow water rights throughout the state. Due to a steady increase in water court matters,
the workload for the CWCB staff responsible for the protection of the CWCB's existing instream
flow water rights continues to grow. For example, resume review activities, including injury
analyses that provide justification for filing of Statements of Opposition, requires significant
staff resources. In addition, technical investigations are needed to process the acquisition of
senior water rights and to provide technical support and expertise to change the decreed uses of
the acquired water to instream flow use.
Likewise, engineering support services may be needed to augment staff water availability
analyses for streams on which the Board is considering appropriating new instream flow water
rights. This includes determination of the amount of water that is physically available for the
Board's appropriation by analyzing available gage records, diversion records and call records,
using available stream flow models, and developing stream flow models or utilizing appropriate
standard methods to develop hydrographs to predict the natural (virgin) streamflows for each
stream under consideration.
The fund will also be used to continue to hire temporary employees to assist with summer field
investigations of new ISF recommendations, installation of pressure transducers and other
temporary stream gages, maintenance of web based mapping applications to provide the public
• with information on the location of proposed ISF recommendations, and other technical services
that support the appropriation, acquisition, and physical and legal protection of ISF water rights.