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Applicant's hydrology resulted in an excess of 35,000 acre feet of water flowing out of point 116, which could not be accounted for as inflow to point 120. Table 111-3 of Applicant's report illustrates other discrepancies between actual gauged data and the runoff predicted by the regres- sion analysis. (Exhibit 438) '6) In an effort to minimize these errors Applicant's model independently calculates physical and legal avail- ability at many of the flow points which are represented on the flow network diagrams by an oval with a sub-basin designation. As a result Applicant I s model does not reflect the flow of water from one flow point to another, but rather statistically calculates water availability at the sub-basin boundaries. This methodology allows errors in the prediction of physical availability above these flow points 'to be used, rather than reconciled with the esti- mates of physical availability at downstream flow points. For example, the overestimation of physical availability at and upstream of flow point 116 was not itself corrected by the independent calculation wh,ich was made at the down- stream point 120. 7) As Mr. Leak testified (on 7/3/91), an overestimate of physical water availability would result in an even greater overestimate of legal availability when legal constraints, such as minimum stream flows, are applied to the model. See Exhibit 493. V. The use of Applicant 's hydrology would therefore result in an overestimate of water legally available to the proposed project. 8) The Court finds by a preponderance of the evidence, that the estimates of physical water availability by Opposers' experts properly account -for the increased precipitation which occurs at higher elevations within the basin. Both Mr. Spronk and Mr. Helton used the gauged data available at the highest elevations and performed appropri- ate regression analyses in order to estimate runoff at the upper gauges, such as the East River near Crested Butte, for years in which no data were available. These estimates are conservative, in that they may overestimate the water available to the Applicant. For example, Mr. Spronk used the East River near Crested Butte gauge to predict physical availability on Cement Creek even though the Cement Creek basin is at a lower evaluation than the Crested Butte gauge. B. ASSTJMP!rIONS RE ABSOLUTE AND CONDITIONAL WATER RIGHTS 23. The parties' experts. also varied significantly as to which of the existing absolute decrees and which existing condi- tional decrees they actually modelled and in the manner in which they modelled the same. 15