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<br />So, Senate Bill 5 may pose some problems. I don't recall enough <br />at this moment to know whether I would say it allows for the <br />flexibility to pump heavily once every 20 years and then not pump at <br />all for 19 out of 20 years. There may need to be some modification <br />made to that. <br /> <br />Q: Can the assets of those who have rights storage and delivery <br />systems be optimized through integration, i.e., Northern and Denver? <br />Can the sovereignty over water supplies and rights in the future be <br />protected? <br /> <br />A: That is one of the most challenging institutional aspects of <br />int7grat~ng any group of water supply systems. I think from an <br />eng~neer~ng perspective you can take five different systems, determine <br />their individual yields, and then operate them in an integrated <br />fashion with a few minor additions for facilities and come up with a <br />greater yield than the sum of those five. A very interesting <br />institutional question is who retains ownership over what? How do you <br />protect each player in the game so that player keeps as much yield as <br />he would have had to begin with? Who gets call to the synergy, if <br />any, that is generated in those yields? Those are questions that we <br />wisely left for the political scientists to try and answer. We know <br />they exist. We left them in the report as concerns, major concerns, <br />to integrating any systems. Again, it was beyond the scope of our <br />study, and frankly beyond my expertise, to address that. <br /> <br />One of our suggestions to the Water Conservation Board and DNR <br />would be that people with understanding and knowledge of the <br />institutional dimension of this address those sorts of questions, <br />because they would have to be answered. Mayor Carpenter evinced a <br />certain reluctance, I think, to be involved in a system that would <br />essentially confiscate everyone's water rights and then turn around <br />and say, OK, here is your share of what we think you get. That is not <br />what we are talking about. We are talking about a system where <br />everyone retains ownership and control of their assets, cooperatively <br />manages those assets and those facilities so as to not diminish their <br />own yield, but provide for additional yield to the group as a whole. <br />How do you slice up that windfall? Who pays? Who gets it? Very <br />interesting questions. <br /> <br />Q: (1) You and the other speakers have talked about the competition <br />between Front Range municipal water systems. Would you please <br />describe two or three instances of such competition. (2) Don't the <br />interruptible supply or first-use agreements require the same type of <br />burdensome water court proceedings as a requirement for <br />straightforward change proceedings? <br /> <br />A: Competition among water systems -- well, the competition exists in <br />an operational sense in that we allocate our water rights according to <br />the Prior Appropriation Doctrine. One city having more senior water <br />rights can call water out past another city that may have junior water <br />rights. It happens every day in every stretch of the river. In that <br />sense, there is competition. With respect to procuring additional <br />supplies, thankfully we are more cooperative than we are competitive <br />now. Ever since the South Platte participation agreement and storage <br />agreement there has been an amazing amount of cooperation among water <br /> <br />36 <br />