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Final Draft - Preferred Storage Options Plan Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District June 8, 2000 Based on these considerations, the District decided to assess whether additional storage capacity could be developed and used to benefit the District as a whole, including agricultural water users. The result of these considerations is the concept of "District Water Management Storage," which is included in the preferred storage options plan. The District Water Management Storage would fulfill a variety of needs, as follows: . Improved Management of Winter Water. By having dedicated storage space into which Winter Water spills at Pueblo Reservoir could be stored for later use by irrigators, potential adverse impacts of municipal carryover and re-operation could be minimized. . Storage for Capturing Spills of Re-operation Water. . Management of Well Augmentation Supplies and Project return flows. . Storage for a Water Bank, or to manage temporary water transfers from agricultural to municipal users under Interruptible Supply (IS) agreements. . Storage Space for Leasing by interested water users on a short- or long-term basis. The exact volume of this District Water Management Storage needs to he verified through further discussions with interested users and further definition of Water Bank and Interruptible Supply concepts currently under discussion by the District and entities in the District. However, the volume ofIO,OOO to15,000 afis believed to be suitable for the current level of planning. The volume of the District's storage space was established on a preliminary basis based on the following considerations: . Re-operation of the Project is expected to increase the frequency and volume of Winter Water spills. Modeling completed for the preferred storage options plan indicates that Winter Water spills could average 4,860 af higher per year in comparison to a scenario in which dedicated storage is provided for Winter Water. . During the GEl Study, a comparison was made between monthly irrigation well depletions and potentially available irrigation return flows. This comparison indicted a potential difference of 16,000 to 17,000 af, based on a future Project delivery of approximately 40,000 af to agricultural users. . The required storage space for a water bank or to facilitate interruptible supply agreements will be dependent on the number of eventual participants and their water needs. A volume of 5,000 af in new storage space appears to be J.\PROIECTS\9906I\Repons\PrerC1TCd SOP FinaI.wpd 2-11 ~ GEl Consultants, Inc.