BOARD00089

• Board Meeting Date: 3/16/2004
• Description: CF Section - Severance Tax Trust Fund Operational Account Recommendations
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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Recommendation: Staff gives a high recommendation for funding of this project because of the
importance to water supply protection, flood protection and water resource managers.

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5. Weather Modification Permitting Program - Local Water Users Cost Share Assistance

Beneficiary/Grantee/Contractor: CWCB, Various
Amount of Request: $80,000

Ranking:

Low

Product Produced: This program is a 10% cost share match to assist local water users that are
sponsored by water conservancy and conservation districts to maintain weather modification ground
based generator programs from enhanced snowpack in watersheds.

Water Planning Relationship: Enhanced snowpack, streamflow and water supply benefits many
of the CWCB, State and local water users programs.

Recommendation: Staff gives a low recommendation for funding of this project because of the need
to provide funding in other projects for flood protection.

6. Community Collaborative Rain and Hail Study

Beneficiary/Grantee/Contractor: Colorado State University
Amount of Request: $16,000

Rankiug:

Low

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Product Produced: Presentation to' the CWCB Board, Annual Report of Operations, and the
development of a statewide network of rain gages where the data is available daily from the website.
CSU posts daily precipitation maps for every day since the June 1998 availability over the website.
New counties that have been added to the program are Park, Summit and Grand County. There is a
strong presence in the Front Range areas including Jefferson, Douglas, Arapahoe and Elbert and Lincoln
County. CSU Rain gages have a small presence in Lake County and Eagle County also. The NWS
Grand Junction office is offering in-kind support to develop the network of gages on the western slope.
There have been 1200 gages distributed to date. In February 2003 there have been 400 active observers
and that number doubles in the summer to approximately 800 observations for rainfall events.
Participation involves sending the observed data to the website or .calling a Denver, Fort Collins,
Greeley and Brush phone line. Kevin Stuart of the UDFCD uses this data as a ground truthing and
quality assurance for their automated rain gages along the Front Range. Other funding comes from NWS
Grand Junction, UDFCD, Soil Conservation Districts of Eastern Colorado, City of Fort Collins Utilities,
U.S. Department of Agriculture and Northern Colorado WCD.

Water Planning Relationship: The CWCB granted the CSU - Colorado Climate Center an initial
$5,000 in 2002 to help CSU leverage a large grant from the National Science Foundation for the
development of a statewide network of rain gages and this would be a continuation of that funding.
Malcolm Wilson of the BaR is very supportive of this program, as water managers in the Colorado
River Basin need a better spatial distribution of rainfall data and additional sources of data to assist in
resource allocation decisions. This network of gages can compliment NRCS SNOTEL, National
Weather Service and Stream gage data to help forecasters and water managers. In the Upper Colorado
River Basin this additional data can assist in the determination of volume and peak flows for water
management issues.

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Recommendation: Staff gives a low recommendation for funding of this project because it is the
development of an additional source of data that can be useful in storm event flood documentation of
rainfall amounts and for forecasting streamflow conditions in a basin.

7. Floodplain Designation Criteria Manual Support
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