BOARD00188

• Board Meeting Date: 11/14/1962
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

reconnaissance study, it was a very sketchy
survey but it certainly did indicate that
there is a potential phreatophyte problem in
the state of colorado.

1

To just give you some figures of what
we came up with, the total potential (now
this is theoretical, this is not actual;
there is quite a difference between the two)
theoretical salvage of water now being con-
sumed by phreatophytes in Colorado runs to
about 575,000 acre-feet of water per year.
This is not a practical salvage; a practical
salvage would be something probably consid-
erably less than that; but even if it were
only in the range of 25 percent to 50 percent
this is a substantial amount of water.

We did go into more detailed calculations
in the Arkansas Valley and came up with this
figure, it would be possible by substitution
of beneficial type vegetation for the non-
beneficial phreatophytes in the Arkansas
valley to salvage, theoretically again, about
68,000 acre-feet. Now I think this is real
significant in that this is about the same
amount of water that the Fryingpan-Arkansas
Project imports from the western slope as a
part of that project.

I

A great deal of research must be done
to determine how much of this would be
actually salvaged. The point I wanted to
bring up today was something that we are
faced with there, and I think it gives an
idea of what we are faced with in other areas
of the s~ate. In the cooperative agreement
with C.S.U. to determine the relationship be-
tween surface and ground waters, the staff of
C.S.U. - Mort Bittinger is here - in working
on this problem, show a short stretch of the
Arkansas River between Las Animas and La Junta.
They made a detailed survey of the phreato-
phyte problem there and I might say that they
came up with an answer of water that is being
wasted and potentially, theoretically, sal-
vageable somewhat in excess of what we came