BOARD00198

• Board Meeting Date: 1/15/1969
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

To implement the various studies and
recommendations, the Colorado General Assembly
authorized the Director of Natural Resources
to prepare a comprehensive recodification of
the state's water laws, although not necessar-
ily in accordance with the recommendations
made by this Board..

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In our review of the proposed legisla-
tion we find that there are many concepts with
which we are in agreement. The legislature
has directed the preparation of legislation
to 'provide for integrated administration of
all diversions and uses of waters within the
state, protect all vested water rights, and
permit full utilization of ground waters in
the state'. The task of carrying out this
directive is incredibly complex and difficult.
Since the staff of this Board has not been
able to come up with a satisfactory solution,
we believe that the proposed legislation is
the best that has been offered to date. We
reluctantly conclude, however, that the pro-
posed legislation is deficient in two major
areas as follows:

1. It dOes not provide sufficient detail
or legislative policy for the integrated
adjudication and administration of surface
and ground water rights.

2. It fails to recognize the accumu-
lated problem in the South Platte and Arkansas
Valleys. It is our opinion that the division
engineers who, by the proposed legislation,
are given the primary responsibility for
accomplishing the necessary changes, will be
unable to accomplish any effective integra-
tion of ground and surface waters in these
areas (the South Platte and the Arkansas) on
the piecemeal basis as contemplated by the
proposed legislation. We believe that a
special adjudication board must be estab-
lished for both the South Platte and the
Arkansas valleys to accomplish the integra-
tion and adjudication of wells with surface

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