BOARD00198

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

April, and then met with them individually
and gave them their assignments. One of their
principal assignments was to take a water
survey of all the available supplies and to
make a study on the historic use basis of all
of the major ditches on the Platte, below
Denver to the state line, and all of the
ditches on the Arkansas. We have never had
anything like this before and this is a rather
voluminous undertaking and these are work
sheets which we have for the benefit of the
Water Board and our division engineers and
our state engineer, where we have analyzed
these water rights on a monthly basis, on an
annual basis, etc. in order to provide the
background for going to the volumetric theory
as far as agricultural uses of water are con-
cerned which will be ultimately determined
in acre-feet and will be determined on the
basis of beneficial use.

I

Beneficial use is the measure, limit and
it's the basis of all water rights. In Bill
No.2, 'Division Utilization', we have merely
set forth what has always been the law of
the State of Colorado that a person, in
diverting water, must apply it to a beneficial
use and when it has met his needs to that ex-
tent, he must allow the rest, the remainder,
to be in the stream for the benefit of the
next junior right. Research has revealed that
we have been far behind the other states in
this particular field. Although they don't
define beneficial use in many instances, they
have gone to the volumetric theory. This has
been one of the principal criticisms of our
present law. I know your director has been
very much interested in this type of an
approach because when we get down to the last
waterhole we have got to make the highest and
best use of our water. In order to do that
in certain areas where we don't have any more
water, we've got to put the lid on this bene-
ficial use concept.

I

We have tried in this to define full water