BOARD00277

• Board Meeting Date: 9/11/1970
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

0:7.1.0

MR. ROBINS:

"It is a pleasure to be here with you again
today, and to see so many visitors, to discuss
the Yellow Jacket Project. We want to give
you a little bit of background on the Yellow
Jacket Project itself, the investigations,
when they started, and the status the project
is in now.

Investigations were started by the Bureau
of Reclamation on the Yellow Jacket Project
back in 1906. During the early 1930's con-
siderable reconnaissance planning and work was
done on the project, the potential project,
and the resource inventory and potentialities
of it were outlined in the Colorado River Report
of 1946, which I am sure some of you are
familiar with.

A more thorough investigation was made in
the early 50's and the results of that plan,
the potentials, were outlined in our 1957
Reconnaissance Report on the Yampa-White Proj-
ect area. This map which is shown here is on
our old 1957 reconnaissance report and shows
~he plan that was contemplated at that time.
That plan included about 41,000 acres of
irrigable project lands, including 37,000 acres
here in the White River Basin and the rest over
in the Axial Basin.

I

This plan included the enlargement of
Trappers Lake with an anticipated building of
a dam at the outlet works to add about 24,000
acre-feet of active storage capacity. We also
had what we called the White-Yampa Diversion
Canal, or Yellow Jacket Canal, which would
divert water from the White River over across
Yellow Jacket Pass and into the Yampa River
drainage. That water would be reregulated then I
in the Thornburg Reservoir site with a capacity
of around 36,000 acre-feet and serve about
10,000 acres of land in the Axial Basin.

After this plan was presented in the
reconnaissance report the Yellow Jacket Proj-
ect was given a priority in Public Law 485 as