BOARD00284

• Board Meeting Date: 1/12/1971
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

dear to Si's heart, there are some recent
developments going on there which will require
a great deal of attention by this Board. It
is now projected that three 450 megawatt steam
plants will be constructed somewhere in the
Yampa Basin, probably somewhere below Steam-
boat Springs, maybe in Moffat county or Routt
County or both. In any event, this will be
a tremendous amount of generating capacity.
For those of you who are familiar with the
Hayden plant, the projected plants would be
about nine times the capacity of the Hayden
plant. In terms of economic impact, Routt
and Moffat Counties will be greatly affected.
It looks quite certain now that these plants
will be constructed in the near future. These
plants will require a considerable quantity
of water. The diversion requirements will
probably exceed 30,000 acre-feet a year.

This puts a different light on some of
the projects that we have now in the planning
stage. I met with the people of the Upper
Yampa Water Conservancy District a few weeks
ago in Steamboat Springs to review the plans
and to determine what could be done to get
something moving as rapidly as possible. We
also had representatives from the Bureau of
Reclamation there. What we are exploring now
is the possibility of a small project loan for
construction of storage somewhere on the Yampa
River above Steamboat Springs to supply the
requirements of these projected plants. It
is projected that these units will be on the
line before 1980. This means that to provide
the water supply, we should move quite rapidly.
A small project loan can be granted if the
project cost is less than $10 million. It may
be possible to construct storage for these
plants at a cost of less than that.

In any event, we are moving as fast as
we can move in the contemplation of a rather
tremendous development in that area."

I

I