BOARD00293

• Board Meeting Date: 3/26/2001
• Description: WSP Section - Platte River Endangered Species Cooperative Agreement
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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STATE OF COLORAD

Colorado Water Conservation Board
Department of Natural Resources
1313 Sherman Street, Room 72 J
Denver, Colorado 80203
Phone: [phone]
FAX: [phone]
WNw.cwcb,state.co.us

MEMORANDUM

. . Rod I<uharlch
CWeB Director
'Oan McAuliffe
Oepuly Olrector

To:

Colorado Water Conservation Board .

Rick Bro&~..Rk;(r Coordinator, Interstate Streams Investigation
Randy Seahol~,'t%'i~1nterstate Streams Investigation

From:

Date:

March 9, 2001

Subject:

Agenda Item 23.d., March 26-27, 2001 Board Meeting.
Platte River Endangered Species Cooperative Agreement.

I. Introduction

In 1997 the Govemors of the states of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming signed an
agreement with the Department of Interior to improve and/or study the habitat offour
endangered species in the Central Platte River in Nebraska. The proposed program has
three components: water, land, and monitoring and research. This memorandum will
highlight some of the key activities of several of the Cooperative Agreement (CA)
Committees.

II. Status of Cooperative Agreement Activities

A briefsurnmary of the status of important individual committee activities is provided
below:

. The Water Action Plan Committee did not meet.

. The Water Management Committee held a conference caU to discuss scheduling and
critical path activities which need to be completed to al10w timely and complete
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) evaluation of several critical program
elements. Specifically, significant work on individual state future depletions plans
needs to be completed in the next few months. The federal government will also need
to detennine how federal depletions will be handled, especially, if these depletions arc
not covered under individual state plans. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is also
required to develop a plan for USFS lands in the Platte River basin. This effort will
include establishing a baseline against which past and future vegetation management
can be measured.