BOARD00453

• Board Meeting Date: 2/26/1975
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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Reservoir or by furnishing water down to this point, to the road up at
this point. If a minimum stream flow requirement requires that the
water go down to Greeley No.2, the river will dry up at that point,
rather than at this point or this point. But the point is that when
you go down here there is still going to be a dry stream and the result
is that these reservoirs are absolutely useless because there is none
of them that can be used by the ditches to whom they belong. They can
only be used by exchange.

Another example and a very important one which has a tremendous effect
on the regimen of the river, that makes reservoirs useful, concerns the
use of the Poudre Valley Canal. The Poudre Valley Canal can divert
above the mouth of the canyon not under its own priority which isn't
worth a hoot, but because we have reservoirs down here which can supply
the Greeley No. 2 Canal. This is the decreed water diversion for the
Greeley No. 2 which is very good. If it gets water from the Larimer
and Weld system, then Larimer and Weld can divert at this point. Or
perhaps Larimer and Weld want to use other of its reservoirs which
cannot fill except through the Poudre Valley Canal and by supplying
Greeley No. 2 it can divert way up to the head of the canyon and fill
these reservoirs which would otherwise never be filled.

Now, as I say, these are illustrative of the problem only. They are
not meant to be the only examples because each one of these reservoirs
and each one of these ditches from time to time can use some exchange.
The pO,int is however, that if these exchanges are in any way interferred
with we will lose the ability to use substantial amounts of water.

It might be suggested by some that we have the right as we do to go
into court and get these exchanges confirmed by the court and thus
perhaps beat the state of Colorado and Game and Fish Department in our
priorities because our exchanges go back some time. And this is probably
true and I think I can assure you that if the State Game and Fish goes
in for its minimum stream flow, it will be a race to the court house
door with our exchanges. But even that won't help because what we
will do is we will stifle y.t:;ur imagination. The exchanges we use today
are more sophisticated than the exchanges we used ten years ago. We
have extremely imaginative division engineers and water commissioners.
They are continually finding new and better ways to encourage the
maximum utilization of the waters of the Poudre Basin. Apparently,
there are things that are going to happen that we could not now very
easily get a decree for because they have not yet happened. The ditches
that you will see on your map that go through Fort Collins are being
overdrawn by Fort Collins. The same has to be true with the city of
Greeley.

The city of Fort Collins, for instance, is trying to enlarge Joe wright
reservoir which it now owns from its present 800 acre-feet to 8,000
acre-feet and perhaps can store these wateIS here by exchange. But if
the State Game and Fish has a 1975 priority and we don't get this done
for ten years, then we can't do it because we would interfere from the
Rustic down with the minimum stream flow which would be a regrettable
thing.

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