BOARD00469

• Board Meeting Date: 5/12/1976
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

hypothesis is right, what do you do with the extra water when it gets
to the state's boundaries? Does anybody think about that in the long
period? We are talking about a period of twenty-five or fifty years
to make these changes. What happens then? If .it's not used here, what
happens then?

MR. SPARKS:
Never in our
at the state
at the state

I think.there's a very simple answer to that, Mr. Jackson.
future history will we have an excess of water to deliver
line. It will be the reverse. We will be short of water
line.

I

Every compact that we have sooner or later gets us into court with
other states. You know we've been sued twice now in the last ten years
by three different states: Kansas, New.Mexico and Texas. In each case,
they all~ged that we are not delivering water ,under the.terms of the
compact. . So I don't think there's ever going to be a moment in the
future history of Colorado where we have to worry about excess deliveries.
The other'states will have to worry about us not delivering water, and'
that's going to be true on the Colorado River. .

MR. ROBBINS: If I may comment. It's purely a policy.consideration for
the Board in making the filings. But you're not,going to force:an
overdelivery through minimum stream flows, unless you set a minimum flow
on the stretch of the river preceding the state line. Clearly by asking
for a minimum flow on a stream in the mountains, let's say in a wet.
mountain valley, you're not going to cause an over delivery to Kansas
in the Arkansas River.

MR. JACKSON: Dave, I think you will. If you, as a condition of a
change 'of.pointof-diversion'-- We've got a guy who is drying;up the,
river wherever'the dry stretch was. 'That is a senior appropriator. ,He
asks for a'change of point. of diversion. I think probably what's going
to happen:is that:you - or whoever is around at that time- as a
condition of that will through the, court probably, through the ,state's
ability, force some give-up of water to the river in that dry stretch
for his getting.a change to whatever point he wants. :

The cumulative affect of those give~ups has got to go to somebody.
You're depleting the amount that's used by some irrigator or some
municipality or whatever. Now, maybe Felix is right that when it gets
to the state line, it makes no.difference. r'm just cu~ious.

MR. SPARKS: I think it's an absolute certainty that none of these
minimum stream flows will ever cause any overdelivery at any:state:line
under any compact. The reverse is always going to be true. We're I
going to be scratching to get that water down, because we.have so many
more potential uses than we have water in Colorado. Everything we've
got now is decreed about three or.four times to the actual amount of.
water that is available in any of these streams. So there is just no
way we're ever going to deliver an excess.

MR. MAYNES: I'm Sam Maynes and I am the attorney for the Southwest
Water Board. I want to redirect the focus to what Mr. Kroeger brought
up with respect to Junction Creek and Lightner Creek. I think part of

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