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. "Now it's going to stay in Boulder Creek and that's going to make a lot of people happy," Moser said. "We marketed the water rights separately," she continued, explaining that they fielded several other offers for the water from various interested parties until finalizing the conservation-oriented deal with the water trust. 'Win-win' Moser said the sale ofthe water rights doesn't affect existing ranching and hay growing at the Slate Creek Ranch, which still has irrigation water available from Slate Creek. "From our standpoint, it's a win-win for the West Slope," said Colorado Water Trust president Mile Browning. "We get water for instream flows and still get to put it to beneficial use. We're not taking water out of consumptive use. We're using it for instream flows in an area where flows are critical and redirecting the consumptive use to an area where flows are not so critical." The deal is significant in part because it helps provide water in an area where the Colorado Water Conservation Board determined that required instream flows are not being met, Browning said. . "The impact on Boulder Creek will be the greatest," said Jay Skinner, instream flow coordinator for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Boulder Creek flows peak at about 50 to 75 cubic feet per second (cfs) during spring runoff, but flows drop down as low as 3 to 5 cfs during the late irrigation season, in August and early September, Skinner said, explaining that the stream suffered from those low flows in late summer. The Slate Creek Ranch diversion gulped up to 8 cfs for irrigation, and the water was transferred out of the Boulder Creek drainage with no return flows. "That was 100 percent depletive, and the effect was profound," Skinner said, expiaining that the increased flows will benefit brook trout populations in the stream. The fledgling water trust was formed in 2002 with specific purpose of acquiring water rights for conservation purposes - an endeavor made more challenging by Colorado water law, which stipulates that only the conservation board can own environmental instream flow rights. It's also the first use of a recently passed state law that enables the conservation board to buy water rights not just to meet minimum flow requirements, but to improve stream flows for the benefit of the environment, and specifically fish, said Melinda Kassen, attorney with the Trout Unlimited's Western Water Project. . It's significant because it's the first time the CWCB has signed on to a deal authorizing