BOARD00725

• Board Meeting Date: 1/18/1973
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

it impossible to make a change in point of diversion for No. 1 water
\~ell ?

Mr. Moses: I,would say it would make it more difficult.

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Mr. Vandenoer: You would say what?

11r. Moses: It will make it more difficult.

fir. Stapleton: Maybe you should have a petition filed before the
election.

Mr. Vandemoer: That is what worries me.

~tr. Stapleton: How about, do you have a comment on that, ~tr. Sparks?

. i'l'tr. Sparks: You can read all kinds of problems into this thing that
are not really here. As far as the lower ends of the streams are
concerned, we are already forced to release considerable water and
more than any minimum flow. For instance, on the Colorado River we
must release about seventy percent of the entire flow of that river
system at the state line. That is because of the two interstate
compacts. So those flows are going to be there whether we do anything
about it or noe. The same way on the South Platte. We have an obli-
gation to deliver water to Nebraska. When we get down to the lower
end of the streams we don't have the problem that we have at the
higher elevations. In the North Park and the Laramie River areas,
that is already taken care by Supreme Court decision. We are limited
as to the amount of water that we can divert out of those basins.
We can't divert any more water out of the Laramie and the North
Platte. So the residual stream flows, the minimum stream flows, are
automatically taken care of in those areas.

Hr. Burr: Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Stapleton: Yes, sir.

Mr. Burr: I am not an attorney, I am an irrigator. I still think
that you are taking away a right to change points of diversion.

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!:Jr. Stapleton: Well, as I understand these legal specialists, they
are saying that you don't have any constitutional right, the right to
change the right of diversion.

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