BOARD00725

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

the seniors are going to be able to get their transfers and changes
of uses, but the juniors, and there are a lot of junior agricultural
rights that are going to be affected. I don't know, maybe this is
right, but I don't think this has been given proper consideration.

~~. Stapleton: Cleland, do you have something you would like to say?

1

Mr. Feast: Yes. I am Cleland Feast. Inasmuch as 11r. Saunders has
put my name into the picture, I would like to make one comment. I
went with the Denver Water Board and was with them seven years to
work and resolve problems similar to this which we are discussing
here today. It was my first outward observation that we were dealing
with rights that the ~ater Board already had appropriated to them.
In order to arrive at minimum flows the Water Board had to give up
something. That was no easy task. The problems of the Water Board
were resolved under the provisions of the Wildlife Coordination Act
which was passed by the federal government which requires a diverter
or an impounder of water to consult with the environmental and wild-
life agencies to determine what the best possible benefit is which
can be derived for fish and wildlife in the operation of that impound-
ment. It took us seven years to resolve those problems of the Denver
Water Board, but they were resolved.

The Denver Water Board now releases agreed amounts at its points of
diversion for the benefit of fish. And it does so under a contract
with the federal government. Those releases work in conformity with
a biological study that was made by the Fish and Wildlife Service and
the Colorado Game and Fish Department as to what was necessary to
maintain fish and wildlife in those streams. That was done success-
fully under the Federal Aid Coordination Act. The only thing that
was done in execution of those stipulations was to provide clauses
in the stipulation that would pertc:in to Denver's water rights and at
the same time protect the ~ffiter for the benefit of the people. ,Ie
put clauses in those contracts that said if anybody else appropriated
that water, the bypasses didn't have to be made.

This is what we are after in this whole issue. Now to me, I see a
lot of complexes in passing a constitutional amendment. Because the 1-
water users and the people that are depending on that are going to
get to thinking about this, they are liable not to vote for it. The
way I look at it, we want a solution. If no solution can be arrived
at, it would seem to me that it would be in order for the state to
pass a state coordination act patterned under or along the lines of
the federal coordination act, wherein the environmentalists, the

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