BOARD00744

• Board Meeting Date: 7/10/1973
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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particularly the West Divide and the Yellow Jacket. to try to provide
a substantial amount of water for the oil shale industry. The Yellow
Jacket project also involved the White River. The original plans for
both the Yellow Jacket and the Flat Tops involved the use of many of the
natural lakes in the Flat Tops area. including Trappers Lake. It was I
obvious that we would have considerable environmental problems with any
project which involved storage in the high mountain areas of the White
River National Forest.

We asked the Bureau to determine if we could meet the requirements of
the oil shale industry in the Piceance basin by moving out of any pro-
,posed wilderness area. We shelved any further action on the Flat Tops
project and concentrated on the Yellow Jacket project. As you know.
the Yellow Jacket report has been completed. That plan eliminates the
,SMeadows area and Trappers Lake. We determined that we could adequately
satisfy the oil shale requirements of the Piceance basin by taking the
waters of the White River after they left the proposed wilderness area.
Iri:~965 when this matter was being considered. we did not have any plan
developed for an oil shale industry in the White River basin. When we
were',requested by Governor Love to furnish information concerning the
wilderness proposal we pointed out that we considered it premature to
include the Meadows area in the wilderness area because we might need
that';'site for a storage facility. We were not considering any trans-
basin diversions. We were merely considering that site for the storage
of water on the South Fork of the White River for release to the Piceance
basin. We asked the Governor to request that the Meadows area be with-
d~a~from consideration in 1966.

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When we subsequently developed the Yellow Jacket plan and determined that
we did not need the Meadows site. I so informed the Governor. As a
result. he has indicated that the state of Colorado no longer has any
objection to the inclusion of the Meadows area in the wilderness plan.
In the meantime. both the Colorado River District and the Rocky Mountain
Power Company. a speculative stock enterprise. made filings on elements
of the old Bureau of Reclamation Flat Tops plan - the Rocky Mountain
Power Company for the purpose of selling the plan to any potential
customer and the Colorado River District for the development of its own
resources perhaps or perhaps to block the Rocky Mountain Power plans.
We never considered either of these plans economically feasible in the
first place.

The present wilderness proposal does not interfere with any plans that
this board has for the use of the state's water resources. It is in
conformity with the Yellow Jacket project. and we worked for years to

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