BOARD00900

• Board Meeting Date: 3/21/2002
• Description: WSP Section - Platte River Endangered Species Cooperative Agreement
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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STATE OF COLORADO

Colorado Water Conservation Board

Department of Natural Resources
1313 Sherman Streetl Room 721
Denver, Colorado 80203
Phone: [phone]
FAX: [phone]
www.cwcb.state.co.us

Bill Owens
Governor

Greg E. Walcher
Executive Director

MEMORANDUM

Rod Kuharich
CWCB Director

To:

Dan McAuliffe
Colorado Water Conservation Board Deputy Director

Rick Brow~itte River Coordinator, Interstate Streams Investigation
Randy SeahO~~~ Interstate Streams Investigation

March 21, 2002

From:

Date:

Subject:

Agenda Item 19.d, March 21-;!2, 2002 Board Meeting,
Platte River Endangered Species Cooperative Agreement.

I.

Introduction

In 1997 the Governors of the states of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming signed an agreement with
the Department of Interior to improve and/or study the habitat of four endangered species in the
Central Platte River in Nebraska, The Cooperative Agreement was extended through June 30, 2003
to allow additional time to formulate a proposed program. The proposed program has three
components: water, land, and monitoring and research, This memorandum will highlight some of
the key issues under discussion at the present.

II. Status of Cooperative Agreement Activities

Environmental Impact Statement

The Cooperative Agreement (CA) participants have begun to assemble the written documents that
describe in some detail the individual elements of the proposed program, The compilation of these
individual elements will be the proposed program, which in turn will be described and evaluated in
the Environmental Impact Statement (BIS), The BIS team, which primarily includes staff from the
Bureau of Reclamation and United States Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), has begun writing the
BIS and has agreed to share preliminary draft information as it becomes available, This is good .
news as it will allow us the opportunity to offer improvements to the document early on, We expect
to see an initial draft description of the proposed program sometime shortly after the March Board
meeting,

Flood Protection. Water Supply Planning and Finance. Stream and Lake Protection
Water Supply Protection. conselVation and Drought Planning

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