BOARD01026

• Board Meeting Date: 5/16/2006
• Description: History of Reservoirs in the San Luis Valley - Presentation by Melvin Getz
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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,The poudre, District >'umber, Three, was the first distriot to request
the court,to appoint a referee to hear testimony or priorities. H. H.
Haynes was appointed rsferee. Greeley appointed two lawyers to protect
their interests by cross examining those cla:l.Jning priority to the Union
Colony., When the testimony was all in the referee made the recommenda-
tion to the court but Judge Ti:lliott retusad to issue the decree on the
grounds that. the law was unconstitut.ional. Later he decided that the
law was only defective. While the Supreme Court was reviewing the case,
the 3rd Colorado legislature convened and the Act of 1681 was adopted.
This law formalized the hearings by which the referee was to prepare the
decrees. It also created the office of the.StatA Ang!n~er, and provided
fQr the gauging of all streams used for irrigation purposes. Thus the
Colorado system came into existence. The men who designed this system
had been irrigating only 10 years, yet it worksd so well that it has been
adopted, with only a few modifications, by the other sixteen western states
having irrigation interests.
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The Cache La poudre 'Yallsy irrigators made a third important contri- ,e...,.,:/"
lnit;l.on to modsrn irrigation. They have developed teohniques and ). /:",,$
praotices for conserving water'tha:t has made the water supply of one
small stream effective, far beyond the dreams of any other irrigators--
even thoee people who count their irrigating' expsrience by mUleniums.
In 1878, Major Powell was authorized by Congress to ,determine the
irrigation potential of ths ,wsst. He took Utah as an'area representative
of the eleven western states. By determining the flow of tile streams' '
of ' ,Utah, and estimating that a second-foot would irrigate a hundred acres,
he reported to Congress that .3 percent of the western lands might be
subjeoted,to irrigation. powell1s forecast has proved remarkably
accurate for the west as a whole. In the Poudre Yalley, for every second-
foot that flows out of the mouth of the canyon there are now aver 400
acres under irrigation. This high efficiency has bee:n achieved by
storing water when 'it is not needed, and by using water high up in the
watershed ao that' the maximUJll return fl~ could be achieved. ,

During the 1860' s and 1670' s hay and small grains were the chief
crops produced undsr irrigation in Colorado. In the 1680's, alfalfa and
potatoes began to be groWn on a comparatively large scale. With hay and
small grains the flood now was usually sufficient to give each water
user enough to insure a crop. Alfalfa and potatoes, and later, beets,
reqUired irrigation over a longer season. By mid-July only s few senior
appropriators were entitled t.o water from the stream. Supplemental
,supplies of water had to be found 11" the land of the valley'was to be ,
, put under more profitabls crops.

The first movement in this phase was the development of reservoirs.
The first reservoir bUilt in the Stata to serve as an irrigation supply
was built on Coal Creek in Jefferson County in 1859. A dozen or more
reservoirs in the State have an earlier priority than any in the poudre
Valley, but they are all of small capacity. In 1882 the building of
relatively large reservoirs was begUn with ths construction of Chambers
Lake in the channel, of the upper Poudre, and of Windsor Lake reservoir
in the 10l'ler'valley. .\ccording to tables prepared by John E. Field,
reservoir' building in' tha poudre reached it peak in the decade of 1880

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