BOARD01143

• Board Meeting Date: 12/11/1953
• Description: Minutes and Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

320

and insist upon the right to know that the Denver diver-
sion, in the amount demanded, will not take from us the
water we need for present use or for future development.
l'fe do not know that, and no one here can tell us that.

I

The majority report (and it is a majority report only),
of the Conference Committee tells us in effect, that
the Hill report contains that information and is to be
accepted as completely accurate. With regard to water
available for trans-mountain diversion or any other use,
which developed in our two counties, it tells us noth-
ing. We are only told that there probably is available
for trans-mountain diversion above Hot Sulphur Springs
400,000 acre feet from the Colorado and its tributaries.
All of the stream flow and other records we can obtain
dispute the accuracy of this statement.

The only Western Slope surplus of water with which you
are here concerned is that which is developed above Gore
canyon in Grand County. It is of no consequence to you,
in your deliberations on the question before you now
whether there are one million or five million acre feet
of surplus water in the Colorado River system. Whatever
that surplus may ultimately be found to total, it is in
the Yampa, the ~nite, the Gunnison, the Dolores, the
San Juan, the Las Animas, and other streams from which
Denver cannot divert it.

If the Colorado Water Conservation Board approves this
majority report without any information as to the amount
of water available to be exported from our basin, and if
that approval leads ultimately to the diversion by Den-
ver of the amount of water she demands, you may well be
condemning Grand and Summit Counties to a future wherein
there is no hope of development or even the maintenance
of its present economy. In fairness to us, to this Board,
and to the fainninded people of Colorado, we ask you if
there is any present emergency which justified your risk-
ing the vested rights and the futures of this segment of
our population?

I

Denver tells us that she faces such an emergency. In the
press, over the radio, in conference rooms, wherever and
by whatever media people will read or listen, we have been
told that"Denver will need the water she demands by the
year 1963, or her growth and development will be retarded
or altogether halted. Let us examine and analyze that
propaganda, for it can only be characterized as such. ~
statements are based on an analysis of testimony introduced
in the trial of the Denver Blue River adjudication case at
Breckenridge, which is now pending in our State Supreme
Court.

Denver now has a firm water supply for m\micipal use of
IB3,500 acre feet of water. With the completion of Reser-