BOARD01250

• Board Meeting Date: 12/9/1964
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

"T..L"T""

MR. STAPLETON:

MR. SPARKS:

I think it is much more fundamental
perhaps, than Mr. Sparks realizes. Mr. Sparks
is not just talking to our Board here or our
Legislature, we may be talking to the whole
United States and people who are interested
in our water. Our water flows downhill to
everybody and everybody keeps his eye on it.

I

I hope that any official statement made
by the State of Colorado will be exceedingly,
carefully, dealt with."

"Thank you, Mr. Saunders.

I think to get through the presentation
of the points in the proposed letter, I am
going to let Mr. Sparks complete that pre-
sentation and then we will have plenty of
time for questions from the Board and our
audience. Go ahead if you will, Larry."

"The second point is that all waters,
not heretofore appropriated in accordance
with existing law, shall be subject to appro-
priation under permit issued by the office of
the State Engineer, subject to a finding by
that office that the requested water is avail-
able for appropriation.

This would change us over to the permit
system subject to an administrative finding
that the water is available. In other words,
under this system, if a permit is requested
for a well or any other water right and the
State Engineer finds there is no water avail-
able, it would be rather futile to adjudicate
water rights which do not exist or which have
already been appropriated. Our present law
permits courts to adjudicate water whether
there is any water there or not. The result I
is we may have a basin with two million acre-
feet of annual supply with four million acre-
feet adjudicated. This causes a major part
of our problem. We suggest that there first
should be administrative examination by the
State Engineer. Any citizen has the right to
appeal any decision to the district courts of