BOARD01367

• Board Meeting Date: 3/16/2004
• Description: CWCB Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

proposal as early as July 2004,
(Boulder Creek)

Gunnison River Basin

Aspinall Unit Operations Meeting: The winter Aspinall Operations meeting was held on Jan,
22 in Montrose, CWCB staff made a presentation on the Board's recent instream flow filing on
the Gunnison River and updated the group on activities associated with federal reserved water
settlement for the Black Canyon ofthe Gunnison National Park. Preliminary forecasts indicate
Blue Mesa will almost fill this July, The next meeting will be held on April 22 in Grand
Junction.

Aspinall Unit Re-operation EIS Scoping Meetings: Reclamation held public scoping meetings
on Feb, 26-28 in Gunnison, Delta and Grand Junction, thus beginning the study to re-operate the
Aspinall Unit to try to meet the USFWS Flow Recommendations for endangered fish and critical
habitat on the Gunnison River or a reasonable alternative thereto, Reclamation expects to spend
approximately five years on this EIS and would like the DNR to be a cooperating agency.
CWCB staff will help identify and resolve issues and develop and model alternatives,

Black Canyon Federal Reserved Water Right Case: On Nov, 3,2003, we asked the Colorado
Supreme Court to review Judge Patrick's order staying the Black Canyon federal reserved rights
case. On Nov. 10,2003, the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to review it. The environmental
opposers (and the United States) filed their responses on Dec, 26, 2003 and our reply was due
Feb, 9, In the federal action filed by the environmental opposers, the United States recently filed
a motion to dismiss,

Gunnison River Instream Flow Appropriation: Following the November hearing on this
matter, the water right application was filed in the Division 4 Water Court on December 23,2003
and received case number 4-03CW265, Statements of Opposition were due at the end of
February, and we may have more to report at the meeting,

Gunnison PBO: Apparently the USFWS and Reclamation have not held a discussion regarding
the proposed draft MOU regarding the Aspinall consultation. We understand that this discussion
did not take place because there was a suggestion made at the January 2004 meeting of the
Colorado Water Conservation Board that the MOU might not be necessary, and that there may
be another avenue to receive assurances regarding the PBO, Even though that suggestion was
made, the water users would still like to pursue signing of an MOU, Therefore, we have
requested that Reclamation and USFWS provide comments on the MOU at the earliest possible
date and we anticipate bring this matter back to the Board in May,

Platte River Basin

South Metro Water Supply Study: We have received the final study report and will post it to
the web site,

Platte River Recovery Implementation Program - Draft Environmental Impact Statement:
Rick Brown will update the Board on this matter during the meeting, In short, initiation of the
public comment period is dependent on the receipt of the National Academy Science report has
been released and the public comment period initiated,

On Jan, 29, the Interior Department released a draft EIS laying out the major options for the
future of the Platte River. Each of the options calls for freeing up more of the river's water and
purchasing land along the Platte for wildlife habitat during the initial 13 years of the project.

The draft EIS outlines four action alternatives: governance committee alternative - this
alten1ative would increase target flows by at least 130,000 acre-feet a year and set aside at least
10,000 acres in central Nebraska, The water leasing alternative has the same elements as the

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