BOARD01372

• Board Meeting Date: 11/17/1976
• Description: Agenda, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

MR. SPARKS: There is ,a very strong sentiment among various members' of
the Colorado legislature for this fund. Senator Anderson, the president
of the Senate, is very strong for this type of fund. He was one of the
principal sponsors of the act when it was enacted in the first place.
There are others that feel this just as strongly in the legislature.
So I don't think we will have any problem getting the limit raised once
welve shown that we have committed the original ten million.

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MR. STAPLETON: All right. It would be my thought, assuming that all
of us have read the project statements, that Mr. Sparks give us the '
summaries of the respective projects, and then r'll call from the
audience if any persons.would like to be heard on a particular project.
And I believe that we ought to take action to recommend and approve each
one individually, because by the time we get to the end of twelve proj-
ects, I am not sure I can sift out all the various facts on each one of
them. Is that satisfactory?

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MR. VANDEMOER: This is just a suggestion. I wonder if it would be
possible to let anybody from the floor speak after Larry gives the
summary of the project. '

MR. STAPLETON: Weill conclude all the comments on the one project
before we consider it. Then in accordance with the agenda, let's
discuss Dove Creek first.

MR. SPARKS: Mr. Chairman and members of the Board, I'll cover these
very briefly because in some cases there are people here as project
sponsors who.wish to speak on these matters.

To summarize briefly the Dove Creek project, the reason we gave it
priority number one is that it is an integral part of the Dolores proj-
ect. A major problem that we have had in trying to solve the Dove
Creek water problem is that we have had no water supply,available to
solve their problem.

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I can remember back now for over some twenty-five years that Dove Creek
has periodically had more critical problems with its domestic water.
supply than any city in the state of Colorado. This is because' it
depends upon a very high pump lift out of the Dolores River. As a
matter of fact, the pump lift is approximately a thousand'feet verti-
cally. Dove Creek has a very'junior priority on the Dolores River and
at the point where it pumps its water from the river, the river goes dry
in most years during the late part of the summer.

In many years, we have had to assist Dove Creek by dispatching military
water trucks and private trucks to that area to haul water to the city.
Just a few years ago, Dove Creek replaced its pipeline from the Dolores
River and one of those unprecedented gullywashers occurred down there'
and destroyed virtually the entire system. They were out of water again
until that system could be replaced, which took a period of time.

OVer the years, they have had a very, very critical problem. We can.now
solve the problem through the Dolores project. But it will be some four
to five years before that water is: available from the Dolores project,

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