BOARD01773

• Board Meeting Date: 11/16/2004
• Description: Report of the Attorney General
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

STATE OF COLORADO

.' Colorado Water Conservation Board

Department of Natural Resources
1313 Sherman Street, Room 721
Denver, Colorado 80203
Phone: [phone]
FAX: [phone]
www.cwcb.state.co.lls

MEMORANDUM

Bill Owens
Governor

TO:

Colorado Water Conservation Board Members

Russell George
Executive Director

FROM:

Randy Seaholm r:P
Chief, Water Supply Protection

Rod Kuharich
eWeB Director

Dan McAuliffe
Deputy Director

DATE: November 8,2004

SUBJECT: Agenda Item 25b, November 16-17, 2004 Board Meeting-
Attorney General's Report - Colorado River Compact Issues

.

The purpose of this agenda item is to provide a brief update on the development of draft shortage
criteria and some of the related issues, Colorado is involved with three distinct but related
processes.

Seven Basin State Discussions

.

The Seven Colorado River Basin States have met and established a technical work group, which
has now met four times, Discussions in the technical work group have been focused on the
development of, "Guiding Principles for Shortage Criteria," The first meeting identified critical
events, such as critical lake levels at Lakes Powell and Mead that were of concern to the states,
and the evaluations and modeling that were needed. The second meeting began to focus on some
of the sideboards such as the hydrology that should be used, Glen Canyon and Hoover operations
and benefits, operational flexibility in the system and Mexican Treaty issues. At the third
meeting, we began to look at some model runs that Reclamation had done for the group and ways
to look at and present the data. We also started to take a more in-depth look at the many different
options that the Lower Basin was considering to save water and become more efficient in their
water use, The primary focus of the fourth meeting was the definition of "extraordinary drought"
as used in the Mexican Treaty and review of some of the refinements that were made to the model
runs. As a result, the group has identified three key triggers (powell Storage, Powell Release and
Mead Storage) and are evaluating at what lake levels and point in time to trigger them. Once the
triggers are determined, the discussion then needs to shift to what happens (i,e, how large are the
shortages, how long are they in place, etc.), Given the recent letter from the four Upper Basin
States, this group will not meet again until after the principles meet in Las Vegas on December
17th.

Colorado Water Conservation Board
Flood Protection. Water Supply Planning and Finance. Stream and Lake Protection
Water Supply Protection. Conservation and Drought Plarming