BOARD01858

• Board Meeting Date: 1/12/1967
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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1

MR. STAPLETON:

MR. SPARKS:

least two or three counties, or two counties
and the City of Denver, the municipalities of
Englewood, Littleton and Denver and there is
no organization in existence at this time by
\~hich we could give that assurance to the
Corps. So I undertook to give that assurance."

"Are you bonded?"

"No and I don't have $2 million~ If I
am subsequently sued as a result of that, I
can add that to my other debts and take out
bankruptcy and I' 11 probably be better off
than I am now, But in any event, somebody
had to give that assurance 60 I did write
a letter giving the necessary assurance.

I think this matter will require an
amendment to our existing state law. The
irony of it is that no state agency has the
authority to speak up for the State of colo-
rado and give such assurances, Yet these
assurances were necessary for the continued
planning on the dam. I only thought about
it for about 30 seconds before I agreed to
go ahead and give the assurances. We were
in a bind and we had to do something. I
explained to the Corps that I had no real
authority and I conditioned my letter upon
the future action of the legislature, et
cetera. Later on I will explain to the Board
what I think should be done to our law to
give us authority to act under those circum-
stances and under future similar circumstances
that will arise in connection with flood con-
trol.

The difficulty we have with flood control
projects is in determining the actual bene-
ficiaries. For our water conservancy districts
we can say we are going to supply water to
certain people, but for flood control it is
very difficult to determine how you assess
the benefits. Obviousl~ the Chatfield proj-
ect conveys in some manner benefits to all
the people of the metropolitan area; as a