BOARD01955

• Board Meeting Date: 3/21/1973
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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six terms on the City Council of Rifle and I was head of their water
board all the time. I got their filtration plants and the pump
plants out of the river, but no matter what you do to that water
you get out of the river, it isn't fit for human consumption. And
,it is like I told Governor Love here a year or two ago. I said,
"John, the water that we pump .out of the river is just something some-
body used up the river a few days before they flushed their toilet
with." There are twenty-one towns above Rifle that dump their sewage
into the river. They all have sewage lagoons and everything, but
they are growing too fast. They put in a new ~300,000 project and
then it is obsolete. It won't do the jOb anymore. The town of New
Castle gets its water out of Elk Creek. They have enough water for
the townias it is today, but if you put a few hundred more people in
there they are not going to have water for them. The same way with
the town of Silt. The town of Silt pumps their water out of a sump
in an island in the river. Last year they pumped it dry. They didn't
have enough water. Rifle gets part of its water out of Beaver Creek.
It is the only good water we get. The rest of it comes out of the
river. Beaver Creek isn't big enough to supply the water that we
need for the town. Grand Valley is in the same shape. They get
their water from some springs and last summer their springs went dry.
They didn't have enough water to supply the town. DeBeque pumps
their water out of the river and it is just as good as the water that
we get in Rifle, which isn't fit for human consumption. You have to
put so much chlorine in it that if you drink it, it gives you the
bellyache. Most of us go down to the springs and outside country
and get our drinking water and boil it.

If they are going to have an oil shale industry in this Colorado Rtv~
valley between New Castle and DeBeque, they are going to have some
water that is fit for human consumption. The Crystal River is the
only good clean stream that we have left over there. It isn't pol-
luted with a lot of towns so that you can't use it for human con-
sumption. The Crystal River is a real clean river. It needed the
Placita Reservoir there. Last summer the farmers dried the Crystal
River up because there wasn't enough water to supply the demands a~a
still have water in the river for fish. They dried it up. And it
will make a good recreation area. There is another da~ on Yank Creek
and another one on Willow Creek, a branch of Divide Creek, which will
make a lot of good recreation.

Our Silt project has a btg reservoir in it and it is one of the most
popular recreation areas around the country. We can do the same
thing with these dams on West Dtvide project.

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