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. . . UPPER GUNNISON RIVER WATER CONSERVANCY DISTRICT Mitigation Proposal Page 2 of 10 pages An especially critical situation exists where existing subdivisions or individual dwelling units utilizing wells that divert water in the Slate River drainage have their wastewater piped to the East River Regional Sanitation District treatment plant (East River Treatment Plant) rather than treating it on site with non-evaporative sewage disposal systems. Because the East River Treatment Plant discharges into the East River, the diversions in such cases are 100 percent depletions to the Slate River from the well location to the Slate River's confluence with the East River (the "Affected Reach" of the Slate River. See FIGURE 3 on Page 3 of this proposal.) The East River Treatment Plant was built in 1984, and since its construction, Gunnison County has required all of the dwellings and subdivisions in the area to connect to the Plant It presently serves over 300 dwelling units, approximately 115 of which are served by wells diverting from the Slate River Drainage. All ofthese wells have non-functioning plans for augmentation, and all but five of the 115 dwellings are owned and occupied by local, middle-class residents who work in the area. (Nineteen of these dwellings are condominium units approximately 1,400 square feet in size, all occupied by local residents.) In 2003, the Division Engineer advised well owners that the Division of Water Resources would begin administering domestic wells with non-functioning plans for augmentation. This announcement placed a significant number of domestic wells in the Slate and East River drainages at serious risk of curtailment as a result of calls by senior irrigation ditches diverting from those streams and the CWCB ISF rights. The plan for augmentation was initiated to respond to this existing need. As noted above, the CWCB has never placed a call to protect the instream flow rights identified in the Statement of Opposition. In fact, it cannot do so despite the continuing injury caused by depletions of existing wells, because of the absence of stream gauges on all reaches but one. The one exception is a gauge at the upper end of the Slate River reach. This gauge was installed in 1993 at the request of the Upper Gunnison District, which paid a substantial portion of the installation cost and contributes the majority of its maintenance costs annually.' The CWCB submitted a call letter for this Slate River instream flow right in 2003, but the Division Engineer refused to honor the call because that sole gauge was inadequate to properly administer the call. In order to request that the Division Engineer administer calls by any of the instream flow rights presently being depleted by the wells discussed above, the CWeB will be required to install and maintain stream gauges. Even if administration could be enabled by installation of stream gauges, shutting off more than one hundred domestic wells is an inefficient and impractical way to protect the Slate River instream flow right , The data from that gauge provides the stream flow information upon which the proposal is based. The data is attached as Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3.