BOARD02003

• Board Meeting Date: 3/20/2000
• Description: WSP Section - Arkansas River Basin Issues - Status of Accounting Issues at Pueblo, Trinidad, and John Martin Reservoirs
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

March 20-21,2000, Agenda Item 24.c.,
. Arkansas River Basin Issues, page 2

Secretary to account for water in storage and releases as demanded by users. The
Colorado Division 2 Engineer, currently Steve Witte, has served as the Operations
Secretary since 1980, and is required by the 1980 Plan to provide an annual accounting
of reservoir operations to ARCA. In a 1997 Bylaw revision, the states created the position
of Assistant Operations Secretary to give Kansas an increased role in supervising the 1980
Operating Plan. The Garden City Water Commissioner from the Kansas Division of Water
Resources currently serves as the Assistant Operations Secretary.

In 1994, and with increased intensity beginning in 1998, Kansas started raising questions
about the Operations Secretary's accounting and direction of specific operations at JMR.
Reports of the Operations Secretary since 1994 have been either conditionally approved
or have not been acted upon by the Arkansas River Compact Administration due to
concerns raised by the State of Kansas. As a result ARCA has not produced its Annual
Report since 1993. The two triggering events leading to Kansas' concerns appear to be
delivery of well augmentation water to the Stateline by Colorado and account spills caused
by flood operations at JMR as a result of the abundant water supply in the Basin beginning
the mid 90's. These concerns focus on the interpretation of certain provisions of the 1980
Plan, and also on how the states should share excess water during historically infrequent
periods of reservoir spill.

.

DISCUSSION

John Martin Reservoir: Status of Operations Secretary Accounting

At the 1998 ARCA Annual Meeting the Operations Secretary and the Assistant Operations
Secretary were directed to meet for the purposes of clarifying and attempting to resolve
issues of concern pertaining to the 1995, 1997, and 1998 reports of the Operations
Secretary that had been or were to be timely raised by the Assistant Operations Secretary.
Both the Operations Committee and the Engineering Committee were to be involved as
deemed appropriate following initial discussions. The ARCA Chairman, Larry Trujillo,
requested that a schedule for these proceedings be prepared. Four days of meetings
between the Operations Secretary and the Assistant Operations Secretary and their staff
members were conducted. These occurred in Pueblo, Colorado on January 14,1999 and
February 25, 1999 and in Garden City, Kansas on April 8 and 9, 1999. The primary focus
of each of these meetings was to understand and respond to the issues of concern
preliminarily raised by the Assistant Operations Secretary. No written summary of these
meetings was prepared, but the Operations Secretary's 1999 Report included several
specific suggestions as to how some of these issues might be resolved.

.

At its 1999 Annual Meeting ARCA again directed the Operations Committee to examine
these issues and referred the Operations Secretary's 1999 accounting to this review
process. ARCA's new Chairman, Aurellio Sisneros, continued to encourage the states to
undertake this review in a prompt and productive manner. A two day meeting of the

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