BOARD02112

• Board Meeting Date: 1/9/1978
• Description: Agenda, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

being-used as a carrier for the coal?

At this time, I will give you a brief' rundown on the San Marcos plan,
because I did not understand it fully until just recently.

(Pointing to maps.) These quad sheets show the sourthern- part of I
Costilla County. As you can see, Costilla County is a fairly barren:
county~ You don't see much vegetation~ The plains in Costilla County
are quite bare, except where irrigation occurs, and there is irrigation
in certain areas of the county. But the water supply is always very
short.

To-give you a little orientation; this is the Rio: Grande River and up
here, north, would be Alamosa. This is the New Mexico state line. : This
is the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range, and over here off the map would
be the-Continental Divide. The' Rio Grande flows south into New Mexico.
The drainage: up: here at the top is Culebra Creek which, for all prac- :
tical purposes, makes no contribution- to the: Rio Grande River, because.
what little water is in it is utilized for irrigation in that area.
Down here is Costilla Creek which.is the subject of an inters tate_
compa'ct with New Mexico. We: also: have an interstate: compact with: Texas
and New Mexico: oil the Rio Grande; Thus there is a potential here of
involving two interstate compacts, the Costilla Creek and -the Rio Grande
compacts.

Costilla Creek originates in New Mexico, flows northerly into Colorado
and then wester~y, makes almost a complete circle; and flows: back out
and into the Rio Grande in .New Mexico:. It makes no contribution, for
all practical purposes, to the Rio Grande River,. because it is com-
pletely utilized in Colorado.and New Mexico.

The San Marcos is 'a. consortium of. two companies, the Houston' Gas
Company of Houston, Texas, and the Denver Rio Grande & Western Railroad
of Colorado. Those two entities have formed a joint venture to con-
struct a pipeline from the San Luis Valley into the Walsenburg area.
At that point, coal from eastern Colorado in the Walsenburg and.
Trinidad areas would be pulverized, put :into the pipeline and trans~
ported into the Houston area for the production of energy.. The
consortium has bought a section of land in southern Costilla County I
just north of Mesita Hill, Mesita Hill being an old volcanic cone.
This is only a -very short distance from the state line, the state line .
being about eight miles south..

On the face :of it, it is difficult to see how this could seriously.
affect the water resources of Color,ado. . But this we don I.t know, and
that is the purpose of the study.

-44-