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<br />Frank, have you anything to add to that? <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />MR. EDDY: Outside of the fact that in the application that now sits <br />before the Rio Grande Water Board in Alamosa:is that the San Marcos <br />Corporation proposes to pump the water from this 960-acre area. and <br />whatever else they decide to go into to get their source of water and <br />pump that water directly into the river (its's a high.q~ality:water), <br />and take. credit on the Labatos guage where Colorado gets its credit for <br />the compact. Then take water directly out of the Closed Basin area <br />which is this area lying north of Alamosa, to take an additional <br />15,000 acre-feet a year and pipe it directly over the Sangre de Cristos <br />into Huerfano Basin, into Walsenburg and their plant there. Their <br />original plan was to pipe this water over an existing right-of-way'at . <br />La Veta into Pass Creek. But now they have changed and they are going <br />this way. <br /> <br />MR. SPARKS: It would amount to the same thing. What we are talking <br />about is approximately 10,000 acre-feet of water annually. They have <br />already drilled a series of wells in this location. I originally <br />understood that these were fairly deep wells and. that we were talking <br />about brackish water. But:these are not deep wells. They are wells <br />that encounter the water table somewhere between two and four hundred <br />feet. As Frank said, it is good quality water, except that it has a <br />fairly heavy iron content. Otherwise, it's good quality water. <br /> <br />The two companies have done a considerable amount of. geologic . <br />investigation. . They still have quite a bit.more to do. I suppose <br />they will spend well in excess of a million dollars investigating this <br />potential before they are through. They have offered to make all of <br />the information they develop in their well logs available to us. We. <br />have had a conference now with the State Engineer I s office, the <br />United States:Geological Survey, the San Marcos people and ~he staff <br />of our board to review this problem and to determine what type of <br />study. we. should engage in to determine the effect of the withdrawals <br />in this area upon both the Rio Grande and Costilla compacts, and what <br />effect those would have upon existing irrigation in Costilla County. <br />That is part of the goal of the Costilla County Water Conservancy <br />District. <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />Also, the district would like to know more about the water supplies, <br />particularly the underground. water. suppl~es in Costilla County. <br /> <br />The federal government at this time appears willing to put up at least <br />half of the cost of this investigation. for several reasons. The <br />federal government is also a party to both the Costilla Creek and Rio <br />~rande compacts, and the federal government is also interested in coal <br />slurry pipelines. Through the Geological Survey, the federal funds <br /> <br />.-45- <br />