BOARD02205

• Board Meeting Date: 3/10/1971
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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MR. ROZICH:

"Mr. Sparks asked me to give you some idea
of the legal responsibilities of the State Water
Pollution Control commission, stress a little
on where we are with regard to cleaning up our
streams.

To give you some background, prior to 1955
the State Health Department had very little
authority. It had authority to set effluent
standards only with regard to human waste.
There was no specific authority with regard to
industrial waste. I guess the Game and Fish
people did have such authority with regard to
fish kills, and they still have that authority.
Also the authority was pretty much divided
among a number of agencies. For instance, the
city and County of Denver had authority over the
South Platte with regard to pollution in the
Platte upstream of where it meets Clear Creek.
As all of you know, the biggest polluter in that
stretch at that time was Denver itself.

In 1965 the federal government said that
all states had until June 30 of 1967 to adopt
stream standards. consequently Colorado had
to change its legislation to allow for the
adoption of stream standards. This was done in
'66. At the same time, the legislature looked
the situation over and decided at that time to
get all of the detail involved in water problems
into a commission. This is an eleven man com-
mission with representatives from various state
agencies, the Water Conservation Board, the
Board of Health, Game, Fish and parks, Natural
Resources. It also has a representative of
industry, agriculture, municipal and county
governments, and four members at large.

Stream standards were adopted. I believe
there has been enough publicity telling you
what these stream standards were. In ~act I
noticed in just this morning's paper that they
have been approved without any reservations.
They were approved with exceptions on October
21 of 1968. Certain changes were made this last