BOARD02241

• Board Meeting Date: 12/9/1954
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

470

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second suit against Colorado in the form
of contempt proceedings to compel Colorado
to restrict meadow land owners along the
Laramie River to headgate diversion of 4,200
acre-feet per year. The diversion of that
amount of water spread over the hay season
is inadequate to grow a hay crop. However,
the Supreme Court agreed that headgate
diversion was what it had meant. The Court
was not impressed by the fact that the
owners of the hay meadows felt it necessary
to divert from 10 to 12 acre-feet of water
per acre each year to produce a normal hay
crop. The Court said this is a wasteful use
of water. Without any close analysis of how
wasteful or how far this practice departed
from normal or proper use, ,cSf water, the
Supreme Court -,said its decree meant headgate
diversion.

"Following the second decision in 1940,
the owners of the hay meadows who had senior
dates of priority opened their headgates in
early May and took all of the water that
they were entitled to take under Colorado
adjudications. The Laramie-Poudre and
Skyline Canal took what water they could
get under their decrees and when 39,720
acre-feet had flowed through the headgates,
everybody in Colorado was shut off the
River on the 15th of June. .

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"Laramie meadow irrigators took out under
their senior rights some 20,000 or more
acre-feet of water. They were disappointed
because no more water was available when
the total allotment to Colorado was exhausted.
Their right to do this was determined in
the Supreme Court of Colorado. This Court
held that while the Supreme Court of the
United States could allot water as between
the two States, within the State of Colorado
priority of appropriation controlled and
each irrigator could take all his priority
called for as long as it was in the River.
This created a deadlock which continued for
two years with each side suffering. The

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