BOARD02248

• Board Meeting Date: 7/20/2004
• Description: ISF Section - Victoria Valar, Case No. 5-03CW101, Injury with Mitigation Proposal
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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July 4, 2004

To:
From:
Re:

Colorado Water Conservation Board
Victoria Valar & John Kelly
Augmentation Plan for well #160674 using Blue Danube Ditch NO.2

We request that the Colorado Water Conservation Board withdraw objection to, withhold
objection to, and support our Augmentation Plan. We have been informed that the appropriate
terms for our request are Injury with Mitigation, Rule 8i3, which we will try to make a case for
here. We believe that our Augmentation Plan will not only preserve the enviromnent but also
actually yield a net benefit to the conservation of water in the Blue River basin enviromnent.

Our well currently is permitted for residential, in-house only, and for non-commercial livestock;
we have six horses. Weare trying to purchase an acre-foot of Blue Danube Ditch water to meet
the needs of an existing accessory apartment, which the Summit County goverrunent strongly
encouraged us to build for employee housing in 1991 without mentioning the need for additional
water rights. We also need to irrigate Yo acre of trees and grass for the horses. The grass is an
occasional treat-not sustenance for the horses, and provides defensible space around the house
in case of fire. The attached table lists current and augmented uses and amounts. We calculate
that consumptive uses total Y2 acre-foot per year.

It is difficult to understand how legitimizing the current use of our well by the purchase of a
senior acre-foot of Blue Danube Ditch water would have negative impacts on the enviromnent.
However, the Report of the Division Engineer, Summary of Consultation, says:

The proposed well would be tributary to the Blue River, tributary to the Colorado River.
Diversion of ground water from the proposed well will influence the rate or direction of
movement of water in those natural systems and their alluvium. The Blue River and the
Colorado River are over-appropriated. At some or all times of the year, the water supply
for the said stream systems is insufficient to satisfY all of the decreed water rights senior
to an appropriation by the applicant. Diversions form the subject wells will cause
depletions to this over-appropriated system.

Based on the above findings, I find that the construction and use of the subject well will
injuriously affect the owner of, or persons entitled to use, water under a vested water
right, or a decreed conditional water right, unless the well is included in, and operated in
accordance with, a plan for augmentation that adequately replaces out of priority
depletions in time, place, and amount.

The above assertions are surely true in the absolute terms in which they are stated. Ultimately,
our well is connected to the Blue River, and vice versa, just as all living beings are connected,
ultimately. But for what quantities and over what timeframe do these assertions hold? In reality,
it would take thousands of years for the proposed use of our well to have any effect on the rate,
much less the direction of the Blue River. Our four-gaIlon-a-minute well is over 100 feet below
and about 3000 feet away from the Blue River, and the amount of water that we use is a
vanishingly small fraction of the total groundwater in the basin. The connection between our
well and the river is more theoretical than real. Whatever the injury to the river, it would occur
so far in the future and be so minor as to make mitigation in the present day speculative, at best,
and more likely, useless and expensive.

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