BOARD02336

• Board Meeting Date: 9/27/1999
• Description: Directors' Reports
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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them by a group oflocal citizens, called the Defenders of Miners Creek. The staffs will prepare reports
summarizing their findings. These reports will be posted on the CWCB Internet site during the first week
of October. This should provide an opportunity for public comment on the findings prior to the
November meeting when the staff plans to bring this issue to the board for its consideration.

Snowmass Creek Instream Flow Donation Agreement Amended: On August 27, we amended
our 1998 donation agreement with The Conservation Fund (TCF) to allow for the temporary use of water
owned by TCF to supplement Snowmass Creek instream flow water rights. We entered into the donation
agreement to accept certain water rights from TCF by January 2000. The donation agreement is subject to
the condition that Aspen Village, Inc. (a corporation owned by TCF) will successfully obtain an absolute
decree for its conditional water right before January 1,2000. Aspen Village, Inc. must still settle with one
objector or proceed to trial before obtaining an absolute decree. In the interim, TCF offered this
amendment to provide the use of the water for instream flow purposes.

California's 4.4 Water Talks Successful: Negotiations among the largest California water
agencies that utilize Colorado river water supplies - the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, the Imperial Irrigation District, and the Coachella Valley Water District appear to have been
successful. After nearly a year of effort, and working against an August 3 deadline, negotiators for the
parties have reached consensus on core elements of a framework quantification agreement. The agreement
will resolve long-standing Colorado River water quantification and use disputes that date back to the
1930s.

All the details of the agreement have not been worked out, but California will continue to use 5.2
million acre feet from the Colorado River until 2015, before dropping to the 4.4 million acre foot limit.
Imperial will reduce its use to 3.1 million-acre feet with saving allocated to Coachella and MWD. David
. Hayes, Acting Deputy Secretary of the Interior, and Thomas M. Hannigan, Director of California's
Department of Water Resources, led the negotiations. The framework agreement will be presented to the
water agency boards for approval and implementation within the coming weeks.

The agreement is considered a key step toward implementing the 'California 4.4 Plan,' under
which the State of California is endeavoring to reduce its use of Colorado River water to match the State's
apportionment of 4.4 million acre-feet per year.

Entering into a consensual quantification agreement advances this interest, by, among other things,
(I) establishing a dateline for measuring the amount of water available for transfers, thereby opening the
way for the proposed transfer of water from the Imperial Irrigation District to San Diego, and (2)
establishing the basis for requesting the Secretary of the Interior to issue surplus guidelines that will assist
California through a transition period of reducing the State's over reliance on the Colorado River. In
recent years, California has been drawing in excess of 5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water.

Ruedi Reservoir Contract: The CWCB has received the one-year Memorandum of Agreement
signed by the Bureau of Reclamation and the USGWS to provide 21,650 acre-feet of water from Ruedi
Reservoir to the 15-Mile Reach of the Colorado for the four endangered fishes. This 1999 contract is for
water from regulatory storage at Ruedi Reservoir, and not the Replacement Pool.

A process has also been initiated to negotiate a l5-year agreement to provide 10,825 acre-feet to
benefit the endangered fish. In accordance with a January 6,1999 amendment to the Biological Opinion
for the Ruedi Reservoir Water Marketing Program, Reclamation will provide water through long and
. short term agreements beginning the first year the Recovery Program pays the operations and maintenance

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