BOARD02386

• Board Meeting Date: 3/8/1972
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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the federal government is making filings through-
out the state claiming a considerable volume of
water for the Indian reservations and for all of
the federal lands. This, then, is going to
force us to show a substantial allocation of
water from the Colorado River to the federal
government. Any allocation that we make to the
federal government from here on destroys some
Colorado project. I am afraid we won a battle
and lost the war. Others do not share that
opinion, but I don't see any other way that it
can work out. The United States has filed
claims. These claims are dating back to the
date of the establishment of the national forest
and monument or whatever it may be. These
claims, many of them, will be far senior to any-
thing that has been entered in the Colorado
courts in the last 50 years, or even going back
further. The Indian reservations, for instance,
were created in 1868. It appears that the Indians
will end up with the number one water right in
the State of Colorado. This is not any great in-
justice. I think \~e can solve the Indian pr(')blem
because in our Dolores and Animas-La Plata proj-
ects we have allocated a substantial amount of
water to the Indian reservations. I think that
will take care of their needs for the foresee-
able future. In any event, I think that filings
would have occurred irrespective of the Eagle
County case. The Eagle County case hastened the
date. I don't think the United States would
have ever come in and asserted these other claims
that they are making for the national forests.
For instance, the United States, this is from
their claim now: 'The United States claims
direct water rights, storage water rights,
transportation rights, and well rights to such
quantities of water unappropriated as of the
reservation dates as are, or will become neces-
sary to fulfill the present and future purposes
for which said reservations were created, in-
cluding, but not by way of limitation to growth
management and production of a continuous supply
of timber, recreation, domestic uses, municipal

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