BOARD02546

• Board Meeting Date: 1/9/1963
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

body see that? Thad, can you see that? I' think
that will do it. (A projector, slides and
screen were used at this point to illustrate
Mr. Moulder's further report).

1

Before the investigations were even
started, there was enough information known
about the occurrence of groundwater in the
state to illustrate that most of the ground
water resources were east of the Continental
Divide and to a large extent they were concen-
trated along the two major river valleys, the
south Platte which is shown here in blue, and
the Arkansas also shown in blue. Another poten-
tial body that has not been developed exten-
sively and on which we did not have very much
information in the state, but we knew it to be
a potential because of development in other
states, is the High Plains area and it consists
of the Ogallala formation, a thick bed of sand
and gravel.

Those are the three in the eastern part of
the state and here in the south central part of
the state is the San Luis Valley, probably a
unique basin in that, even though extensively
developed, the total ground water resources
have only been slightly tapped. Now if we com-
bine all of this and indicate what there is
in the way of ground water storage, two billion
acre-feet is the best rough estimate that we
have at present and I'd say 95 percent of the
two billion acre-feet is right in the San Luis
Valley from the standpoint of storage.

1

From the standpoint of long term develop-
ment, we think of long term development in
three of the aquifers, perhaps four of them,
but one of the aquifers - the High Plains aqui-
fer up here - (pointing to the Republican River
Basin), looks like its doomed to be a mining
operation once it is extensively developed.
The reason is that all of these others are
related in same respect to the streams. The
High Plains aquifer sets up above those, and
is not hydraulically connected to the streams