BOARD02571

• Board Meeting Date: 6/5/1958
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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After considering the apparent need for a closer work-
ing arrangement between the Director and the local: groups of
water users, it seems to me that the Director should be relieved
of some of his time consuming administrative and routine duties.
I suggest, therefore, that a new position of Assistant Director
be established to accomplish this. The Assistant Director could
attend many of the meetings at which Colorado should be repre-
sented but not necessarily by the Director; he could review plan-
ning reports and write comments thereon and attend to budgetary
matters and thus relieve the Director of these and other more or
less routine duties. The Director then would have the time to
work closer with the various water user groups. This should
help to secure local support for the irrigation developments
the Board may decide to include in the general plan for the utili-
zation of Colorado's remaining unused water supplies.

It has been suggested that there should be closer liai-
son between the Director's office and the water users on the
Western Slope and also with the field offices of the Bureau of
Reclamation which are investigating and making plans for the
potential irrigation projects on the Western Slope. This liaison
could be provided by having a resident liaison engineer located
on the Western Slope whose job would be to keep in close touch
with the Bureau's field offices and keep the Board, as well as
local water users groups, informed as to progress and status of
the investigation program. He would also keep in close touch
with the local water users groups and keep the Board and the
Bureau currently informed as to their sentiments and wishes.

If the proposed position of Assistant Director is
established and the Director and the Chief Engineer then can
devote more of their personal time to working directly with the
water users on the Western Slope, I think that a resident liaison
engineer on the Western Slope would not be needed. The Director
and the Chief Engineer would be more effective than a resident
liaison engineer in getting the support and cooperation of the
Western Slope people.

The present technical staff of the Director's office
appears to be adequate to handle the hydrology and water supply
studies. I think, however, that the technical staff should be
augmented by at least two additional high-level engineers capable
of analyzing and commenting on planning reports and on plans for
proposed irrigation projects. I suggest that one of these engi-
neers be experienced in irrigation planning and investigation
work and the other be a specialist in the economics of irrigation.
He should be able to analyze the economic feasibility of proposed
projects, determine their income and repayment ability, and class-
ify the various proposed projects as to their relative importance
in the State's economy. At present most of this work is done by
the Director and the Chief Engineer.