BOARD02628

• Board Meeting Date: 1/16/1981
• Description: Agenda, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

APPENDIX B

MEMOMNDUM

COLORADO WATER CONSERVATION BOARD
J. William McDonald
Director

I

January 12, 1981

TO:

Members, CWCB

FROM:

J. William McDonald, Director

SUBJECT:

Agenda Item 3 - Construction Fund Project
Selection Process, Board Meeting, January 16, 1981

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Appropriations of monies to the construction fund have
been meager until the last two years ($8.2 million dollars
from FY 72-73 through 78-79, as compared to $10 million
in FY 79-80 and $52 million in FY 80-81). Largely as a
consequence of this fact, relatively few projects have
been submitted for consideration by the Board and they have
been quite small with but a few exceptions. Most proposed
projects have been forwarded to the General Assembly with
the Board's recommendation that they be funded.

Given this kind of process, proposed projects have not
been evaluated in terms of their contribution towards any
particular set of objectives for the overall use and
management of the waters to which the state is entitled.
Thus, while the projects authorized to date are certainly
not without merit, there is no assurance, given the Board's
present selection process, that basic water development
objectives are being and will be served by expenditures
of construction fund monies.

I

The recent large increases in appropriations to the con-
struction fund, coupled with the monies accruing to the
.severance tax trust fund, present the Board at long last
with an opportunity, through the judicious selection of
future projects for recommendation to the legislature,
to have an impact on the attainment of overall water use
and management objectives.

APPENDIX B