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Feasibility Study West Rhone Lateral Ditch Company Headgate and Pipeline Project Introduction The West Rhone Lateral Ditch Company (West Rhone), located in Mesa County, is a mutual ditch company and a non-profit corporation registered in the State of Colorado. The company serves 14 shareholders who own 130 shares of stock and about 105 acres of land. The West Rhone Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws are included in Appendix A. The West Rhone operates an irrigation lateral for the benefit of the shareholders by providing irrigation water delivery to their lands. For the past 10 years, the West Rhone has operated as an association. The association managed the lateral by holding shareholder meetings at least once each year, coordinating and performing annual lateral cleaning and maintenance, collecting assessments from shareholders, and operating the lateral to assure equitable delivery of water to all shareholders. The corporation now performs these functions and manages the lateral as described in the Bylaws. The water supply for the West Rhone is from Headgate No. 395 of the Grand Valley Irrigation Company's (GVIC) Mainline Canal. The West Rhone is a sub-lateral that begins approximately 0.5 mile below Headgate 395, and delivers water to its shareholders via a concrete ditch (0.75 mile long) and an underground pipeline (0.5 mile long). The concrete ditch is about 30 years old, and needs to be replaced despite regular maintenance over the past 15 years. The lower 0.5 mile of the concrete ditch was replaced with underground pipe in 1998. In March 2000, the West Rhone received approval for approximately $40,000 in cost-share funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to replace the 0.75 mile of concrete ditch with underground pipe. The NRCS estimates the total cost of the project to be approximately $58,000. While preparing preliminary plans for the pipeline, the West Rhone had 3 different engineers (2 Federal government and 1 private) conduct on-site inspections of the existing delivery system. As a result, the West Rhone learned that several problems exist in assuring a long-term, reliable water supply for its shareholders (discussed in Project Service Area and Facilities, below). Simply replacing the concrete ditch with underground pipe would not resolve these problems. The West Rhone subsequently evaluated 6 different water delivery alternatives, reviewed statistics for over 1,300 irrigated acres in the area, and obtained information from other organized lateral corporations in the valley. The Board and shareholders of the West Rhone believe the most prudent, long-term, solution to effectively manage both the West Rhone Lateral and Lateral 395 is to construct a new headgate and pipeline for the West Rhone. West Rhone Lateral Ditch Company Headgate and Pipeline Feasibility Study August 2000