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"The water rights associated with the Grand Valley Irrigation Company, the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District and the Grand Valley Project, collectively referred to as the Cameo rights, constitute a large and relatively senior group of irrigation and power generation rights which exert a major call on upstream rights in the Color.uio River basin. Green Mountain Reservoir, constructed as part of the COlorado-Big Thompson project, augments the supply available to the Cameo rights in such a manner as to allow other West Slope water rights decreed prior to 1977 and used for irrigation and domestic purposes to divert in spite of a Cameo call. "This means that all of the 'town's water rights except for the Palisade Cabin Reservoir 1st and 2nd Enlargement storage rights and the conditional water rights for Palisade Reservoirs Nos. 4 and 5 are protected by Green Mountain Reservoir. "While the amount of augmentation water provided by Green Mountain Reservoir may not be sufficient to fully insulate the Town's water rights from a Cameo call during elttremely dry years, our hydrologic and modeling analyses indicate that in such dry year conditions, the Town's most senior direct flow rights will be sufficient to divert the entire natural flow tributary to the Town's collection points and that the Town's storage rights would have no remaining physical supply to divert." E. WATER QUALITY The raw water supply serving the 'I"own of Palisade has been tested and meets all EPA and CDH Primary Drinking Water Standards. The Primary Standards have mandatory limits and cover such categoriell as trace metals, organic chemicals, disinfection by-products and radio-nuclides. The water which passes through the treatment plant also meets all EPA Secondary Standards, which refers to impurities in water which may affect aesthetics or taste and which have 'recoml\1ended' standards only. This includes such impurities as hardness, alkalinity, total dis~lved solids and sulfates. Table IV -4 is a summary of tests for these constituents ove:r a 3-year period for water passing through the water plant. The drinking water supplied to the Town has low to moderate hardness and alkalinity, and low sulfates and TDS. The: water is on the alkaline side, with pH running between 7 and 8. The mineral content of the raw water will vary with the source. A USGS study of the Rapid Creek basin (Brooks, 1986) reported results of water quality tests at samples taken from several different locations in the Rapid Creek basin. The water in Cottonwood and Rapid Creek that passes into reservoirs on top of the basin had a very low mineral content and was slightly acidic. The headwaters and reservoir in this area are on glacial till and basalt, which dissolves very slowly. Water in Cottonwood Creek tends to have a lower mineral content than that in Rapid Creek. Results of samples taken at the two primary stream intakes Oil the two streams in shown in Table Al IV-l3 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I