WSP00433

• File Number: 8141.600.20
• Description: Fryingpan-Arkansas Project - Studies - Environmental Studies
• State: CO
• Basin: Arkansas
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 4/16/1975
• Author: US DoI BoR
• Title: Final Environmental Impact Statement Volume 2 of 2, Pages XI-422 to XI-519
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: EIS

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with the Fish and Wildlife Service and Colorado Division of Wildlife,
who submitted a schedule of minimUM flows to be maintained in the Project
collection systems. These Operating Principles constitute the basic
criteria for operating the Project's western slope features. It is
a document that also allows for future changes. Paragraph 19 provides
for the creation of a commission empowered to study the yearly Project
operation and recommend any necessary revisions in the established
criteria.

14. Issue: The people that live on the West Slope and care about the
Fryingpan and the Hunter Creek baa ins are sickened to see more than
80 percent of their annual natural virgin streamflows being diverted over
to the Front Range to make it poasible for the Pueblo Wests of Colorado
to bloom into fruition - subdivisions of that sort. More than half of
the total Fryingpan-Arkansas Project proposed diversions, which would
be roughly 40,500 acre-feet of water a year, will be allocated for
sale to these urban communities like Pueblo West and the Front Range.

Raised by:

Representin&

Tam Scott

Colorado Rivers Council
(Rocky Mountain Rivers Foundation)
Mayor of Aspen
Aspen Valley Improvement Association

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*Stacy Standley
*c. W. Miller

~esponse:

The average diversion of the Project will be 69,200 acre-feet. Of
this about 50,800 acre-feet will be from the Fryingpan basin. This
will be about 26 percent of the historic average snnual flow of the
Fryingpan River at Ruedi for the period 19l1 to 1957 of 195,900
acre-feet. About 50 percent of the Project water is presently allocated
to municipal and industrial use in the Project area. About 3/4 of
this use would be in the Colorado Sp~ings-Pueblo F~nt Range a~ea.

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15. Issue: The Colorado Division of Wildlife is working on newer
and better approaches to formulating realistic and meaningful minimum
flows. The Bureau should cooperate with the Division, the State Water
Board and the Fish and Wildlife Service in this effort, and should
take the lead in getting these aspects of the minimum streamflows
updated and reevaluated. The Bureau should follow the two minimum
standards presently set under the Operating Principles, for NORRI and
the aggregate streamflows in the collection diversion points, which
we understand from the local observers hasn't been followed completely
or at all.

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XI-458