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<br />and/or augmentation plans which allow them to divert out of <br />priority while replacing water to senior rights at the time those <br />rights are in priority. Non-tributary water which operates <br />outside of the natural stream appropriation system is utilized in <br />these augmentation plans, in part, or as direct supply. The <br />flexibility of Colorado law, this combination of markets, <br />storage, augmentation, and non-tributary water, has rendered the <br />domestic condemnation preference, to this time, unutilized by <br />cities. <br /> <br />Your Delph.Carpenter essay clearly points out how compacts, <br />particularly the Colorado River Compact between the Upper and <br />Lower Basin States, was based on equitable division fixed at a <br />point in time, so that disputes in equity before the United <br />States Supreme Court--and the uncertainty connected therewith-- <br />could be avoided while assuring that, within a State, that <br />State's choice of law would be the principal means of intra-state <br />allocation and enforcement regarding water use. The Colorado <br />River Compact allocates beneficial consumptive use, i.e. <br />depletions, between the States in order to avoid the rush to put <br />water to use in order to gain the better right as to another <br />State and its water users. <br /> <br />I would note, based on your work, that equity was reduced to <br />settled legal principles by means of the Compact, so that present <br />and future rights could be created and preserved within each of <br />the compacted States, utilizing the allocated depletions to which <br />that State is entitled. Of course, in order to obtain the <br />Boulder Canyon Project and because of the continued dispute <br />between Arizona and California with regard to use of the Lower <br />Basin allocation, the Lower Basin was required to accept the <br />Secretary of Interior as the water distribution master. <br /> <br />Your research vividly conveys a concern about federal water <br />control which has endured. On the one hand, projects like C-BT <br />would not have been brought to fruition without the financial <br />assistance of the federal Government. On the other hand, unless <br />property rights to water can continue to be created and perfected <br />within Colorado, under the State's prior appropriation laws as to <br />its allocated share of the interstate waters, Colorado would lose <br />the benefit of the compact bargain. <br /> <br />Senator Brown's recent efforts to have the U.S. Forest <br />Service respect the exercise of existing perfected water rights <br />and Governor Romer's efforts to prevent interstate sale of <br />Colorado's Colorado River Compact allocation are cut right out of <br />Delph carpenter's cloth, understandably so since carpenter, <br />though outstanding, is only one of many Colorado citizens and <br />public officials who have been dedicated throughout the decades <br />to preserving Colorado's interstate allocation for the use of <br />Coloradans. <br /> <br />Settled rights and markets within Colorado for the sale and <br />purchase of water rights and contract rights to water, in order <br />