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<br />22 <br /> <br />Arkansas River basins into the Basin. The Colorado-Big Thompson Project <br />alone accounts for 227,000 acre-feet per year from the Colorado River <br />Basin. <br />Ground Water. Most of the interest in ground water has been <br />focused on the alluvial aquifer extending from Denver to Nebraska. Some <br />1,600,000 acre-feet was pumped from this aquifer in 1970, a year which <br />just followed the start of groundwater regulation. The estimated <br />storage is 8,330,000 acre-feet (2). In addition, the tributaries of the <br />South Platte are underlain with tributarY groundwater that adds to the <br />Basin's total supply. Clearly groundwater is an important part of the <br />South Platte water resource system. (Figure 2-5). <br />Deep aquifers of the Denver basin have not been exploited exten- <br />sively. The volume .of water in storage in these aquifers is estimated <br />to be 250 to 300 million acre-feet, wi~h 40,000 to 100,000 acre-feet/ <br />year recharge. The annual pumped volume is on the order of 150,000 <br />acre-feet. These aquifers have an important role strategically, parti- <br />cularly if they were mined only during times of drought. <br />Reservoirs. There are some 370 reservoirs in the basin having <br />storage capacities in excess of 500 acre-feet. The collective storage <br />volume, excluding Horsetooth Reservoir and Carter Lake, is about <br />1,300,000 acre-feet, secured by 1,200 decreed storage rights. Horse- <br />tooth Reservoir and Carter Lake, which add another 263,000 acre-feet of <br />storage, are used for Colorado-Big Thompson Project water. The total <br />storage capacity, of offstream reservoirs in the Henderson-Julesburg <br />reach is 274,000 acre-feet. <br /> <br />. <br />