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<br />the diversion of up to 1,250 cfs of water from the Colorado River in the vicinity of Glenwood <br />Springs to generate hydroelectric power at the Shoshone Power Plant. Originally known as <br />the Glenwood Power Canal and Pipeline,. this plant holds a 1905 priority water right for year- <br />round operation. The size, seniority, and year-round nature of this water right cause it to <br />dominate mHnagf'..ment of water in the Upper Colorado River. <br />Transmountain diversions, moving water out of the Colorado River Basin to the Front <br />Range of Colorado, are the other major factor dominating use of Colorado River water in <br />Colorado, Early transmountain diversions were relatively small in size and served to bolster <br />water supplies for irrigation users.30 The City of Denver through its Denver Water Board <br />constructed the fIrst large-scaletransmountain diversion project taking water out of the <br />Colorado River Basin.31 Piggybacking on the COnstruction of the Moffat Tunnel under the <br />Continental Divide to provide direct rail service west from Denver through the mountains, the <br />Denver Water Board brought water from the Fraser River, a tributary of the Colorado, <br />through the "pioneer" bore for the Moffat Tunnel beginning in 1936. In the 1930s, Denver <br />began COnstruction of the Williams Fork system by which water from this drainage was <br />brought to the FrontRange. <br />Beginning in 1938, the Bureau of Reclamation began construction of the Colorado-Big <br />Thompson Project.32 The water supply for this major federal project was to be the Colorado <br />River Basin, while the water use would occur on already irrigated lands in the northern <br />portion of the Front Range. Completed in the late 1950s, as much as 310,000 acre-feet of <br />water per year can be diverted from the collection system on the West Slope through the Alva <br />B. Adams Tunnel for use on the Front Range. <br />Then, in the 1950s, Denver began construction of what is now its major source of <br />water supply from the West Slope - Dillon Reservoir, With a storage capacity of about <br />250,000 acre-feet, the reservoir impounds the Blue River at the town of Dillon. Up to _ <br /> <br />" Robert Follansbee, Upper Colorado River and Its Utilization, Water Supply Paper 617, United Slates <br />Geological Survey (1929) at 49. <br /> <br />31 James L. Cox, MetroDolitan Water SUDDlv: The Denver EXDerience (1967) (hereafter "Cox"). <br /> <br />" Tyler at . <br /> <br />15 <br />