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<br />Reservoir and Ruedi Reservoir, help offset the depletive effects of the transmountain <br />diversions out of the Colorado River Basin by these projects. The depletive effects of <br />Denver's large-scale transmountain diversions are offset somewhat by releases from the <br />Williams Fork and, now, the Wolford Mountain systems. Nevertheless, in a river with a <br />native yield that substantially exceeds existing consumptive uses, there are many holding <br />water rights who believe they would benefit from a reduced call from the Grand Valley, <br />These interests Certainly would favor reduced diversions in the Grand Valley, but they would <br />prefer that the reduced diversions simply return to the river and become available to help <br />supply the rights of junior appropriators. <br /> <br />VI. <br /> <br />Once, not so long ago, there lived a minnow in the Colorado River that grew up to six <br />feet long and weighed as much as 80 to 100 pounds. That minnow, the Colorado squawfish, <br />still inhabits the basin. But now it is an endangered species, occupying about 25 percent of <br />its original habitat in the Colorado River and its tributaries. The largest of these fish today <br />reach no more than half their original size. The squawfish and three other species native to <br />the Colorado - the humpback chub, the bonytail chub, and the razorback sucker, thrived in a <br />habitat that has been called by Philip Fradkin "A River No More".46 In its "untamed" form <br />as experienced by Major John Wesley Powell and his crew in their remarkable journeys down <br />'. <br />the Colorado in the l870s, flows in the Colorado River peaked with the spring runoff - often <br />flooding over its banks and scouring out its channel - and then declined slowly during the <br />summer months. Sediment loads from the. many tributaries feeding ,the river made the water <br />turbid and brown-colored, particularly as the snowmelt dissipated. As the currents slowed and <br />the air temperatures heated up in the river canyons, the water wanned. <br />Fradkin called the Colorado "A River No More" because of the dramatic changes <br />wrought by the construction of ten major dams within the basin during the past 80 years by <br />the Bureau of Reclamation. These dams capture and store the peak spring flows. Flooding in <br /> <br />.. Philip Fradkin, A River No More: The Colorado River and the West (Knopf 1981). <br /> <br />20 <br />