WSP05336 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

." 3441 In December 1991, Colorado Water Supply Company (CWS), submitted an offer to shareholders of the FLCC for the purchase of their shares. CWS desired to purchase at least a ontrolling 51 % interest in the company. The plan was to sell the water to cities on the Front Range of Colorado. The offer attracted the attention of the Governor and the CWCB who requested that a study of the effects of such a transfer be conducted. The study was authorized by the Colorado General Assembly in 1992. Although the offer failed and was withdrawn in mid- 1992, the study continued. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the findings of a study of alternatives to permanent transfer of Fort Lyon water out of the Lower Arkansas Valley. This multi-disciplinary study was conducted in 1993 by Gronning Engineering Company of Denver for the CWCR OBJECTIVES OF THE MULTI-DISCIPLINARY STUDY The first objective of the study was to understand and characterize the Fort Lyon Canal Company system, together with such surrounding area as may be affected by transfer of water out of the system. This was accomplished by an identification of issues, description and analysis of historical water transfers in the region, and developing knowledge of the forces underlying the motivation to buy and sell water. The FLCC physical system and socioeconomic characteristics of the study area were described with a significant amount of data. The second objective, following from the first, was to identify and analyze alternatives to a large-scale permanent transfer of water out of the valley. The alternatives are combinations of strategies, management tools and applications of resources which appear to provide overall net benefit to the Fort Lyon system and the region. Estimates were made of the impacts that implementation of the alternatives would have on the FLCC and the study area. It is hoped that an alternative which presents the most net return to the shareholders of the Fort Lyon and the area population will receive serious consideration by the shareholders of the FLCC. THE ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN AND THE STUDY AREA The basin and study area are illustrated in Figure 1, showing the 25,600 square miles which are tributary to the Arkansas River in Colorado. Geologically, the aquifer of the lower valley rests in a U-shaped trough, cut into cretaceous shale and limestone bedrock. Climate in the Arkansas River Basin has a high degree of areal, daily, seasonal and annual variability. Precipitation in the study area ranges from 11 to 15 inches. The five counties represented in Figure 1 comprise the economic region which is under direct influence of production and associated spending distribution of the FLCC system; population was 43,183 in 1990, about 1.3 percent of the state's population. The study area contains about 6.7 percent of the state's land area, producing 8 percent of the state's total annual income from field crops or about $93 million. Income from livestock is even more significant; annual livestock sales in La Junta alone exceed $103 million. The citizens of the Lower Arkansas River Valley have a rich heritage of development and productivity for the past 150 years. The Fort Lyon system controls 211,600 of 838,000 af or one-quarter of all diverted water between Pueblo and the Kansas state line. It irrigates more than one-third of all land along the mains tern of the Arkansas River below Pueblo. Land under the Fort Lyon Canal produces $23 million annually, or 24 percent, of the total field crop income in the study area.