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L") C"" GO ,,-/ l~ ~) '..:.:) 5. was the subject of major dispute in the Rules and Regulations case (In the matter of the Rules and Regulations Governing Groundwater Withdrawals), which was tried for 13 weeks to the Water Judge for the Rio Grande drainage, during the summer of 1978. The State Engineer and allied surface water rights interests (principally, the Conejos Water Conservancy District) alleged that such groundwater withdrawal substantially damaged stream flows,and the wells being generally junior, they should not be allowed to divert unless pursuant to Court-approved plans for augmentation. Well pumping interests, of course, resisted. These interests were two groups: the San Luis Valley Well Users Associationr primarily agricultural users, and the San Luis Valley Communities, which represented collectively most of the municipal interests of the San Luis Valley, who are almost totally dependent upon groundwater. 3. An interesting and important physical phenomenon also occurs in the San Luis Valley which took on a major importance in the case. The high water tables throughout the valley support large amounts of naturally occurring "non-beneficial" phreatophytic growth. As pumping occurs, the resulting drawdown in water tables apparently causes a reduction in this non-beneficial consumptive evapotranspirative loss, thus offsetting to a degree the effect that such pumping would otherwise have on stream flows. 4. This groundwater controversy was imbedded in a knot of other legal issues which came to a head in the same case, principally concerning the proper inter- pretation and administration of the Rio Grande Compact. The central of these issues was whether such administration should separately impose individual delivery schedules contained in the compact, article III, on the Conejos River and on the Rio Grande mainstem, respectively; or whether the two tables together comprised a unitary Colorado obligation on the State, leaving it to the appropriation system to allocate water between the two streams. The Conejos interests, being generally senior to the mainstem and being faced with a more severe table, contended for the latter. The Rio Grande, and the State Engineer, were persuaded of the correctness of the former view. In the groundwater dispute, the senior surface interests on the Conejos tended to point to the groundwater users as a major aggravating factor in the difficulty of the valley as a whole, and the Conejos particularly, in meeting the obligations of -2-