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<br />. <br /> <br />PART II--GENERAL DESCRIPTION <br /> <br />The unit area is in northern Colorado, within the drainage basin <br />of the Cache la Poudre River. The upper two-thirds of the basin is <br />mountainous with the uppermost part lying along the Continental Divide, <br />The higher peaks of the general area have elevations above 14,000 feet" <br />and the streams are entrenched in narrow, steep-walled canyons and <br />valleys. This mountainous area provides most of the water supply of <br />the basin from native supplies and from transbasin importations, The <br />basin slopes to the east and the mountainous sector merges into the <br />Colorado Piedmont through which it extends to its confluence with <br />the South Platte River. The Colorado Piedmont is a part of the Great <br />Plains Region. <br /> <br />EXISTING WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENTS <br /> <br />Irrigation Facilities <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />Approximately 240,000 acres are irrigated within the Cache <br />la Poudre River Basin. The water is distributed by 32 irrigation <br />companies which operate and maintain the distribution systems and <br />about 62 reservoirs of which 56 are located in the plains section <br />and six are located in the mountainous section of the basin, The <br />capacities of the storage reservoirs range from about 90 to 17,690 <br />acre-feet; collectively,they have a total capacity of 161,300 acre- <br />feet. Other irrigation facilities owned by the irrigation companies <br />include diversion works, canals, and tunnels which convey water from <br />the Colorado and North Platte River Basins into the Cache la Poudre <br />Basin. There are five systems for making these transbasin diversions. <br />All of these irrigation works were constructed prior to 1920, <br /> <br />The irrigated portion of the Cache la Poudre Basin is within <br />the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, and is part of <br />the primary service area of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. <br />Supplemental water from this project is delivered to the Cache la <br />Poudre River near the point where it emerges from the mountains into <br />the plains. Supplies from this source became available in 1953, <br />and since then the area has reached a fairly high level of productivity. <br /> <br />During the past two decades considerable activity has been <br />directed toward developing ground water for irrigation. In 1959, <br />the United States Geological Survey reported that 1,100 operating <br />irrigation wells were located in the basin. Additional wells have <br />been constructed since 1959, but the number has not been determined, <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />4 <br /> <br />