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.:,; ;,. 007~ ground water return is from areas below the Narrows Reservoir and will continue whether Narrows is built or not. ~, Only an adequat';! ground water storage program in the area below Narrows w111 save for Colorado the w t h" h es- "~h " a er w 1C ~3?eS 1.'1 ~,e w1nt~r. The South Platte River Study will no doubt address ~h1s problem and it is perfectly obvious th~t Na:rows can 1n no way meet the problem because it ar1ses 1n an area gravitionally below Narrows from water over which Narrows has no control. Without specifying the area actuaily to be served by the reservoir, the promoters of Narrows have said that it would serve 287,000 acres of land to be irrigated. under current circumstances, this land should be explicitly speci- fied because transmountain diversion water, the alluvial pumping system and the impossibilities of exchange have made actual specificity necessary to see whether the project will really serve land which is not being served. The fact that no subcontracts with even one acre of land to be irri- aated out of Narrows has yet been signed indicates that the 287,000 acres is pie in the sky. l Before a private entrepreneur would spend a 163,000,000 1978 dollars on an enterprise such as the Narrows, that entrepreneur would certainly know where the water supply was coming from and where the buyers were who would pay for the project with the water supply. In view of the uncertainty of water supply for Narrows, considering seepage, evaporation and a very late decree and dependent on the uncertainty of floods from time to time, there is no question that private capital would not undertake the project. Yet, if Congress funds this project, it will be taking, through taxes, private money to build a public project which will not stand up to the standards of good business management. Another area whiCh needs to be updat~d aD to aEfnctivc- ness of Nanows Reservoir i~ flood cont;r:nl. '1'hf3 1311[0011 of Reclamation has said that the construction of rluod control dllms above D~nvl!!r hai3 not !rneliorllt(!d the fluud hazard the Bureau found at Narrows. Yet, the actual obser- vation by those in RLG indicates that most of the major damage from floods in the vicinity below the Narrows Reservoir is Erom water of Bijou Creek which enters the South Platte River just below Narrows and above the Town of Fort Morgan. Below thiS there are no major tributaries downstream to Balzac where a r~ver gauging station has been maintained Eor many years. -12-