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,.. . OO'? '3 the lower half of this. segment are frequently short of water during the irrigation season, but the State Engineer's office of Colorado, which is responsible for regulating the flows to the ditches entitled to water has said that releases of water from Narrows could not reach these lower ditches which are from fifty to a hundred miles below Narrows because the alluvium will soak up Narrows' releases before the water gets to the point of need. The State Engineer's office has had long experience with this because a senior ditch near the State line has an early enough priority to call water from junior ditches as far as seventy miles west and upstream from the senior ditch. It requires calls for several times the amount of water required by the lower senior ditch to get water to that ditch because of the loss in transit during the summer months from the stream itself into the underlying alluvium. The alluvial ground water storage which has been stabi- lized by the increasing transmountain diversions from the Colorado River has become the basis of an ever widening agricultural benefit, which without federal subsidy, exceeds the benefits which were originally expected to arise from the creation of the Narrows Unit. The stability of the well supply dependent upon the alluvial reservoir will in fact be injured by the construction of Narrows which would preclude the effectiveness of the Wildcat Reservoir of the Public Service Company of Colorado which is designed to serve its Pawnee Power Plant with cooling water. The Wildcat Reservoir would be run as an adjunct to Riverside Reservoir and be filled through the same ditch. With 58,000 acre feet of capacity, an ultimate consumptive use of 28,000 acre feet per year and an additional 30,000 acre feet of backup, this one reservoir would stabilize productivity in at least as much area as could be stabilized by Narrows and without a penny of expense to the American taxpayer. If Narrows were built with its decree senior to Wildcat, it would simply destroy the agricultural benefits to be secured without taxpayer cost by that project.' While RLG is not in the electric utility business, it does know, as a matter of common knowledge, that additional electric energy is essential for the Denver metropolitan area which will be served by the Pawnee Power Plant and RLG knows firsthand how vital electric energy is in efficient farm management. Construction of Narrows would clearly increase the cost of electric energy both to farmers and urban users. An additional injury directly to agriculture if Narrows kills the Wildcat project is the 30,000 acre feet of depend- able annual yield for agricultural purposes which Public Service Company of Colorado has included in the project -6-