WSP08363

• File Number: 8240.200.30.C
• Description: UCRBRIP Conditional Water Rights
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 6/1/1987
• Author: The Nature Conservan
• Title: Converting Conditional Water Rights to Instream Flow Protection: A Property Transfer Strategy
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

(

original water development plan may be

subject to reexamination and the Vidler and

City of Florence standards considered in a

diligence case, but this may only mean a

~ore rigorous review of the progress on the

original plan, and not a wholesale planning

exercise in which the .economics and

efficiency of the plan are weighed against
all others.

4. In Metropolitan Suburban Water Users, the
Colorado Supreme Court said:

"The trial court had no right to
substitute its opinion as to the course
of future events, for that of those
charged with the duty of supplying
adequate water for municipalities and
other public bodies, who have made
careful studies of the questions and
problems presented and have in good
faith put their vision, work, money and
energies into a program by ,which they
seek to put the public waters of the
state to beneficial use. If they have
miscalculated and fail~ the loss is
thei~s-if they succeed, it will be for
the eternal benefit of the peoples of
the State of Colorado~"

365 P2d at 288. Whether one agrees with
the Court's rhetoric on the public benefit

of water development, the statement stands

as an expression of current law.

F. Under prevailing Colorado law, the acquisition

of condition~l watar rights in the marketplace

for change to instream flow protection may be

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