| 12/4/2006 8:12:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Augmentation objectors want detailed information
by Jason Starr
Mail Staff Writer
As its global augmentation plan awaits decision in water court, Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District officials hope to implement a piece of the plan in Cottonwood Creek drainage.
The water district applied in May to change its augmentation plan allowing it to augment wells in one basin with water from other basins, increasing its flexibility and use of its water portfolio.
Four months later, the district applied with the Colorado Division of Water Resources for a substitute supply plan initiating changes in the global plan limited to the Cottonwood Creek drainage without water court review.
"We would operate it while it is pending in court," state water engineer Hal Simpson said.
Objectors to the water court case include the City of Salida, Chaffee County, the Town of Poncha Springs and a group of ranchers in Cottonwood Creek drainage.
"It looks like there are a lot of questions pending," said Division of Water Resources supervising engineer Heidi Frey. "I'm not sure when we will get to the application."
Most of the objectors request more detailed information.
"My biggest objection is while protections for senior water rights users are mentioned, they are never spelled out," Lee Rooks, leader of the objecting group of Cottonwood Creek ranchers, said.
"It's so vague. Anything is possible and it leaves senior water rights users very vulnerable."
The plan requests the ability to augment wells in Cottonwood Creek drainage with shares of water from Twin Lakes. Currently the district can use only Thompson Ditch and Fryingpan-Arkansas project water for Cottonwood Creek.
Rooks believes the change would allow the water district to deplete the Cottonwood system as long as the Arkansas River remains satisfied.
"Water will be drained from Cottonwood and instead of releasing it into Cottonwood, they can release it into the Arkansas and call it good," Rooks said. He irrigates a ranch at the base of Mount Princeton and is preparing for a long legal battle.
Pat Alderton sees both sides. She is a UAWCD director and is also Poncha Springs Administrator - one of the objectors to the plan.
"(The district) wants to be able to use all its water rights to the maximum extent, which makes sense to me," Alderton said. "From Poncha's perspective, there's not enough detail for us to know we aren't going to be harmed.
"It makes sense from the district perspective to maximize water resources, and it makes sense from the town's side to protect theirs."
Alderton said the district is starting with the Cottonwood Creek drainage partly because need for augmentation there is pressuring the district supply of augmentation water under current drainage restrictions.
"Water supply is short in the Cottonwood drainage, so this would be a way of using some other water to help with the problem," Alderton said.
The proposed Meadows subdivision, a 277-acre residential and agricultural community northwest of Buena Vista, will continue to pressure the system, Rooks added.
Alderton said filing the substitute plan is a way to get a sense of what objections will be to the larger plan pending in water court.
Simpson, head of the Colorado Division of Water Resources, said the substitute supply plan is likely to be approved.
He said there has never been a case where the Division of Water Resources approved a substitute plan followed by rejection in water court of the main plan.
"We are really careful in considering all the comments," Simpson said.
Rooks said approval of the substitute plan would precipitate new residential development in the drainage that would be in jeopardy if the larger plan is denied.
"People would have to shut off their wells," he said.
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