| 4/21/2006 9:06:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | RICD clarification
Last week, the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District and Colorado Springs Utilities gave their approval to separate memorandums of understanding with Chaffee County on the proposed recreational in channel diversion.
The two entities were among 17 objectors to the RICD and the last to come to terms with the county. Final MOUs with objectors are now being worked out. Once the agreements are complete and final, the RICD will move to water court. Because the county has tentative agreements with all objectors, few if any delays in getting final court approval are expected.
As is typically the case with complex water issues, there are misconceptions about what the RICD will and will not do.
At the top of the list is that it will “guarantee” water flows to the county. Nothing could be further from the facts.
In a nutshell, the RICD covers the months of March through November. It calls for 1,200 cfs in the river for essentially the month of June and up to 1,800 cfs for eight event days during the month. From July 1 through Aug. 15, the recreational diversion basically follows the voluntary flow program of the past 15 years with a minimum flow of 700 cfs. The balance of time, the agreement calls for 250 cfs.
So, what happens if, for example, flow drops below 1,200 cfs in June, or if there’s not 1,800 cfs for the event days, or if the July-August flow falls below 700 cfs?
The prevailing – but incorrect – belief is that the county would issue a water call to satisfy its decree and junior water rights holders upstream would be forced to cease their diversions to satisfy the county’s call. This is how water calls normally work.
In the case of the county diversion, however, there are no major water rights holders with decrees junior to the RICD. This means that even though the county would possess the diversion right, for all practical purposes carries no force at this time under these circumstances when it comes to calling for water to satisfy its decree.
As an example, if the recreational diversion had been in effect during the ’02 drought, a water call to satisfy the 1,200-1,800 cfs during June or the 700 cfs later in the summer would have had no effect. This is because the county diversion is, once again, junior to all other major rights holders on the upper Arkansas and because water simply was not available.
In the summer of ’02, flows in the Arkansas hovered around 250-300 cfs for much of the summer, coming as a result of downstream calls from the most senior water rights holders. The RICD would have been powerless to do anything to improve flows in the upper valley.
In addition to its junior rights status, vis-a-vis its objectors, in order to clear objections, the county agreed to “carve outs,” essentially granting exceptions to pending exchanges or exchanges under consideration for implementation at some future time. These exemptions will be made public in the near future, after MOUs are made final.
County commissioners say what the RICD could do at some future date on a future exchange is, as the more senior rights holder, issue a call that would protect its water flow according to the terms of its decree against an entity with junior rights. Proponents say 30, 40 or 50 years from now, this feature could be invaluable, helping to preserve and protect river recreational uses from harm caused by water being taken out of the stream.
Proponents say the one immediate benefit of the recreational diversion is it strengthens the voluntary flow program, putting it on a five-year compared to the annual agreement format in effect the past 15 years. It also brings in entities which had not previously been party to the flow program, namely, Colorado Springs Utilities.
— MJB
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