The Colorado Water Trust (“CWT”) has offered the Colorado Water Conservation Board (“CWCB”) an interest in a water right that will be used in the state’s instream flow program. The Board will be making a decision about whether or not to accept this water right interest at its next Board meeting on January 26-27, 2010 in Denver. The use of the water will occur by a grant of a Conservation Use Right that has all of the attributes of a deeded interest. This collaborative project among Skyland Metropolitan District; Verzuh Ranch, Inc., a local development company owned by Billy Joe Lacy and Dan Dow; the CWCB; and CWT will mean more water for local rivers and local people in Gunnison County.
The project, called the Breem Ditch Transaction, will add much-needed streamflow to sections of Washington Gulch and the Slate River near the Town of Crested Butte. Even during this past water-plentiful summer, the Gulch was completely dry by the middle of July due to irrigation diversions into the Breem Ditch, and the Slate River was quite low. This de-watering starves the immediate creek and the nearby wetlands through which the Town of Crested Butte’s Recreation Path meanders. The proposed transaction will allow Washington Gulch to flow all year round, even during the summer and dry years, and will help fix flow shortages to the Slate River. In fact, a section of the Slate River that runs through Crested Butte Open Space land, replete with public fishing access, will benefit. These local stream segments could see up to a 5.45 c.f.s. increase in flows during the summer months, which is an amount similar to calf-deep water in a small order stream.
The arrangement, years in the making, will allow the CWCB to use the water decreed to the Breem Ditch in the state’s Instream Flow Program in Washington Gulch and for about two river miles of the Slate River below the confluence with Washington Gulch. After use in the river, it will be brought into the Skyland Metropolitan District’s system to create additional water for Skyland’s water supply, which from 2002 to 2004, Colorado’s most severe recent drought period, was in danger of impairment. The transaction was put together by CWT. We are a statewide nonprofit that works to improve the state’s streamflows through voluntary, market-based transactions.
The project is an important one for the state’s instream flow program for the following reasons:
• This project is the first of its kind, allowing the instream flow program a Conservation Use Right before a consumptive use is made of the water by Skyland Metropolitan District.
• This is the first transaction considered by the CWCB for which the parties are requesting funds from the CWCB’s $1 million Construction Fund allocation. Approving this project and the funding request will make the funding a reality, rather than a concept or potential tool. It will help to underscore the CWCB’s increasing commitment to the instream flow program.