OCR Text |
Show Company about 15,000 acre-feet of water per year in excess of that now being diverted by that company; (c) store the waters imported to the eastern slope, and, in addition, store eastern slope flood waters and winter flows averaging 50,000 and 93,000 acre-feet per year respectively. Supplemental irrigation water will be supplied for 280,000 acres of irrigated land in the Arkansas River Valley that do not now have an adequate water supply. Water will also be supplied for expanding municipal, domestic, and industrial purposes on both sides of the Continental Divide. The project will prevent a large part of the flood damages along the Arkansas River which presently occur between Pueblo, Colorado and the John Martin Reservoir. In accomplishing the above primary purposes of the project, works will be provided for the generation of about 469,000,000 kilowatthours of hydroelectric energy annually. The Ruedi Dam and Reservoir costing about $13 million, a water storage facility on the Fryingpan River in western Colorado, will be constructed as a part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, the over-all cost of which is about $170 million. Negotiations by representatives of eastern and western Colorado have resulted in proposed operating principles for the project. These operating principles as last modified on December 9, 1960, have been printed as House Document 130, 87th Congress. The conservation and development of fish and wildlife has been specifically included as one of the purposes of the project. Legislation, the enactment of which would authorize the construction, operation and maintenance of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project is now pending in the 87th Congress. Although the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project is not a full-fledged participating project of the Colorado River Storage Project because it does not participate in the use of Basin Fund revenues of the Act of April 11, 1956, it could be called a "limited" participating project in the Upper Basin development plan because it does use water apportioned to the Upper Basin by the Colorado River Compact and to the State of Colorado by the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact. The Upper Colorado River Commission at its Adjourned Regular Meeting held in Denver, Colorado on May 11, 1961 unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project. The resolution urges the early authorization of the project by the Congress of the United States. 71 |