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Show 702 GROUND WATER RIGHTS IN SELECTED STATES so diverted delivered to him, the owner may obtain the right to have such well or wells made alternate points of diversion.197 In authorizing alternate points of diversion for wells, the widest possible discretion to permit the use of wells shall prevail. In administering the waters of a water course, the withdrawal of water which will lower the water table shall be permitted but not to such a degree as will prevent the water source to be recharged or replenished, under all predictable circumstances, to the extent necessary to prevent injury to senior appropriators in the order of their priorities, with due regard for daily, seasonal, and longer demands on the water supply.198 Where a well has been approved as an alternate means of diversion for a water right for which a surface means of diversion is decreed, the well and surface means of diversion must be utilized to the extent feasible and permissible to satisfy the water right before diversions under junior rights may be ordered discontinued.199 The act also provides that if an application for a determination of a well water right and priority (the priorities for which have not been established in decrees prior to the effective date of the act or in proceedings pending on that date) has been filed no later than July 1, 1971200 (subsequently changed to July 1, 1972),201 and if the application is approved and confirmed, the priority date shall be the date of the actual appropriation of the water, provided the appropriation was completed with reasonable diligence.202 Applications filed after July 1, 1972, shall be awarded priorities junior to those awarded in preceding years. i91Id. § § 148-21-17(3)(b) and (c). See also chapter 15 at notes 235-237 regarding plans for augmentation. Until July 1, 1971, subsequently changed to July 1, 1972, by Colo. Laws 1971, ch. 370, § 4, p. 1324, all diversion by wells to supply a water use for which there was a surface decree could be charged against the surface decree, even if the owner had not secured the right to an alternate point of diversion at the well. Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 148-21-17(3)(d)(Supp. 1969). 198Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 148-21-17(3)(e) (Supp. 1969). l99Id. § 148-21-35(2). 200In water division three the date was July 1,1972. 201 Colo. Laws 1971, ch. 373, p. 1333. 202Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 148-21-22 (Supp. 1969). A 1970 article states, in regard to this provision of the 1969 act, that "notwithstanding the relation back provisions for unadjudicated well priorities, most well appropriations are in fact junior to most surface appropriations * * *." Note, "A Survey of Colorado Water Law," 47 Denver L. Jour. 226, 333 (1970). And a 1971 article states, "The vast majority of wells on the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers were drilled long after the surface stream was over-appropriated, and even with 'relation- back' the priorities assigned to these wells in an adjudication would be very junior." Comment, "The Ground water-Surface Water Conflict and Recent Colorado Water Legislation," 43 Univ. of Colo. L. Rev. 1, 28 (1971). |