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Show LARAMIE RIVER LITIGATION 675 exceeded the ordinary high vear. Of such character would be [also] the floods of 1885, 1900 and*1909, three [four] years in thirty." The same witness further said: "Aside from reasons which I have given why reservoirs designed to catch only these rare high waters of Poudre River are not feasible, it is a fact that no farmer would be able to anticipate the high flow and therefore could not depend at all upon water for irrigation until it reached him. If he undertook to so divert water it would become a gamble rather than a safe guide for living." Another of her witnesses said: "The present storage capacity in the Poudre Valley is such that in some years the reservoirs are not all filled, while in some years they are filled and water runs to waste. ... It would not be possible to inaugurate a scheme in the Poudre Valley to construct reservoirs to store water from one year of high flow to another where such water is the only source of supply, for the reservoirs would have to be con- structed to hold the maximum amount, and if the water has to be carried over for three years the average diversion from the reservoir would be only one-third of its capacity, making the cost per acre prohibitive." And still another of her witnesses, referring to the unused waters of the Poudre in years of high flow and also to what is contemplated by the defendants in respect of the Laramie, said: "The really dependable water supply of the District1 will come from the Laramie River, the amount secured from the Poudre River fluctuating greatly and being used to augment the supply from the Laramie. There will be years when the supply from the Poudre River and its tributaries will be practically nothing. Our plans contemplate taking all the water that it is possible for us to take from the Laramie River each year. It is possible to get only a certain amount from that river, and I do not believe that we can absolutely depend on more than half the required amount from the Laramie River. The very great floods on that watershed we cannot consider because we cannot construct works to take care of them." In accord with these statements, bearing on what is susceptible of use in actual practice, is further evidence coming from Colorado's witnesses and exhibits to the effect that, notwithstanding the great need for water in the Poudre valley and the returns obtained from its use, large amounts of water pass down the stream without use or impounding in the years when the flow exceeds what is termed the average. With the high state of irrigation development in that valley the full capacity of the reservoir system there provided when the proof was taken was 146,655 feet-an evidence of the limitation in- hering in the practical storage of water from such streams. The Cache la Poudre River heads in the same mountain range as does the Laramie and the conditions which make for a pronounced variation in the natural flow are largely the same with both. The following table compiled from data relating to the Cache la Poudre, furnished by Colorado, will be helpful in illustrating the view of the witnesses, and also ours. We add the third and fourth columns. 1 The reference is to the Greeley-Poudre Irrigation District, one of the defendants. |