WATER & GOVERNOR POLIS

 

Dear Governor Polis,

Re: ADMINISTER WATER IN PRIOR APPROPRIATION & WITHDRAW FROM PRRIP 

As you're well aware, Colorado's Water is being grossly manipulated to generate unjust enrichment for some while significantly harming others, including Senior Water Rights Owners. 
You must take action now, to right the wrongs and stop the harm!
Here's how: Demand state's water engineers administer water in Prior Appropriation, and withdraw Colorado from the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program (PRRIP).

The PRRIP is the gorilla in the middle of the room that's never mentioned in water meeting discussions. And it only gets about a sentence in the Colorado Water Plan.

Perhaps one of the reasons why? In 2005/2006 Lower end (Junior) of S. Platte River claimed, “upper end (Senior) took our water, caused depletions, now we don’t have any water.” Junior muscled in and denied Senior use of their property. This is known as “takings without just compensation;" aka stealing.

Senior Rights Owners were *wrongfully ordered to augment at 100% (unattainable) and make up for depletions going back to 1975.

This order to make up past depletions going back to 1975 begs the question: Where were the water engineers during that 30-year time span? If they were in charge of “administering” water rights owners’ property, shouldn’t they be held accountable for the so-claimed "past depletions?" 

Despite junior's "no water" claim, Governor Owens amazingly “found it" in 2005/2006. Enough  to commit to Nebraska.

How and where did Governor Owens suddenly find water Junior claimed didn’t exist?

Flow charts show S. Platte River historically dried up around Kersey, CO (depending on snowpack/precip).

Because of the wrongful shut down of Senior Water Rights, the whole upper end of the S. Platte has been overhydrated to such extent the new perennial instream flow is powerful enough to push - then lose thousands of acre feet water across the border to NE. 

The overhydrated high-water table is growing a new underground reservoir the size of which is known only to those developing it. Some speculate the reservoir could exceed the Ogallala. That info must be made public. Most of that water was stolen and should be returned to its rightful owners.

The PRRIP is NOT a compact! 

It's a five page agreement (with a withdrawal clause)  signed by Nebraska Governor Heinemann, Wyoming Governor Freudenthal, Colorado Governor Bill Owens and DOI Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. They bypassed state’s general assemblies.

PRRIP agreement is structured in ways that if CO can't make the Water delivery, it has to make the financial delivery.
PRRIP violates Colorado's Constitution because it commits state’s assets, “water,” and indebts (financial commitment) Coloradans without their vote.

If Owens had had any concerns for Colorado Water Rights Owners he wouldn't have gotten into the PRRIP; or at the least he would have structured it as forgiving as the 1923 NE/CO compact (based on 1897 flow rates/precip and snowpack).

We have reason to believe the PRRIP is the "carriage vessel" that moves this new instream flow to the Colorado/Nebraska border, where corrupt entities peel it off and sell it to power plants, cites and so on. 

The fact that CO does not have extra water is the main reason it needs to withdraw from PRRIP!

Administration of water according to “First in time, first in right,” must be done to correct the non-historically high-water table along the S. Platte River basin, stop property destruction, and return water to its Rightful Owners. 

Governor Jared Polis please:

1) Demand state’s water engineers administer water in “Prior Appropriation.”

2) Withdraw Colorado from PRRIP.

Thank you.

*wrongfully: Throughout the WAS case, Judge Roger Klein reminded everyone that "senior/vested/valid/pre-existing" Water Rights Owners were to be "exempt" from augmentation and the well shutdowns. Whoever executed WAS ignored Judge Klein!