Opinion ID: 2600424
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Lack of Sufficient Trial Court Findings

Text: The case before us involving a one hundred year planning horizon requires us to determine whether the governmental agency exception to the otherwise applicable anti-speculation requirements should be broadly or narrowly construed. We determine that our decision in Bijou stands for a narrow construction. As Bijou demonstrates, Colorado's anti-speculation doctrine includes constraints on conditional appropriations by governmental agencies. [8] The length of the governmental agency's water supply planning period, its anticipated future needs for a normal rate of population growth based on substantiated population projections for that period, the amount of conditionally-decreed water to be allocated for its use, and its ability under the can and will test to put the conditionally appropriated water to beneficial use within a reasonable planning period were the focus of our factual and legal inquiry into the water court's judgment and decree in Bijou. Id. at 37-45. In upholding the water court's approval of a fifty year water supply planning horizon for the conditional appropriation, we observed that the applicant had presented extensive evidence to support both its projections of future water demand and its ultimate intent. Id. at 40. That evidence included witnesses, planning experts, planning documents, and studies prepared by water consultants. Id. In addition, the water court imposed reality checks in the conditional decree to verify in subsequent six year diligence proceedings that the population and water usage fore-casts continued to be reasonable. Id. Also, we approved the inclusion of a decree provision for a volumetric limit on the conditional appropriation. Id. Based on Colorado's statutory requirements and Bijou, the limited governmental agency exception to the anti-speculation doctrine should be construed narrowly, in order to meet the state's maximum utilization and optimum beneficial use goals. Although the fifty year planning period we approved in Bijou is not a fixed upper limit, and each case depends on its own facts, the water court should closely scrutinize a governmental agency's claim for a planning period that exceeds fifty years. The ultimate factual and legal issue in a governmental agency conditional appropriation case involves how much water should be conditionally decreed to the applicant. The experts who testified at the water court trial in this case were called upon to address such pertinent factors as: (1) implementation of reasonable water conservation measures for the planning period; [9] (2) reasonably expected land use mixes during that period; (3) reasonably attainable per capita usage projections for indoor and outdoor use based on the land use mixes for that period; and (4) the amount of consumptive use reasonably necessary for use through the conditional appropriation to serve the increased population. [10] But in this case, the water court did not make sufficient findings of fact enabling our review of its judgment and decree. For the water court's guidance and consistent with the statutes and Bijou, we identify areas of unresolved factual findings bearing on whether the districts have met their burden to demonstrate a nonspeculative intent to appropriate the amount of water they claim and whether the districts' have satisfied the can and will test. In doing so, we do not limit the water court's authority to: (1) consider additional factors based on the issues raised by the parties; (2) make findings based on the evidence already contained in the record and that which it takes on remand; and (3) enter a judgment and decree for the districts' conditional appropriation. In decreeing to the districts a total diversion into storage of 64,000 acre-feet of water annually, with a right of reuse, and decreeing a separate 80 cfs direct flow diversion, the water court did not make findings of fact with regard to the disputed threshold issue of what planning period is reasonable, whether 2040, 2050, or 2100. When the districts were forming their intent to appropriate water, they started with a planning horizon that was well within the fifty year planning horizon approved in Bijou. They had before them the 2003 Harris report that supported a conditional appropriation to meet their 2040 demands. Because SJWCD already holds a 6,300 acre-foot conditional water right, the Harris report supported a year 2040 need for the appropriation of an additional 5,700 acre-feet of water for a total of 12,000 acre-feet of water at a diversion rate of 18.5 cfs through the Dry Gulch Pump Station into the reservoir. In contrast, the conditional decree approved by the water court contains a planning horizon, diversion rates, and a total volumetric annual consumption amount for stored water far in excess of what the districts initially considered to be reasonable for water supply planning purposes. The decree also contains an unexplained direct flow diversion rate of 80 cfs. The decree implements the districts' goal of appropriating water for the entire 35,000 acre-foot storage capacity of the Dry Gulch site, with a right to refill and make a fully consumptive reuse, based on population and water demand protections for the year 2100 put forth by their engineer. [11] In approving the districts' conditional decree application, unlike the water court in Bijou, the water court did not resolve a factual dispute concerning substantiated projections of future growth. Trout Unlimited advanced population projections for Archuleta County based on figures from the State Demographer's Office and the districts' engineer made his own long-term projections based on recent growth rates in the county. Nor did the water court make findings concerning the future land use mixes for the Town of Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County and per capita water usage requirements, taking into account implementation of water conservation measures. [12] Further, the water court did not take into account the measure of consumptive use the districts reasonably need to serve their population in the future during a reasonable planning period. The effect of decreeing reuse rights is to greatly increase an entity's usable water supply. As we pointed out in Bijou, an appropriation of native water is typically subject to only one use, with the return flows going back to the groundwater or surface water. 926 P.2d at 27-28. Return flows help fill other appropriations, whereas a right of reuse to extinction does not. We said in Bijou that one can appropriate reuse rights of unappropriated native flow water, but the need to do so must be substantiated. Id. Here, the water court did not make findings of fact relating to the amount of water that can be generated through reuse, in relationship to the total amount of available unappropriated water necessary to meet the districts' reasonably anticipated needs over a reasonable water supply planning period. Id. at 39-40. Finally, the water court did not make findings of fact under the can and will test regarding the districts' ability to construct the 35,000 acre-foot reservoir and perfect the use and reuse of 64,000 acre-feet of stored water together with construction and use of a separate 80 cfs direct flow water right. In sum, the planning horizon for the conditional appropriation the water court decreed doubles the fifty year period for the conditional appropriation the water court decreed in Bijou, and the amount of consumptive use water the water court decreed greatly exceeds the amount the 2003 Harris report supports as adequate to meet a 2040 planning horizon. The justification for the much longer planning horizon and the vastly greater amount of water conditionally decreed for the districts' consumption does not appear in the water court's findings of fact, judgment, and decree.