Watson #1 Monitoring Station

---

Saddle Mountain Mutual Water Company has received the official notification from the Colorado DWR releasing us from the credit suspension imposed in 2012.  We are now eligible for water credits when we are in priority. 

It's been a very busy fall, winter, and spring.  My fellow shareholders, I am pleased to report the Watson #1 Monitoring Station is completed.  Tom Hatton and I spent a number of days this fall out on site and did all the major install work for the head wall, head gate, piping, and man hole.  JDS Hydro engineers, Hach representatives, and Division of Water Resources personnel did an inspection and manufacture configuration and certification exercise on 11/17/2017.  Our configuration passed manufacture certification and the initial certification from the State.  The station met all of the design specifications exactly within tolerances.  Unfortunately, we discovered too late the conduit size wasn't going to fit some of the cabling for the electronics, but by that time of the year, bad weather made it impossible to do any more work. 

We waited till early spring for good weather and changed out the conduit, built the cabinet mounting stand, and installed the monitoring device cabinet.  Tom Hatton finished the grading and did some additional work piling up stones and shoring up the stream bank.  In late March, more good weather allowed Reba Fertitta and I to go out and install the sensors and monitoring device in the cabinet.  Since March 27th, the device has been turned on the head gate has been opened and measuring water flow in the station.  JDS Hydro has since been out twice to fine tune and calibrate the sensors and devices to the %5 tolerance levels required by the State.  On May 4th, JDS Hydro engineers, the Division of Water Resources commissioners and engineers, and myself will be onsite for what I hope will be the final approval and certification of the station’s accuracy.  I've posted some pictures below to show the work we've done.

I want to thank everyone involved in the project, Tom Hatton, JDS Hydro, the Division of Water Resources, our SMMWC Board and our other partners in the Watson #1 water right for support during the construction and certification phases.  Finally, I want to thank our SMMWC shareholders for your support and confidence in me as Secretary/Treasurer to see this project through.  Our project construction estimate was $38,000 and our costs came in just over  $19,000 so far.  We will have a few minor things here and there to pay for still and some more site restoration work to do, but we are in the home stretch.

Sincerely,

Brian Bertrand
Secretary/Treasurer SMMWC