Projects and proposals, 1949-2003

The primary function of the CWRRI has been to research and report on water problems in Colorado and the West. Numerous projects and proposals were generated to this effect. Projects were financed by a combination of state and federal funds and were often renewed over several years. Many were collaborations between various researchers, universities, state, regional, and federal organizations and were, therefore, very complex financially and organizationally. To the extent that time allowed, every effort was made to decipher these projects and provide information to researchers to help them understand what materials exist in the files. Acronyms were used extensively throughout this entire collection but most heavily with project files. Original labels often had several acronyms strung together and revealed little about the file's contents. Additionally, files with the same acronyms were not grouped together when the collection was received by the Water Resources Archive. To aid researchers, files were rearranged categorically by acronym. Original file titles, including acronyms, were copied exactly onto acid-free folders during processing in order to retain original information; however, file folder titles were adjusted in the finding aid to facilitate research by consolidating acronyms, listing them only once, or eliminating them altogether. Acronyms dropped from this series were N, GAS, GAF, A&O: S, A&O: N (see acronym listing for explanations). Enough information was retained in the finding aid that researchers should not have a problem matching file folder titles to those in the finding aid. This series is divided into seven subseries according to groups sponsoring or involved in project research with one miscellaneous subseries; subseries 1.7 is by far the largest. Materials consist primarily of reports and related correspondence. Unless stated otherwise, folders were arranged alphabetically followed by any files that began with dates or numbers listed numerically. The bulk of the research represented occurred between 1965 and 2003.