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it, in order to meet the senior right holder’s need. A holder
of a run-of-the-river right does not have the right to call water
that has been stored in a reservoir upstream, despite a junior
priority date of the upstream holder. As a result, a run-of-the-
river right is not as dependable as rights to stored water during
a drought and is less valuable. Petitioner’s certificate allowed
it to store only 86 acre feet of water, which was sufficient to
enable its intake pumps to function properly at normal stream
flows. Consequently, petitioner’s early priority date was
important in that it determined the availability of water to
petitioner in times of drought.
On August 29, 1997, petitioner filed an application with the
TNRCC for the right to change the use of and to transfer out of
the Colorado River Basin the 133,000 acre-foot portion of its
water right not being sold to Corpus Christi. The requested
amendment would allow petitioner to sell all or a part of its
water right for municipal, industrial, or commercial purposes
outside of the Colorado River Basin. Petitioner made the August
27, 1997, application in order to preserve an argument that its
remaining water would be exempt from the Junior Water Rights
Provision of SB1 because the application was filed before the
effective date of SB1 (September 1, 1997). The argument was
supported by letters from Texas State senators. Since the
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