When I moved to Salida 27 years ago to edit the local daily, I was relieved because I thought it meant I could quit writing about threats to the local river – the Arkansas here.
In my two previous newspaper jobs, it often seemed that all I did was water. Those jobs were on the Western Slope, Kremmling and then Breckenridge, from 1974 to 1978.
There was the Denver Water Board of Water Commissioners (whose name is now compressed to the snappy “Denver Water”), which was constantly devising ways to take more water out of the Fraser and Williams Fork rivers.
There was Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which ran the state’s biggest trans-mountain diversion, the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. And if that weren’t enough, it was also promoting the Windy Gap Project. Northern’s manager, Larry Simpson, came up to Grand County and talked about how important it was to build Windy Gap so the northern Front Range cities would have municipal water, and thus agricultural uses would be preserved.
Later we learned that Windy Gap water was really going to the Rawhide Power Plant near Fort Collins. But if there’s a state law which prohibits lying when you’re trying to hustle some water out of another basin, it has never been enforced.
And there was a scheme called the Vidler Tunnel Water project, which involved a maze of canals on the east flank of the Gore Range, just below the wilderness boundary, to convey water to a tunnel under the Continental Divide near the Eisenhower highway tunnel.
Those, as well as assorted rumors, and Denver’s refusal to release water from Dillon Reservoir to Green Mountain Reservoir despite its legal obligations, were more than enough to make me welcome a move to Salida, on the Eastern Slope.
The Arkansas, after all, was a beneficiary of diversions like the Twin Lakes Tunnel and the Frying Pan-Arkansas project. I’d be on the winning side of the mountains. Naively, perhaps, I thought there was a sort of “honor among thieves” – Front Range cities wouldn’t raid each other.
Back then, Aurora had fewer than 150,000 residents. Now it’s got close to twice that many, and along the way, it began buying senior agricultural water rights east of Pueblo.
Up here, it wouldn’t matter much if Aurora, instead of local farmers, took water from the Rocky Ford Canal. But Aurora didn’t have the plumbing to pump water up 1,500 feet and 160 miles from there. It did have half-interest in the Otero Pump Station in northern Chaffee County, and so the city got a “change in point of diversion.” Water that had flowed through Buena Vista and Salida no longer did, for it was removed from the river upstream.
Salida and Buena Vista have built river parks with play holes for kayakers, and by some estimates, the Arkansas River from Granite to Cañon City is the most popular whitewater rafting stream in the world, with more than 600,000 annual visitors. It’s a big part of the local economy – and there isn’t much else, since the mines closed and the railroad quit running.
So the county government recently applied for a Recreational Instream Flow Diversion. As you might have guessed, the application has been opposed by Aurora and Colorado Springs.
The instream flow right would be very junior – a 2005 priority date – but it could thwart future changes in point of diversion for senior water rights that those cities already own.
Also opposing it was the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District, which is based in Salida. That seems a bit surprising, since a similar body, the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, took the lead on applying for an instream flow right for the Gunnison River Park.
But Upper Arkansas seems to be focused not on protecting Chaffee County’s economy, but on expanding into eastern Fremont County, where residents would have to start paying a property tax to the district.
Does this increase in property taxes require an election under TABOR? The district says it’s not increasing its tax rate, so it’s not a tax increase. But property owners in and around Cañon City may see it differently; a new tax may look very much like a tax increase.
This could get a lot more confusing before anything is settled, and I’m starting to miss those simple days on the Western Slope, where it was easy to spot the bad guys – they drove around in Denver Water Board pickups, sometimes even in broad daylight.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
