Lake City – Dave Miller sees a reservoir in Colorado’s Collegiate mountain range that no one else sees – or wants to see.
On a sweltering summer day last month in this tiny mountain hamlet, Miller patiently delivered a pitch he has been making for 19 years – this time to a room of hardened foes, members of a Western Slope lobbying group.
It took less than a minute after he finished his spiel for the Club 20 water committee to send Miller its message on his plan to ship water to the Front Range: No.
“I’m kind of hardened to this,” Miller, 74, said after the vote. “It won’t defeat me, because I know I’m right.”
These days, the indefatigable former Air Force colonel and real estate developer has a bigger problem than Club 20.
On Aug. 3, a state judge revoked a 1982 water right on a Taylor River tributary owned by Miller’s company, the Natural Energy Resources Co.
Without the water right, the Union Park reservoir is dead. Miller said his attorney is preparing an appeal.
The idea emerged from a 1982 plan for a 114- billion-gallon reservoir and hydroelectric plant above Taylor Creek.
Two years later, Miller became a major stockholder in the venture.
In 1986, Arapahoe County lent its support to a larger version with a new purpose – a 391- billion-gallon bucket designed to export some water to supply growth along the Front Range.
After two trips to the Colorado Supreme Court, Arapahoe County gave up on the reservoir.
Since then, Union Park has become a litmus test for Western Slope officials.
Even Miller’s most ardent foes say they admire his pluck.
“The amount of energy he puts into this concept is phenomenal,” said state Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison. “He’s just a bulldog. We wish we could channel it into something that had more balance.”
Miller, a Palmer Lake resident, recently garnered support from U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and state Sen. Jim Dyer, R-Centennial, whose district includes part of Arapahoe County.
The fight for Union Park is similar, Miller said, to the time he spent in the Air Force in the late ’50s and early ’60s helping develop standardized shipping containers and a system of planes, trucks and ships to carry them.
“It revolutionized the whole industry,” Miller said. “We’re basically saying high-altitude storage could have the same kind of impact on water.”
An unrelenting correspondent, Miller says he mails at least 300 letters a year, updating, prodding and cajoling local, state and federal officials.
His persistence has also earned a curious distinction. Of the 250 resolutions in Club 20’s policy binder, Miller is the only person to have one named after him.
Some see his long advocacy as an impediment to development in the Gunnison basin.
“There are so many loose ends, hard feelings and emotional complications,” said Department of Natural Resources director Russell George. “It’s hard to get into a rational discussion about Union Park without all that getting in the way.”
But Miller says he’s in for the long haul.
“I know if you hang in there, you can revolutionize things once you get to a critical mass,” he said. “It’s going to take an independent guy like myself who’s crazy enough not to give up.”
Staff writer Theo Stein can be reached at 303-820-1657 or tstein@denverpost.com.
