Glenwood Canyon – From the riverbank, everything appears as it should. The water flows wild and free through the Colorado River basin, churning along toward the high-water mark of the annual peak runoff.
A peek beneath the surface reveals the truth, however. The river never will achieve its natural objective. It is neither wild nor free. And the shackles are only growing tighter.
As a habitual water watcher, I tend to notice when the plugs are in place. This week they’re there, at Windy Gap above Byers Canyon, below Green Mountain Reservoir where the Blue River connects to the Colorado, and even higher in Summit County, where it would otherwise gush beneath what is now the Dillon Reservoir.
Only a few days prior, the water was where it should be, the plugs pulled and the rivers roiling in the height of spring. Dams and diversions have since emasculated them, rendering an otherwise impressive watershed a feeble fraction of its former self.
Like any self-respecting Western Slope resident, I am, of course,
familiar with the concept of water rights. Yet, no matter how long I
wrestle with the notion, I still can’t seem to come to terms with it. It just feels wrong, or at the very least misnamed, as if everyone has rights
except the water.
I understand this isn’t really the case. Far from it, in fact. The reality is that, like the river, very few of us are allowed our natural rights to water, or even much say about what happens to this most precious of public resources. Despite what might seem like an inherent claim to life-giving liquid falling from the heavens, the fluid pie long since has been diced into pieces by entities outside our reach. Some actually claim rights to precipitation before it leaves the clouds.
But what happens to the water once it’s here on Earth most concerns me. It’s our arrogance as a species in general and the closed-door deliberations of Colorado water brokers specifically that I find so disturbing. As a case in point, take the most recent deal struck between the Denver Water Board and Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, described by both parties as a “win-win” scenario. The end result is an unmitigated “lose” for the Colorado River, arguably the most valuable, fragile and abused resource in the West.
The pact, presented to the public without previous consultation, can be traced all the way back to 1902, when a company then called Public Service acquired the water rights necessary to spin the turbines of a smallish 16-megawatt hydroelectric facility known as the Shoshone Power Plant. Those rights, senior to almost all others on the Colorado River, grant Shoshone – now owned by Xcel – nearly 900,000 acre-feet of water annually, what amounts to a daily average of about 1,250 cubic feet per second flowing through Glenwood Canyon.
Because of its seniority, the Sho- shone water call needed to generate electricity for the region’s air conditioners in the heat of summer trumps almost any attempt to plug up the river upstream for storage and trans-mountain diversions. Purely by coincidence, it also guarantees a healthy flow of water moving downstream when the river needs it most.
The notion of water flowing in a river doesn’t sit well with the old guard, however. It’s perceived as water wasted, particularly in times of drought, as we saw in 2002. So when Xcel wanted to renew its 20-year utility franchise with Denver this month, the city brokered a Shoshone water agreement as part of the deal. Now, in times of severe drought, the pact states that Xcel will shut down one of its two turbines, essentially cutting the river’s flow in half so that water may be diverted and stored upstream.
But no matter who retrieves the stored water, it’s the river that will run short.
It is, of course, imperative that a city the size of Denver maintains a water supply even in the most severe drought, but doing so at the expense of the river’s own environmental needs is self-serving and shortsighted. Even during the worst drought in 300 years, the city managed to
survive, albeit with a few more
brown lawns. Should this Shoshone pact be implemented even for a short period, we’re likely to see real and lasting impacts on the health of the ecosystem, including a collapse of the river’s Endangered Species Recovery Program.
There are many more interests at stake along the Colorado basin than those of Denver and an out-of-state power company. Rather than attempting the impossible task of hording water, Denver and the rest of Colorado need to focus their efforts on wiser use and responsible consumption of the resource as it exists. Ultimately it remains the public’s water, and the public has both a right and a responsibility to see that it is managed properly, just as the river has a right to flow.
Staff writer Scott Willoughbycan be reached at 303-820-1993
