When the “founding humans” of the Western Colorado Congress first crowded into a farmhouse near Montrose in the spring of 1980, they brought plenty of potluck dishes. But they were short on political clout.
They included schoolteachers, carpenters, a plumber, an attorney, a social worker and a wildlife agency spokesman. Local power players bent on development quickly dismissed these questioning environmentalists as tree-hugging kooks, and even communists.
Last month, that same group — now boasting 3,100 members — drew Gov. Bill Ritter’s presence and praise at its annual meeting.
And last week, WCC members were invited to the table when the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission met with stakeholders about proposed rules for energy development. The rules are being changed thanks in large part to more than eight years of lobbying work by WCC and its affiliate members.
Also last week, the nonprofit El Pomar Foundation recognized and awarded $7,500 to a WCC program to protect national forests through conservation biology.
It seems the Western Colorado Congress has grown up, having gone from a gangly fringe group that once toyed with calling itself The Rocky Mountain Oyster Alliance to a progressive political force that counts business owners, oil field workers, ranchers, hunters and state and local officials among its members.
Gone are early attention-getting publicity stunts and pie-in-the-sky dreams of rewriting environmental history. In their place: grassroots organizing efforts targeted at specific local issues, and the formation of effective partnerships with other Western Slope concerns.
“Being affiliated with WCC is no longer a negative,” said contractor and interim director Duke Cox. “We have developed a lot of skills. We have a lot of intellectual capital.”
WCC remains vilified in a few quarters. But some of its early nemeses — the Colorado Ute Electric Association and the Louisiana-Pacific waferboard plant in Olathe — have gone out of business while WCC and its 43 affiliate community groups have forged once unlikely alliances.
Ritter among its “friends”
“It goes back to an old saying,” said Kevin Williams, a WCC leader for almost 25 years. “There are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends.”
People viewed as “friends” include Ritter, who gave the annual meeting’s keynote address. Ritter commended the work WCC has done on issues such as air quality, watershed protection and preserving the Roan Plateau. He was the first governor to step up to WCC’s podium in 22 years.
Josh Penry, a Republican state senator who usually champions causes diametrically opposed to WCC’s, recently aligned himself with the group to oppose plans for locating wastewater pits around the town of DeBeque.
DeBeque, a conservative ranching community of about 800, traditionally has closed its doors to environmentalists but is now thankful to WCC for helping to keep the unwanted pits away.
“A likely alliance”
“There are lots of folks here who wouldn’t side with WCC on every issue, but this was a likely alliance. This was about toxic chemicals in the middle of our town,” said DeBeque Mayor Don Cramer.
WCC recently racked up one of its biggest victories when it was instrumental in revamping the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The group has two members on the new commission.
Even Club 20, the Western Slope lobbying group usually in the corner of the ring opposite WCC, has an affiliation of sorts with the group. WCC president Bill Grant and former president Charlie Kerr are also members of Club 20. The organization gave Kerr an award last year for his conservation work.
But that doesn’t mean the two groups are making nice after 27 years on opposite sides of many social and environmental issues.
“They might rise to the level of a nuisance at times,” said Club 20 director Reeves Brown. “But in general they really aren’t even on our radar screen. The issues they deal with are much narrower in scope than ours.”
But Club 20 officials have taken the time to look into the membership and funding of the group that pulls 60 percent of its $700,000 annual budget from foundations, including many based outside Colorado such as the Educational Foundation of America and the Ben & Jerry Foundation. The other 40 percent comes from membership dues.
“They have members who don’t even own anything in this area. They haven’t created businesses here. They have people who don’t have to earn a living here,” said Club 20 chairwoman and oil and gas spokeswoman Kathy Hall. “They’ve been successful at killing businesses as long as I’ve known them.”
Ironically, Club 20 had an inadvertent hand in creating WCC.
“The Front Range and the media all looked to Club 20 for a Western Slope voice. Club 20 was founded to promote growth and economic development,” said Geoff Tischbein, a WCC founder. “We wanted to balance that out.”
At that time, the organized resistance in the West to federal public- land policies known as the Sagebrush Rebellion was trying to stymie wilderness protections. Oil shale was sparking crazy growth. Forests were being logged in willy-nilly fashion. A power-hungry power company was pushing plans for questionable projects. Diversion attempts on water were being made in the Gunnison River in the Black Canyon. James Watt, a notorious adversary of environmentalists, would soon be drafted as secretary of the Interior.
WCC fought land-use, clean-air, water-development and logging battles and made strong enemies. The late publisher of the Montrose Daily Press banned the group from mention in his paper.
So WCC resorted to theatrics to draw attention to issues.
They sent letters to the editor signed by the then-director’s dog. They held a “Cookies for Clean Air” bake sale to raise money when the Colorado Air Quality Control Division said it could not afford more inspectors on the Western Slope. They demonstrated at the Colorado Welcome Center west of Fruita when Colorado was inviting other states’ nuclear waste. They used a belly dancer to raise money for a timber issue.
They showed up with signs, costumes and bullhorns outside Club 20 meetings. They marched out of a hearing about the Louisiana-Pacific waferboard plant, singing as they went.
“Now we can get quoted without having to do anything extreme,” said longtime member Marv Ballantyne.
That translates to low-key tactics such as collecting signatures on petitions at churches and holding relatively staid informational meetings in small town halls.
WCC has helped behind the scenes to form many community groups that focus on specific issues. The group has pulled together coalitions such as the mayors of Garfield County towns to speak out in counterpoint to county commissioners perceived as being too friendly to the oil and gas industry.
Group flexing its muscle
The group has also gained new muscle by joining the seven-state Western Organization of Resource Councils that includes eight other grassroots groups.
Today, the group’s storefront office in downtown Grand Junction is home base for a dozen employees. Some have science and research backgrounds and specialize in subjects such as water and energy development.
The old Montrose headquarters, located up steep creaking stairs in an office furnished with castoffs that might not make the cut at Goodwill, is now a satellite where a group of original members, including founder Chuck Worley, 90, recently gathered to talk about challenges — old and new.
They say the issues — wilderness, gas pipelines, new drilling proposals, incursions into agricultural lands, watershed threats and now global warming — keep coming with sometimes overwhelming frequency.
“We realized long ago,” member Stu Krebs said, “that although we wanted to change the world, we were just going to budge a little part of it.”
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
