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Perhaps it's for the best that all the political attention is focused on speculations about peculations. Otherwise, Colorado candidates would have to start looking at problems here, such as the expanding results of Front Range growth.
It's impossible to hide from. Start here in Salida, 150 miles from Denver. The most recent passionate local controversy concerned proposals from a group called the Quiet Use Coalition, which suggested that some local trails be closed to machinery, being as the woods were getting awfully crowded and noisy of late.
This inspired the motorized recreation lobby to make the usual responses about elitists who want to close off land that belongs to all Americans.
(I've never quite understood why someone with $50 for a
pair of hiking boots is an elitist,
while someone
with $25,000 for a sport-utility vehicle or gaudy
four-wheel-drive pickup is just plain folks, but I'm sure
there's an explanation.)
The point here is not to discuss the merits of these arguments, but to bemoan that the arguments are even occurring.
It wasn't that long ago that we had ample territory to go around. Those who liked quiet and solitude could visit uncrowded wilderness, or merely stroll along some old wagon road in the National Forest, where vehicles were allowed, but seldom seen.
But that was before hordes of recently arrived Front Range residents started visiting with their four-wheel-drives, often towing trailers with noisy off-road motorcycles or the like.
That makes much National Forest land somewhat other than quiet, and as for the more remote areas, there are the mountain jocks on their expensive bicycles and the continuing growth in visitation to the official wilderness areas.
So we have too many users crowding onto too little land, with divergent and often conflicting desires for recreation. The Forest Service budget keeps shrinking, so that agency can hardly take any management or leadership role in resolving these conflicts.
These conflicts have escalated to feverish levels during the past decade as Colorado gained a million people.
Across the Continental Divide in the Gunnison Country, my spies tell me that a tax increase is likely to pass this fall. The money would go to the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District for more court fights against Arapahoe County schemes to take water from the Taylor Park area.
Or we could go south, into the San Luis Valley, where rancher Gary Boyce has proposed pumping up to 150,000 acre-feet a year out of the Closed Basin and selling it to Front Range markets.
There's hardly any contention in the San Luis Valley about Boyce's proposal: Everybody I've talked to there, except for Boyce, is against it. Ballot issues and court fights loom, and that means the opponents have to raise money for propaganda campaigns and perhaps raise their taxes to pay attorneys in water court.
But look beyond the merits, or lack thereof, of Boyce's specific proposal, and you see that it wouldn't even be on the table if the Front Range didn't need water to accommodate growth. If there were no subdividers in Douglas County, ready to buy water at substantial prices, then there would be no plans to tap and export the annual recharge of the Closed Basin, a desert that sits 200 miles away.
We could venture eastward from Salida to South Park, where they're also collection donations and talking tax increases to oppose the Aurora Conjunctive Use Project, which as you correctly guessed is a scheme to take even more water from Park County.
So I see Colorado's growth producing a conflict that pits neighbor against neighbor here, when we used to get along tolerably because there was room enough for everybody to play without unduly bothering anybody else.
In every nearby drainage, people are soliciting contributions and seriously considering paying more taxes in order to oppose various water development and diversion schemes.
This Front Range growth, in other words, means contention and tax increases all over the state. And these aren't tax increases that will improve schools, streets or libraries. The money will go to lawyers representing the affected basin, and if they win, all the victory represents is preservation of the status quo, not an improvement in local life.
If any Colorado candidates this year are sincere about
reducing taxes, they'll promise firing squads for Front
Range subdividers. But instead, the candidates will talk
about their values.
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