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One of our state's most obscure and clandestine organizations is CARP -- the Colorado Association of Red-bearded Pundits. There are no officers, dues or meetings. For that matter, there really aren't any red beards any more. If accuracy mattered more than vanity in this regard, it would be FOGIES: the Fraternal Order of Gray-bearded Imperious Egotistic Sages.
Besides me, the only other member is Bob Ewegen, who posed a question in his column yesterday: Why isn't water an issue when Coloradans talk about growth?
The answer came years ago from John Love, governor of
Colorado from 1963 to 1973: In the West, water flows
uphill toward money.
In other words, if you've got money, you can get the water, even in this Great American Desert. For evidence, consider the Colorado River, which supplies water to many large cities, among them Denver, Colorado Springs, Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix.
Not one of those cities is on the banks of the Colorado River, or even within its drainage. The physical course of the river is irrelevant when confronted by the political and financial resources of a metropolis.
Note further that about 80 percent of the water consumed in Colorado is used by agriculture, and farmers don't make much money these days. A relatively minor reduction in irrigation -- say, from 80 percent to 70 percent of the state's water usage -- would mean a 50 percent increase in water for domestic and industrial use.
Some us might prefer hay meadows to cul-de-sac subdivisions, but that doesn't change this fact. Water won't be a meaningful restriction on growth in Colorado for a long time -- the limit now is running out of money, not running out of water.
Ewegen's Monday column also quoted State Sen. John
Andrews, a Republican from Arapahoe County. The real
problem is that we have 500,000 acre-feet of Colorado water
flowing downstream to Las Vegas and Los Angeles every
year.
Diverting it across the Continental Divide is
fervently opposed on the Western Slope, Andrews observed.
But he wonders Why would they rather have our water go
to Las Vegas or Los Angeles than Northglenn or
Parker?
There are many ways to answer that question, starting
with the conjecture that Northglenn
is really an old
Gaelic word for hideous suburban sprawl,
but let's
start with what matters most in America: money.
Colorado's water law made sense in the 19th century with
its concept of beneficial use.
The pioneers arrived
in a desert where water in a river was of no economic
value. Put the water on a field to grow crops, route it
through a stamp mill to wash the dross away from the gold,
pipe it to paying customers in a city -- those were
beneficial uses. There wasn't any beneficial use
if
you just let the water flow wherever gravity might take
it.
But in recent decades, clever entrepreneurs have invented economic value for water that stays in the river. Rafting, fly-fishing and much scenic tourism all depend on sufficient water in our rivers, and these are all major industries in the mountains.
This new economic use for water in the river is reflected in water management. Taylor Park Reservoir, north of Gunnison, was built to supply water to farmers in the Montrose area. It gets a second filling every year now so that the Taylor River can support fishing and rafting.
The Arkansas River is managed to support a long summer rafting season, and the May releases to downstream farmers are timed so as not to interfere with the caddis-fly hatch beloved by visiting anglers.
Those are two tourism-oriented flow regimes that I happen to know about; doubtless there are others. The point is that in the mountains and on the Western Slope, the economy increasingly depends on there being water in the river.
What used to be seen as a waste of Colorado resources --
and still is, by John Andrews -- is now a beneficial
use
because people are using the water to make
money.
It isn't just a few hay farmers who would suffer from more diversions across the Continental Divide; the Colorado mountains are dominated by a sophisticated resort complex (part of tourism, the largest industry in the world) that relies on the water flowing toward Los Angeles rather than Northglenn.
The Front Range developers -- Andrews' constituents who
want that wasted
Western Slope water for more
suburbs -- can't call all the shots any more. Colorado
water still flows toward money, but now there's money in
the flow as the water descends toward Las Vegas.
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