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The prospect of an expanded Great Sand Dunes National Park replacing the current Great Sand Dunes National Monument is not entirely pleasant.
National Parks get more publicity than mere National
Monuments. That means more visitors, and to quote the late
Ken Olsen, Sr., of Twin Lakes, nobody moves to a little
mountain town because he loves his fellow man.
And you can get even more misanthropic by trying to follow the political wranglings on Sand Dunes expansion.
It has the support of every member of the Colorado congressional delegation except Joel Hefley of Colorado Springs. Hefley says he opposes expansion because national parks should be distinctive places, and there's nothing all that special oabout the Sand Dunes, even if the park were expanded to comprise the Baca Ranch, which includes 14,165-foot Kit Carson Mountain and 14,080-foot Challenger Point.
So that's two 14ers, while Rocky Mountain National Park has only one, 14,255-foot Long's Peak. Rocky Mountain has neither sand dunes or sabkha, nor old toll roads or legends about web-footed horses. Rocky Mountain is a rather generic alpine landscape; what you see from Trail Ridge Road is not all that different from what you see from Independence Pass or Cumberland Pass.
Thus I can't really buy Hefley's argument. It makes more sense to note that he's from Colorado Springs, and Colorado Springs could conceivably expand its water supply if the Baca Ranch were not part of a national park, but remained in private hands.
More water means a bigger Colorado Springs and more Republicans -- and it's Hefley's job to look after the interests of his district and his party.
Also opposed to park designation are the Saguache County commissioners. They see lost property-tax revenues if the land goes from private to federal, as well as fewer places to hunt if land goes from National Forest to National Park.
I've tried to explain to some friends there that they just need to pass a county sales tax, get a park portal in their county so that Moffat starts to look like Estes Park, and then whore themselves out to the tourist industry, just like the rest of us.
For some reason, they're still reluctant.
And then there's the latest bump on the road to park status. There are two park bills before Congress. One's in the house, introduced by Rep. Scott McInnis of Colorado; the other is before the Senate, and it comes from Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado.
They are quite similar -- both require the federal government to go through Colorado water courts for any new water rights -- but there's a minor difference in the water-rights language, so minor that I wasn't able to discern any meaningful distinction.
Several experts have explained it to me, though. Under the McInnis version, the Park Service might be able to get an instream flow right to water in creeks that flow to the dunes. In the Allard bill, the Park Service couldn't, because his bill recognizes that Colorado law requires all instream flow rights to be held by the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
Presumably, the issue of the Park Service holding instream flow rights would be settled by a Colorado water court, no matter which version became law.
But in late July, an Interior Department solicitor told Allard's staff that the department couldn't support Allard's bill, and if it passed, Interior would recommend a veto.
On the ground at the Sand Dunes, this makes no
difference, Monument Superintendent Steve Chaney said.
Our water would flow across the park in then natural
stream channels, whether we had instream rights or regular
water rights,
he said.
So this snag isn't about the sand dunes -- it's about the possibility that a precedent might be set, in that a Colorado water court could conceivably grant an instream flow right to some entity other than the state Water Conservation Board.
And if this happened (which seems highly unlikely, since the Colorado water court would be bound by Colorado water law), then the Evil Federal Government might gain more control over Colorado water.
For one thing, the feds already have a lot of control. The biggest water decision in recent memory -- the killing of the proposed Two Forks Reservoir on the South Platte -- was made by the federal government during the administration of Bush the Elder.
For another, I'm trying to imagine how we'd be the worse off if water stayed in the creek, no matter who held the instream flow right.
But the longer they wrangle, the longer it will take to make it a park, and if that delays more visiting hordes, well, I just have a hard time getting upset about that.
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