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Even though the federal government just agreed to sacrifice the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, it's probably not yet time to break out the champagne along the Front Range and start celebrating the opportunity to import enough Western Slope water to extend the sprawl to Kansas.
Last week, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the
state of Colorado came to an agreement on
quantifying
river flows through the Black Canyon of
the Gunnison National Park.
It was proclaimed a national monument in 1933 by
President Herbert Hoover, and under the Winters
Doctrine,
that meant the federal government was
entitled to enough water, with a 1933 priority date, to
serve the purposes of the monument: to conserve and
maintain in an unimpaired condition the scenic, aesthetic,
natural, and historic objects of the monument, as well as
the wildlife therein.
In days of yore, the Black Canyon's bottom was scoured by spring floods. Since three major dams -- the Aspinall Unit -- were built upstream in the 1960s, the water flow has been more even through the year. That meant more vegetation and the like in the bottom of the canyon, which meant the Park Service wasn't maintaining the natural state of the canyon.
Just how much water would it take to do that? The
process is called quantification,
and it's been
winding through our water courts since the Park Service
applied for a water right in 1972 and got it in 1978,
subject to quantification.
But now there's an agreement. In essence, the Park Service will settle for a year-round canyon flow of 300 cubic feet per second with a 1933 priority date, as well as some big flows in wet years with a 2003 priority date.
Basically, this removes the Black Canyon from the
equation as Front Range water developers ogle the Upper
Gunnison River. Without any significant flow demands from
the downstream Black Canyon, there ought to be plenty of
water available for diversion and transport to the Front
Range -- something like 240,000 acre-feet of marketable
yield,
according to some estimates.
An acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons, or about what two families of four with small but green yards would consume in a year. So that could be enough water for perhaps 2 million more Coloradans, and another generation of residential developers, road builders, car dealers, mall promoters and similar public nuisances could retire in comfort.
However, there's a real question as to how much water
might be available from the Gunnison, even with Black
Canyon out of the picture. The Land and Water Fund of the
Rockies recently issued a rather thorough 74-page study of
that issue. The report concluded that there might be no
more than 20,000 acre-feet available, since almost all the
water in the basin is already being put to some form of
beneficial use
or another, and would thus have prior
rights.
Several Front Range entities -- among them Arapahoe County and the City of Aurora -- have already tried to get rights to divert upper Gunnison water. And they have lost in the local water court, and on appeal to the state supreme court.
One reason it's difficult to export this water is that
there are provisions, in the contracts and legislation for
the Aspinall Unit, that the water be used only in its basin
of origin. Or, as the water court put it a few years ago,
It is clear from reading the decrees ... that the
findings contemplated uses and development of water within
the Upper Gunnison Basin, and no mention is made in any of
the decrees of any intention to develop water resources for
trans-basin diversion.
The agreement made between the state and federal governments last week may eliminate the feds as a player. But if there's anything we're good at inside Colorado, it's fighting over water, and any effort to take water out of the Gunnison will inspire some fierce battles.
Kathleen Curry is the manager of the Upper Gunnison
River Water Conservancy District. She told me that the
agreement, reached without any consultation with her
district, makes it clear that the state has one agenda
and we have another.
Hers, of course, is protecting the water users in the
headwaters of the Gunnison River. As for the state, it
appears the state wants to get control of the water so it
can be diverted to the Front Range.
Thus any proposed diversions will certainly be
opposed by the conservancy district.
The district is
just one of the 382 parties which filed objections to the
original quantification plan, she said, and I would
imagine many of them will oppose trans-mountain
diversions.
So while it sounds pleasing that the state and federal
governments negotiated, rather than litigated, this just
means years of litigation in Colorado.
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