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Early this year, the local chapter of the League of Women Voters invited me to talk about water issues in Colorado. I began by observing that it's pretty much a waste of time for any voters to concern themselves with Colorado water. Even if our state constitution says that the water of Colorado belongs to the people of Colorado, we don't matter.
The most recent example involves the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, an obscure quasi-state agency. It helps fund water projects in Colorado, and last week it turned out that two of its board members (appointed by the governor) had been hired to lobby the board for water projects.
This same body, in a year when the state government is strapped, also found $15 million for a tiny water conservancy district whose assessed valuation is only $29 million.
The story can start in 1922, when Colorado and New Mexico negotiated a compact on the La Plata River near the Four Corners. It's complicated, but in general, it requires Colorado to deliver at least 100 cubic feet per second to New Mexico during the irrigation season.
Colorado apparently has trouble meeting this obligation, since there are irrigators organized in the La Plata Water Conservancy District. They're also in the Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District, as well as the Southwestern Colorado Water Conservation District -- all of whose directors are appointed, not elected, and all of which collect tax money.
Now let us move to 1981, when Colorado was promoting two lame pork-barrel water projects -- the Narrows on the South Platte, and Animas-La Plata in the Four Corners. The idea was to grab every drop that might escape the state in excess of compact requirements, and building such facilities takes money.
For some reason, the existing Colorado Water
Conservation Board (more powerful people you don't vote
for) was not deemed up to the task, so the Colorado Water
Resources and Power Development Authority was formed. Gov.
Dick Lamm charged the CWR&PDA to develop all
remaining water resources in the state as quickly as
possible,
and it would depend on the Legislature for
authority and final approval of all projects,
according
to a history of the Colorado-Big Thompson project by Dan
Tyler (who just wrote a biography of Delph Carpenter, the
Colorado water lawyer who negotiated the La Plata Compact
and the Colorado River Compact).
In 1982, the legislature transferred $30 million from the CWCB to the CWR&PDA. So, they've had more than 20 years to develop all our water resources, and even so, everybody that matters in this state has been complaining that we weren't equipped for this current drought.
Further, the Authority's current assets are about $43 million, according to one of my favorite troublemakers, Phil Doe of Littleton, who has looked hard at the Authority in recent months. If you had put $30 million in a 5-percent savings account in 1982, you'd now have $83 million in the bank.
So, the Authority hasn't invested well, and it hasn't developed all our water, since we still hear Front Range folks complaining about that million acre-feet a year that allegedly just flows down the Colorado River.
Of the two major projects the Authority was established to build, the Narrows is as dead as a project can get in Colorado (none, however bad, ever suffers eternal death) and Animas-La Plata is under construction. But thanks to our Sen. Ben Campbell's herculean efforts at the federal trough, the state doesn't have to help finance this destruction of a good river.
So it might have made sense this year to just eliminate the Authority as one of those bodies, like the Moffat Tunnel Commission, whose day had come and gone. And its $43 million might have been put to some productive use.
However, $15 million of that is escrowed -- for a grant or a loan -- to the La Plata Water Conservancy District, according to Dan Law, the authority's director. He told me that the district might use some of that money to build reservoirs to help meet Colorado's compact obligations.
According to the state Department of Local Affairs, the conservancy district's total assessed valuation is only $29 million, and according to Doe, there are only 89 irrigators in it, most of them hobby farmers. One of the irrigators, though, is a state senator -- Jim Isgar.
Plus my state senator, Lew Entz of Hooper, pushed
through a bill this session removing legislative oversight
of the Authority. It's their money,
he said, and
they shouldn't have to come back to us with every
project.
No, it's our money, and it's our water -- at least in theory. But as noted, in Colorado that doesn't matter.
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