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Certain acquaintances have told me that I've been rather one-sided about Referendum A, the ballot proposal that would allow the Colorado Water Conservation Board to issue up to $2 billion in bonds for water projects selected by that board and the governor. So to be fair and balanced, I now present the Top 10 Reasons to Support Referendum A.
10) It offers good investment opportunities. Find those companies that are will get construction contracts, and buy their stock. They're in a position to profit handsomely from cost overruns. Just look at Animas-La Plata, perhaps the most planned water project known to history. In just four months after construction started, the estimated cost went from $338 million to $500 million -- a 48 percent increase.
9) Keep Colorado water in Colorado. If the water goes down the river to California, they just waste it growing crops so that we'll have fresh vegetables in the winter. Other wastes of our precious Colorado fluids include habitat for endangered species, flows in the Grand Canyon and the generation of electricity at Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam. We've got to put a stop this, or else Phoenix developers will be carving out suburbs that could have been built in our own Douglas County.
8) Metro Denver ranks only third in gridlock. Referendum
A projects will provide more water to the metro area, which
means more population and more people driving. In just a
few years, this should put metro Denver in first place on
the time spent waiting in traffic list.
Making
Denver Number One in an important category will assist in
the current marketing and branding campaign. It will also
improve the economy with more money being spent on
billboards, cell-phones, car DVD players and similar
activities for people who are in their cars, but not going
anywhere.
7) Help Colorado industry. Almost any major new water development will require pumping. That's because the easy gravity-powered projects, like the Roberts Tunnel and the Moffat Tunnel, have already been built. Pumping will require electricity. Extracting the coal for the power plans will put more Coloradans to work, and with our winds, the acid rain should fall in Kansas or Nebraska, where it's not our worry.
6) Punish freeloaders. Throughout the rural parts of the state, there are people who spend a great deal of time wandering around on public land and enjoying themselves -- without paying extra for the scenery they consume. The federal government is trying to eliminate these parasites with a user-fee program for public lands, but we can help on the state level, The fewer creeks and rivers that flow on public lands, the less attractive they will be, and thus, there will be fewer freeloaders attracted to them.
5) Save our wilderness. Along the same line, observe that with fewer people attracted to undeveloped public lands, there will be less demand for roads, campgrounds, privies and other improvements.
4) Help put Colorado in the White House. America has dozens of Republican governors who do pretty much the same thing -- build more prisons, cut spending on social services, encourage the oil and gas industry, etc. To have a good shot at the presidency in 2008, our Bill Owens needs to be able to point to an accomplishment that will make him stand head and shoulders above the crowd. What better than launching the biggest public-works projects in Colorado's history?
3) Improved conversation topics. We can all enjoy guessing which project will be approved first. Will it be the Big Straw, and if so, will they route it up the Gunnison valley, along Interstate 70, or a northern corridor? Will they resurrect the Escalante Canyon Reservoir, the 1948 Gunnison-Arkansas Project, or perhaps the Juniper-Cross Mountain Project on the Yampa? Face it, morning-coffee conversations about possible water projects would be a big improvement on the usual speculations about the Kobe Bryant case, ghost-written letters from military personnel in Iraq and the collapse of the Red Sox and the Cubs.
2) Save money on highways. The less there is to do on the Western Slope (i.e. white-water rafting, fly-fishing), the less need there is for people to drive there from the metro area. That means that expensive expansion of Interstate 70 between Denver and Vail can be postponed, perhaps permanently, and the savings could run into the billions.
1) Colorado needs more Republicans. Any water developed by Referendum A bonds will go toward the continued growth of the south metro suburbs. That's because they currently get their water from wells whose water table is falling. So they need to import water. That's Republican territory, so the more development there, the greater the GOP's political edge in Colorado.
So you have a patriotic duty to support Referendum A. Otherwise, Colorado might suffer the horrors of a divisive two-party political system.
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