< PREVIOUS ] [ 2004 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
The drive to elect members of water conservancy district boards in Colorado seems to have sputtered, which should be no surprise. When it comes to water, our legislature makes democracy a difficult process.
Colorado has about 50 conservancy districts, spread all over the state. They range from tiny outfits which do little except collect property taxes to immense entities like Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which operates the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, and Southeastern Colorado, which operates the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project.
Conservancy districts levy taxes and have the right of condemnation for their water projects. However, their board members are appointed, not elected. And they're not even appointed by elected officials like county commissioners; almost always, they're appointed by district judges.
There are a few exceptions, since it is possible to elect a conservancy district director. First you have to get signatures from at least 10 percent of the registered voters within a division of a conservancy district. Then hire a lawyer because the conservancy district will almost certainly challenge the signatures, and you'll need to defend them. Be sure there are some candidates for the seat. And go through this every four years, because the petition for election is a one-shot deal.
In the past decade, there have been less than a dozen such elections in Colorado. Most have been in the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District. But this year, with three seats up, there were no petitions and thus there will be no election in the Upper Gunnison.
State Rep. Paul Weissman of Lafayette has introduced legislation to make conservancy districts like other special districts, and have elected boards, accountable to the public. But Weissman's bill never gets out of committee. Colorado Republicans may complain about an unelected judiciary exercising too much power, but when given a chance to do something about it, they don't.
Some conservancy districts have gone into retail water
development by selling augmentation permits.
These
are complicated, but in essence, they make it easier to
install domestic wells inside rural subdivisions.
They're also profitable for a conservancy district. It can buy water for $5,000 an acre foot, and sell augmentation permits for $2,500 for 1/10 of an acre-foot, which works out to $25,000 an acre-foot.
On the ground, this can produce an expensive water war, and one may be developing now in Custer County. There a developer wants to build a subdivision with 14 five-acre lots on the edge of Westcliffe, which is served by the Round Mountain Water and Sanitation District.
Round Mountain is not a conservancy district. It's more like a municipal water supplier, and it has an elected board.
Round Mountain said it would provide water if the developer annexed into town, but the town would require small lots, paved streets, and curbs and gutters. The developer wanted something more rural, so he turned to the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District.
Upper Ark said it could provide water. Round Mountain cried foul, on several grounds. One was that Round Mountain had agreed to support Upper Ark's proposal for an augmentation plan in Custer County, with the provision that Upper Ark stay out of Round Mountain's service area, and this looked like an incursion. Another was that the subdivision would have individual septic tanks near a well Round Mountain uses for supplying the adjacent towns of Westcliffe and Silver Cliff, and that could lead to problems.
Upper Ark still has to go to court to get approval for
its blanket augmentation plan
for Custer County, and
Round Mountain will likely oppose it. An expensive legal
battle looms, and the people of Westcliffe and Silver Cliff
will be taxed to pay for both sides.
This expense won't add a single drop to the water supply of Custer County. And as a resident and taxpayer in the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District, I'd certainly vote for any candidate who promised to avoid such litigation. In fact, I'd vote for a board member who proposed to get the government out of the augmentation business, and leave that to private enterprise. Why use public resources to subsidize sprawl?
But we don't get to vote on such matters. Our
legislature doesn't trust us around water, even if our
state constitution says that the water of Colorado is
hereby declared to be the property of the public.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2004 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >