The Colorado Index

Supreme Court Saves Colorado $9 Million In Fees

The latest volley in the great water war between Kansas and Colorado ended today, saving Colorado $9 million in legal fees.  From Denver Channel 7's website:

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected claims from Kansas that Colorado should be forced to pay $9 million in legal fees from their century-long dispute over water from the Arkansas River.

The court, in a unanimous ruling Monday, said Colorado must reimburse Kansas only for about $163,000 in payments to expert witnesses. Kansas had argued that the Supreme Court could require Colorado to pay more, despite a $40-per-day limit set by federal law.

Apparently, Kansas was hoping for some judicial activism to change the federal law and acquire more Colorado taxpayer dollars that the State presently lacks.  Luckily, the court decided that a uniform legal standard is better than a federal free-for-all. 

Hopefully, now that this twenty-year-old litigation is winding down, Colorado can focus its efforts on legally storing  water for its twenty-first century needs instead of fighting ancient lawsuits over twentieth-century actions.

by Civil Sense

Building Water Pressure

While the Denver Post never once mentioned the Southern Delivery System in its article about Denver's need for water today, their article can't do anything but help build the argument for SDS.

If Denver will run out of water in eight years, as the Denver Post reports, you can bet that the issue of getting water to all front range cities will receive more favorable press treatment in the years to come.  That will only help SDS.

Just More Anti-Energy Policy

Anyone who wants to try to understand the cost to the economy that Boulder Liberal Mark Udall and the environmental extremists would impose on the public need look no farther than the US Senate this week.

Another opportunity to remove barriers to the production of homegrown energy may have been squandered.

This time it was in the U.S. Senate, where last week Democrats on the Appropriations Committee on a party-line vote upheld a moratorium blocking regulations until Oct. 1 on the limited production of oil from the massive shale deposits beneath Colorado and Utah.

At least 500 billion barrels of oil from those deposits are considered recoverable, more than double Saudi Arabia's proven reserves.

Governor Bill Ritter and Senator Ken Salazar were playing their parts:

To be sure, some legitimate concerns about the economic and environmental impacts of oil shale production were aired Thursday by Gov. Bill Ritter at a Senate energy committee hearing in Washington. Among other things, the governor cited uncertainties about the amount of water and energy that would be needed for extraction, along with the impacts large-scale production might have on ground water and wildlife on the 360,000 acres of federal land in Colorado that could be developed...

Unfortunately, the governor is also supporting legislation by Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar. It would delay any final leasing regulations for at least 27 months after passage, which might well stick a fork in this fledgling technology.

The regulations are embodied in the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (don't you love bureaucratese?), which bars oil shale exploration on any federal lands where energy production is not allowed for environmental reasons. It also requires commercial operators to abide by federal, state and local rules.

Corn ethanol production uses enormous amounts of water.  It is draining our aquifers at an alarming rate.  Yet Bill Ritter and Mark Udall promote it vigorously.  If someone opens a new corn ethanol plant, Bill Ritter can be counted on to be there to cut the ribbon.  Where is the consistency?

Thanks to the Rocky Mountain News for an excellent editorial.

Southern Delivery System

This is a background piece so that readers understand the politics of what is happening with the Southern Delivery System and why it is taking so long to get built.

The Pueblo Chieftain is running a series on the Southern Delivery System.  It seems that they have suddenly realized that their years of obstructionism might backfire.

Coming from Fremont County could mean less water coming through Pueblo, since 2004 intergovernmental agreements provide for a flow program if Colorado Springs comes from Pueblo Dam. However, the court filings for the new exchanges to Fremont County have not survived their test in court.

So, is the potential to take the pipeline through Fremont County merely a ploy to get Pueblo County to agree to a less damaging plan?

“That’s occurred to us,” said [ Fremont County Commissioner Mike ] Stiehl, whose concerns led to a meeting with the Bureau of Reclamation and Colorado Springs officials in January, a full month before the draft EIS was released.

Some years ago, Colorado Springs conditionally ceded some water rights to Pueblo in the hope that Pueblo would cooperate in building SDS.  That cooperation has never materialized. 

If memory serves, the editor of the Pueblo Chieftain once celebrated that he was going to stop the growth of Colorado Springs by cutting off its access to water.  A part of the obstructionism is based on jealousy.  At one time, Pueblo was the thriving metropolis and Colorado Springs the smaller town.  That started changing in the middle part of the last century.

We understand that one of Pueblo's problems is that its sewage treatment plant would have to be upgraded if the amount of water in the river were significantly reduced, so a part of the "damage" in the "less damaging plan" is the cost of upgrading their sewage facilities.

Pueblo hopes that the SDS is never built.  It has been adding water features to its river park so that it can scream loudly in opposition.  Some of those features might be left high and dry in low flow years but the city fathers knew they were taking that risk.

Pueblo's problem is that it doesn't own the water rights to the water that flows through its city.  It does have possession of that water as long as it can obstruct the construction of SDS, or promote obstruction elsewhere.  The articles have a cute little graphic that isn't at all subtle: 

In the immortal words of Rodney King "Can't we all just get along?"

The second installment is here.  The first installment is here.  The fourth installment is here  An editorial is here.  Their history and mission statement is here.