Colorado's Water Fight

...The project was first proposed much before he took office two years ago...

...In the suburbs, which rely on the core city for much of their water, officials are particularly adamant They say their sprawling communities will be short of water as early as 1990...

...Produced by the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, which must issue a permit to build the dam, the environmental impact statement recommended the mitigation package be increased to $84 million, a stipulation city officials seem prepared to accept...

...Those who want to build the dam say it can be done for $500 million...

...But environmentalists berated the Governor for approving construction at all, and dam supporters defiantly promised to forge ahead, ignoring his conditions...

...Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers were charged with carrying out what began at the turn of the century as a technological dream: the taming of wild rivers for the benefit of Western farmers and city dwellers alike...

...The "interference" of out-of-state activists has exasperated dam proponents...

...Shortly after President Reagan took office, Federal funding for such undertakings abruptly dried up, leaving state and local governments to fend for themselves...

...Bill Hornby, senior editor of the Denver Post, is perhaps the most prominent commentator to have found in it a parable for a current controversy that has divided the state...

...And I don't think it dealt with the facts...

...But Denver kept growing...

...Business executives and Teamsters, home builders and suburban mayors have backed the project, believing it will stimulate economic growth and create new jobs...

...I have the responsibility to make sure that we have a workable water supply for a million and a half people...

...City planners warn that it is still not enough...

...In 1936, they tapped an upper tributary of the westward-flowing Colorado River by running water under the Divide through an auxiliary bore of the Moffat railway tunnel...

...He's trying to push Colorado water development from brawn to brains," a close adviser explained...

...When submitting his opinion to the Corps, Governor Romer said the dam should be built, but only as a "last resort" and only if Denver water suppliers first adopt strict conservation measures...

...Though only a few made fortunes in gold and silver, many others profited as merchants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and professional men...

...Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S...

...As Denver spread away from its banks, and especially after indoor plumbing arrived in the early 1870s, city engineers began looking for additional supplies of water...

...The structure would tower 555 feet above the floor of scenic Cheesman canyon...

...For that tenth, according to Bob McWhinnie, director of the Metropolitan Water Providers, city homeowners will each have to pay no more than $32 ayear for the next 30 years in the form of increased water bills...

...Heknows they could easily force the issue onto a ballot, shifting the decision away from elected officials to the voters themselves...

...The environmental community really got out of hand when the national groups came in and did a big number on us for the whooping crane habitat down in Nebraska," protests Monte Pascoe, president of the Denver Water Board...

...Hundreds of miles downstream in Nebraska, reduced flows on the South Platte would affect wetlands essential to endangered whooping cranes and other waterfowl, they say...

...The measures would improve stream fishing at other locations and clear new habitats for displaced wildlife...

...Fittingly, the same river lies at the heart of the matter...

...Tens of thousands of "gobackers," pioneers who were fast fed up with the crude living conditions and uncertain economy of the new town called Denver, packed their wagons and headed east "toward America...

...His figures, they say, ignore the fact that every major water project built in Colorado in the past 25 years has run way over budget...

...The next water supply will be very expensive," says Marcia Hughes, lawyer for the Metropolitan Water Providers...

...One of those writers, a D. C. Oakes, was hung in effigy along the trail and inspired a famous epitaph: "Here lies the remains of D. C. Oakes/Who was the starter of this damned hoax...

...To understand why the polemic has generated such extreme positions, it helps to look at the history of water use in Colorado...

...If constructed, the dam would, to use Hornby's word, "preserve" Colorado's capital city, supplying it with nearly 32 billion gallons of water a year, enough to slake its thirst, keep its lawns green and drive its industry at least through the year 2010...

...Dam proponents say they would never stand up if they were...

...The go-backers of Hornby's scorn, the people he thinks lack faith in Colorado's future, are environmentalists and other opponents of a giant dam Denver developers want to raise on the South Platte...

...The South Platte crosses the plains into Nebraska and then joins the Missouri River at the Iowa border...

...The resulting reservoir would be by far the largest standing body of water in the state, measuring 30 miles in length with a surface area of 7,300 acres, an expanse roughly half the size of Manhattan...

...Each time, too, they skirmished with those who objected to using state and municipal funds to finance the work, even though the Federal government was footing most of the bill...

...The solution: a dam that would utilize much of the remaining unclaimed water from both sides of the Divide...

...Yet, so prolific was the government's previous work that the best sites for reservoirs, those places where damming a river yields low-cost water, have been used up...

...The Colorado flows into Utah, through the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and on to California...

...At its concrete crest, it would span nearly a third of a mile...

...Unlike the Two Forks proposal, few of these options have been subjected to public scrutiny...

...Water engineers turned their attention to the "Western Slope," the far side of the Continental Divide, where 80 per cent of the state's rain and snow falls before reaching the eastern watersheds...

...ANTICIPATING strong opposition, the Denver Water Board and the Metropolitan Water Providers, a coalition of 42 suburban governments and water districts, designed a $50 million plan to mitigate damage to the environment...

...Will the state betray its pioneering past, trading more than a century of economic progress for the few butterflies and waterfowl to be saved by leaving the river alone...

...the need for water doubled, and doubled again...

...A Denver Post smvey of 351 capital residents had 37 per cent against the dam, 28 per cent in favor, and the remaining 35 per cent undecided...

...Their power is reflected in the reluctance of Democratic Governor Roy R. Romer,achampionofeconomicdevelopment, to endorse Two Forks unequivocally...

...their critics put the price at $1 billion or more...

...Since the tunnel would cross part of Rocky Mountain National Park, it also kindled the ire of national conservation groups...

...But far more difficult is the position of those who would find solutions acceptable to both sides...

...It has often been described as a mile wide and only an inch deep...

...With half the state's inhabitants living in and around Denver, they forecast shortages within a decade unless new supplies are developed...

...Nevertheless, Romer withheld his support until this past June— and then attached numerous conditions to assuage environmentalists...

...Approved by Congress in 1937, the project diverted billions of gallons to Front Range farmers despite the opposition...

...But the scheme has provoked a farreaching, vitriolic debate that has each side accusing the other of trying to spoil a particular vision of Colorado's destiny...

...ON June 10 Colonel Steven West, who is in charge of the Two Forks project for the Army Corps of Engineers, closed a threemonth period of public comment...

...It would lie 25 miles southwest of Denver, a mile downstream from the confluence of the South Platte with its North Fork tributary in Pike National Forest...

...For decades, Federal tax dollars financed giant water storage and diversion projects throughout the West...

...Cheesman Dam, the first to impound a significant supply of South Platte runoff, was completed in 1905...

...The modern go-backers live on a myth of the West that holds the region to be predominantly a preservable paradise of wide open spaces and natural beauties," Hornby wrote in a recent editorial...

...D. C. Oakes lived to become a respected sawmill operator, an Indian agent and a deputy U.S...

...So although Two Forks would hold more than 350 billion gallons of water, roughly a tenth of it could be used annually by Denver...

...The U.S...

...The latest public opinion polls indicate substantially more Coloradans oppose the project than support it, even in Denver and its environs...

...Even if his estimates are accurate, the expense far outstrips what Denver residents are used to paying for the quality of water Two Forks will provide...

...The best solution to that, by a long shot, is the Two Forks reservoir...

...The gold rush, of course, proved more than a hoax...

...But this time opponents say they are fighting on level ground...

...During that time he received more than 3,000 letters, pro and con...

...A few dug wells but found them easily depleted...

...Colorado could become so polarized over Two Forks that it wouldn't be worth the effort even if [its supporters] succeed...

...Along the way, they turned back others weary of the trek, cursing the outfitters, newspaper editors and guidebook writers who had promised stream beds sparkling with gold...

...And Denver began its ascendancy as the major city between Chicago and San Francisco...

...That all changed under the Reagan Administration...

...Hence the name, Two Forks Dam—or, as the public relations people have it, the South Platte Recreational Corridor...

...Consequently, one of the environmentalists' most effective tactics has been to present counterproposals that they claim could give Denverites more water at less cost...

...He challenged the State Legislature to come up with an alternative that would spare Cheesman Canyon, and called for the creation of a metropolitan water authority to resolve future water battles...

...The canyon also serves as a recreational haven within easy driving distance of Denver...

...Bureau of Land Management, the U.S...

...Binding compacts with these and more than a dozen other states legally entitle Colorado to only a fraction of the water not already stored in state reservoirs...

...Project backers feel they have bent over backward to protect the environment...

...The lack of definitive, committed mitigation in the final environmental impact statement is disturbing," said Scherer...

...Over the past decade and a half environmentalists have acquired enough political clout to alter the course of state politics...

...Other Federal agencies that must issue permits include the U.S...

...Other types of recreation, such as shoreline fishing and reservoir boating, would replace present uses...

...The story is one a lot of Coloradans have heard repeated of late...

...It is "not unlike trading the Everglades for Disney World," says one of them...

...McWhinnie's detractors believe he underestimates...

...But the facts are also that the vast majority of Westerners live in towns and cities, and that where they are located, systems to preserve them and their built environment must be given equal weight with those that relate to scenic splendor, open space and the natural environment...

...The environmentalists further contend that the issue is not Cheesman Canyon...

...With the dam's construction, a 20-mile stretch of white water providing some of the West's best trout fishing would disappear, as well as hiking, camping and kayaking along the river...

...Will developers sacrifice the last remnant of wilderness in blind pursuit of a modern-day brand of Manifest Destiny, an archaic imperative to devour the West...

...The National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society and the Environmental Defense Fund are among the numerous national environmental organizations rallying behind local activists...

...The ensuing years saw three more dams erected on the river, increasing the total storage capacity to approximately 65 billion gallons of water...

...They also financed a $37 million study to analyze the project's environmental impact...

...This time, however, it is not the South Platte's gold that is at stake, but its water...

...With the addition of three more transmountain water tunnels, one of them stretching 23 miles under peaks rising to 13,000 feet, Denver could count on nearly 40 billion gallons of Colorado River water...

...Fearful for their own cities and farmland, they waged their first significant fight against Denver's inexorable thirst more than 50 years ago, following a proposal to build a 13-mile water tunnel under the Divide in northern Colorado...

...Hal Langfur, a past contributor, is a free-lance writer based in Colorado...

...The Platte is not a big river...

...Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which holds final veto power...

...That controversy set the tone for debates surrounding the construction of the next major mountain dam in the 1950s and, now, the Two Forks proposal...

...Soon communities on the Western Slope joined the fray...

...We've moved beyond the point where these kinds of things can be built, because we the people are no longer going to stand quietly by and subsidize them...

...It just won't happen anymore.' Such statements presage a broad reassessment of what Colorado's future should be, and a fundamental restructuring of the laws, institutions and political alignments that will define it...

...He has now begun sorting through their myriad arguments, and by early fall intends to issue or deny a permit to build the dam...

...Scherer, West and their counterparts at the other agencies have a formidable task...

...Most of the early settlers who set up encampments along the South Platte got their water straight from the river, using buckets hauled by horses and cattle...

...In Western Colorado, draining from the Blue, Frazer and Colorado rivers could threaten several endangered fish species by reducing overall water quality...

...Significantly, Jim Scherer, the EPA's regional director, recently wrote Colonel West to criticize the Corps' environmental impact statement...

...I think they were just looking around for a trophy to hang on their walls in Washington, so they could pay those fancy people better salaries...

...Following the lead of the House of Representatives, the Energy and Water Developemnt Subommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill that provides no money to start new water projects next year...

...The politics of this state for some period of time have revolved around two fundamental themes: economic growth and environmental values," says Romer...

...On one point, however, both sides seem to agree: The Two Forks controversy signals the end of an era in Colorado and throughout the West...

...land surveyor...

...Be that as it may, in the case of the Two Forks project it is clearly unfair to label opponents as go-backers and supporters as the sole proprietors of faith in the vitality of the state...

...If you look at the amount of time it's taking to get the required permits, you've got to believe it's going to take us twice as long on the next one...

...He recommended that, at least for the near future, Denver pursue "the implementation and construction of sources which are less costly and less environmentally damaging" than Two Forks...

...They argue that the South Platte's Cheesman Canyon, which would be inundated, comprises an irreplaceable habitat for elk, beaver, mule deer, bald eagle, bighorn sheep, and the endangered Pawnee montane skipper butterfly...

...In areas such as wetlands mitigation, water quality mitigation, and impacts on aquatics, the information presented in the statement is insufficient to make a reasonable judgment regarding adequacy of the proposed plan...

...Dan Luecke, senior scientist and regional director of the Environmental Defense Fund, puts it more forcefully: "This is the last big dam project, bar none...

...Ironically, the Federal government, long the nemesis of those demanding free-flowing rivers, is now integrally responsible for their increasing strength...

...This is particularly true in Colorado, because the water flowing out of the Rocky Mountains has to be shared...

...The proposals include a variety of smaller dams and diversions, conservation measures, water exchanges and leases, and the use of agricultural water...

...TROUBLE AT TWO FORKS Colorado's Water Fight BY HAL LANGFUR Denver The mad rush to Colorado's South Platte River and its Cherry Creek tributary in the spring of 1859 did not fill every prospector's pan with gold...

...Long before the construction of Cheesman Dam, officials developed the habit of proclaiming an end to Denver's water-supply problems each time they completed a new storage or diversion project...

...Environmentalists view their concessions as grossly inadequate...

...environmentalists see the failure to examine their suggestions as an unwillingness by officials to consider another course...

...The most obvious source was the spring runoff, the torrential flow that gushed past the city unused as the vernal sun melted snowflakes in the Rocky Mountains...

...The most recent round of budget-cutting came in June...

...By 1974, about halfofthewaterusedontheFrontRange —the densely populated corridor running along the eastern edge of the Rockies—came from the Western Slope...

...With the backing of Western Slope residents and other constituencies that traditionally vote anti-Denver, the environmentalists would stand a good chance of prevailing...