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Last modified
1/26/2010 2:50:24 PM
Creation date
10/12/2006 3:23:04 AM
Metadata
Fields
Template:
Water Supply Protection
File Number
8220.106
Description
Animas-La Plata
State
CO
Basin
San Juan/Dolores
Water Division
7
Date
1/1/1996
Author
High Country News
Title
A Review of Animas-La Plata - The West's Last Big Water Project
Water Supply Pro - Doc Type
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<br />~ I <br /> <br />Usually, Anglos, <br />with the help of <br />BuRec and the <br />Army Corps of <br />Engineers, have <br />stolen Indian <br />water When the <br />Indians seek to <br />get it back, they <br />often win <br />empty legal <br />, battles. <br /> <br />14 - <\:)1996 High COuntry News <br /> <br />, 1993 <br />, ,< " <br /> <br /> <br />The Animas River winds through the lower vaDey <br /> <br />politics for three decades. <br />As Sam Maynes, Durango's legendary <br />water attorney and the brains behind the <br />Animas-La Plata Project, said in a recent tele- <br />phone interview, "I have never known an elect- <br />ed official in Colorado that has been oppose~ <br />to the Animas-La Plata Project, either in local, <br />state or federal office." <br />Politicians were reacting to nearly unani- <br />mous local support, but not all that support was <br />freely given. Durango has a long and some- <br />times black history of strong-arming project <br />opponents: Local critics have been shouted out <br />of public meetings, harassed at work, and dis- <br />credited in the press. Now the town has grown <br />too large and diverse for those tactics, But local <br />support for what would be the most expensive <br />federal water project ever built in Colorado is <br />still exhorted on the basis of regional patrio- <br />tism and self interest. <br />"Why support the Animas-La Plata <br />Project?" read one (X)litical advertisement dur- <br />ing a 1987 campaign to ratify the project's <br />repayment contract. "Because someone else is <br />paying most of the tab, We get the water. We <br />get the reser\'oir. They pay the bill." <br />The result is one of the largest and most <br />cohesive coalitions that has ever put its shoulder <br />to a Western waterwheel. The coalition includes <br />half a dozen local Colorado and New Mexico <br />water conservancy districts; the cities of <br />Durango, Colo., and Farmington, Aztec and <br />Bloomfield, N.M.; numerous counties; the gov- <br />ernors of both stales; three lndian tribes; and the <br /> <br />Bureau of Reclamatioll/LalTy Kysar <br /> <br />entire congressional delegations of Colorado <br />and New Mexico. <br />The coalition has already built several <br />small BuRec projects - on the Mancos, <br />Piedra, Florida and Pine rivers - and, in the <br />1980s, pulled off the $570 million Dolores <br />Project, which was once on President Carter's <br />famous "hit list." <br />The crowning project is to be Animas-La <br />Plata, which Maynes calls "the granddaddy of <br />them all." It will supply water for the cities and <br />their new suburban developments; create a <br />recreation reservoir outside Durango; allow <br />development of the area's substantial coal <br />reserves; and irrigate 68,000 acres. <br /> <br />An Indian project <br />The project also has a racial and cultural <br />dimension that makes it very attractive to the <br />U.S. Congress and to non-Westerners. Thanks <br />to the 1988 Ute Indian Water Rights Settlement <br />Act, Animas-La Plata settles a dispute that <br />could damage and racially divide the Four <br />Corners area, In 1972, the Southern Ute and <br />Ute Mountain Ute tribes filed suit in state court <br />for water rights that date back to 1868, lhe year <br />their reservations were created. The filing <br />would have given the tribes senior water rights <br />on virtually every river and stream south of the <br />San Juan Mountains, says Southern Ute waler <br />lawyer Scott McElroy. <br />A clash between the then Anglo A-LP coali- <br />tion and the tribes would have doomed the pro- <br />ject, and put a cloud over the existing economy <br />
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