WSP08963 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

In short. the hal~century- long effort to build Animas-ta Plata ranks among themost enduring and well-led political movements in the history of Western water 18 - C 1996 Hi!t1 country News 1993 Caputo argues that A-LP will never get built unless it is scaled back. "The Bureau has two choices," Caputo and Potter wrote last fall in a letter to the Durango Herald. "It can either keep trying to bull ahead illegally with Animas-La Plata, in which case we will con- tinue to sue them and beat them in court. Or it can recognize that Animas-La Plata is an ille- gal turkey that cannot and should not be built, and begin to look seriously at cheaper, envi- ronmentally friendly alternative ways of meet- ing the real human needs in the Four Corners area." Dump tile IIInau of Reclamation The A-LP coalition, however, is undaunted. Maynes calls Caputo's threat "braggadocio." He says the lawsuits are procedural issues that can be easily fIxed. Maynes also laughs at the offer to negoti- ate. "We don't have to deal with the Sierra Club. We have to deal with the National Environment8J Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act." Despite his poise, Maynes is clearly furious that the project can be so easily held up this late in tbe game. 1be blame, he says, lies with the Bureau of Reclamation. "At various times in the last 1 0 years, peo- ple within the Bureau of Reclamation never thought we would be able to get the project built," says Maynes. "As a result, they didn't do tbeir bomework." Maynes says key studies on soil toxicity were required in 1986, but never done. Tbe Bureau also failed to do surveys and dozens of otber researcb items required by several feder- a1laws. To tbe dismay of local supporters, tbose mistakes, bave made Animas-La Plata an easy larget for wbat Maynes calls "slam dunk" law- suils by tbe Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. Even tbe Durango Herald lasbed out, warning tbat "if BuRec's bandling of the Animas-La Plata Project is any indication of its compe- tence, tbe agency sbould be one of tbe fIrst agencies targeted for elimination under the Clinton administration." The Bureau, Maynes concludes, can't fIx the problems and sbould be dumped. The coali- tion sbould build Animas-La Plata itself, as Utab water officials did when tbey took over tbe fail- ing Central Utab Project. Or, be adds, the tribes Miles Davies After a court order baited tbe planned construction start, BuRec engineers faked the Animas-La Plata groundbreaking by blowing up a billslde could take over responsibility for CQDstruction under lbe Indian Self Dfle,nnination Act. , A project that makes a Rube Goldberg machine look elegant Blaming the Bureau is clever but "disin- genuous," says Jim Decker, a political science professor at Fort Lewis College in Durango and a founding member of TAR, Taxpayers for the Animas River. Tbe small Durango group has fought an almost solo war against Animas- La Plata since 1979. The Bureau of Reclamation is just an engi- neering finn, says Decker, and does exactly wbat local proponents tell it. He says the fatal flaw is the project itself. Decker, who can recite a litany of prob- lems, always starts with the economics. A-LP, he says, has been a tinancialloser since it was authorized in 1968. Its fIrst incarnation- a high-altitude storage dam and a 48-mile-long system of canals, siphons and tunnels - would bave cost $] 10 million, and bad a,benefit-cost ratio that even by the Bureau of Reclamation's