WSP08963

• 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: Publication

The Bureau of
Reclamation
"didn't do their
homework: Sam
Maynes says.

20 - C 1996 HiQh Country News

1993

there are unanswered questions about the
endangered fish living in the San Juan River
downstream of the project.
The allegations are raising eyebrows
around the region, and may have led New
Mexico Rep. Bill Richardson, D, to hedge his
backing of A-LP.
"I have been supportive of it, but I am
alarmed by the growing opposition of my con-
stituents," Richardson recently told the
Farmington Daily Times. "One of the main
issues will be if we can afford it:'
The reports also worry New Jersey Sen. Bill
Bradley, D, chairman of the Senate subcommit-
tee on water and power, who recently asked the
General Accounting Office to reinvestigate the
project.

To spilt the coalition
Nevertheless, opponents concede they
may never have the political strength to kill
Animas-La Plata. In fact, counter pressure is
mounting to get the project back on track. The
politics have narrowed to one issue: the Ute
Indian water treaty. To take that message to
Washington, project supporters have a perfect
ally in newly elected Sen. Ben Nighthorse
Campbell, D-Colo., who is Northern Cheyenne
but !pakes his home in Ignacio, the capital of
the So'!thern Ute reservation.
Campbell, wbo strongly backed the project
while in the House, has acted quickly, spear-
heading an effort last month along with Sen.
Hank Brown, R-Colo., and Rep. Scott McInnis,
R-Colo., to stymie the GAO investigation.
Campbell says tbe Sierra Club Legal Defense
Fund offer to find viable alternatives to Animas-
La Plata is an attempt to delay the project until it
collapses from rising costs.
, "If Animas-La Plata doesn't get built,"
Olmpbell says, "it will bejust one of a series of
treaties that the federal government has made
with Indians and systematically broken
because of special interests. They just oppose
the Indians getting fair treatment:'
Campbell and the A-LP coalition argue
that the 1988 Ute Indian Water Rights
Settlement Act is just as important - socially
and legally - as the federal environmental
laws.
"I am surprised that the Southern Ute tribe
hasn't ordered its attorneys to figure out how to
sue the Sierra Club for violating their civil

C Rod Craig. artist
A barbed portrait of Sam Maynes caDed
"The Blackest Knight" was displayed in the
Durango MaD

rights," says Maynes. ''They are causing the
Indians great damage by delaying the project:~
But project opponellls, including many
tribal mem/)ers, are ,not ,backing off. Instead,
lhey have takep a page out of Sam Maynes'
book. Once a rag-tag group of maybe a dozen
volunteer activists, TAR has created a coalition
of regional groups fighting various aspects of
the project.
The Four Corners Action Coalition
includes rafters, farmers, ,landowners along the
Animas River, Southern Ute tribal members,
environmentalists and m3;P-Y others. At a
January meeting at a tiny schoolhouse on the
Animas River in New Me~ico, more than 30
showed up to plan the coming fight.
Local opponents also established new
links with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
and several other nalional groups, Togelher
they hired former Colorado water engineer
Jeris Danielson, a m~ve calculated to split the
A-LP coalition, activists say.
"My clients are fully committed to meeting the
Indians' and non-Indian needs," says Caputo. "We
are trying to come up with a settlement that requires
neither Animas-La Plata nor further liligation:'