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

1990

made its way through Congress.
"I was in favor of it back then because of
the financial value," he said. "But now there's
no direction." He would like the project to be
"halted, redesigned "of re-evaluated to some-
thing that meets our needs."
Controversy over the project was a factor
in the first recall election in the history of the
Southern Ute tribe laSt spring, when Frost and
a group called the' Committee to Improve
Tribal Government nearly unseated Burch and
several council members. They consider Burch
beholden to the Anglos, particularly tribal
attorney Sam Maynes, and criticize Burch for
not keeping them informed about the project
and other tribal issues.
'''They were forgetting their human
resources, listening to their attorney and not to
their own people," said Annabelle Eagle, anoth-
er member of the committee. In regular elections
this fail, however, Burch resoundingly beat Frost
in a race for tribal chairman on a platform sup-
porting Animas-La Plata.

Durango, Colo., is split physically and politi-
cally by the Animas River. It roars through
town in a brown torrent in the spring, and slides
fro", blue-green pool .to pool in the falL
Descendants of the miners and farmers who set-
tled the area rub shoulders with Fort Lewis
College undergraduates ll)ld other relative new-
comers, many of them drawn to the area by its
proximity to the mountains, the desert and the
river.
A stone's throw froll) the river is Sam
Maynes' office. Its walls are covered with the tro-
phies of 30 years of practicing water law: pho-
tographs of Ute leaders, a picture of former Gov.
Richard,Lammsignin~lhe Colorado Ute Indian
Water Rights Settlement, and a framed Durango
Herald story proclaiming, "It's Yes to Animas-La
Plata."
The garrulous attorney works for both
Indians and Anglos who stand to benefit from
the Animas-La Plata Project. While he doesn't
represent the Southern Utes in water issues, he
is their general counseL He also represents the
Animas Water Conservancy District - which
will be supplied with, water from the project -
as well as the San Miguel Water Conservancy
District and the La Plata Electrical Association.
"Periodically people like to accuse me of
having conflicts of interest," he says, adding

that a court action taken against him by oppo-
nents of the project was dismissed by the
Colorado Supreme Court.
He doesn't like to talk about the criticism
leveled at the project by opponents, who
charge that it would beCome an economic and
environmental disaster. Instead, he points out
the series of hurdles the project has cleared,
from local voters' accepting a cost-sharing
agreement to congressional passage of the
Colorado Ute Water Settlement Act, which
reauthorized the project.
"We won. They lost," he says. "The fact of
the matter is we came up with a plan, and that
plan has been accepted by the u.s. Congress,
the president of the United States, the voters of
La Plata County, the voters of San Juan County
and the Indian tribes."
Maynes argues that Animas-La Plata will
prevent another Wind River, a r~ference to the
valley in Wyoming where the Shoshone and
Arapaho Indians successfully litigated their
claims to over half the water in the basin,
which is now affecting the water supply of
Anglo farmers (HeN, 8/27/90).
''The alternative is years and years of liti-
gation," he said. "The alternative is that if the
Indians won we'd have another situation like
the Wind River on the Mancos River, on the La
Plata River, on a lot of the other streams cross-
ing this reservation. They (the Anglos) would
lose all their water; they would lose their
farms, their ranches, three or four generations
of living."
Others say, however, that the issue of
Indian water rights is a massive bluff by the
Indians and their lawyers. Englert of Taxpayers
for the Animas River challenged the Utes',
claim of an 1868 date for their water rights in
testifying against the Colorado Ute Waler
Settlement bill in 1987. Citing the complicated
history of the Ute reservation and focusing on
a 1950 settlement in which they were awarded
$32 million for much of the land that had been
taken from them, she suggested the Utes aren't
entitled to the amount of water that project pro-
ponents claim.
"I don't know if I'd want to get into a
poker game with Sam (Maynes) and Leonard
(Burch)," she said during a telephone' in!er-
view. "It's quite a bluff to parlay poor water
rights into a $600 million project." ,
The report by Sonosky, Chambers 8<

"It's a solution in
search of a
problem. They're
trying to build a
19SOsWater
project in 1990
and it can't be
done~
-'- Congressionil/
observe'

C 1996 High COuntry News - 29