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'1 f11- ... , Ill;) 14.1992 Bigh"Country News - February 24, 1992 Wilderness water takes another turn Colorado's wilderness bill - a con- troversial compromise between Sen. Hank Brown. R-Colo.. and Sen. Tim Winh, D-Colo. - was intended to create 6.a 1.690 acres of new wilderness. Instead, the bill has become an engine pushing on Colcndo's water developen. environmentalists and bureaucrats to redefine me state's approach ID water within and ouuide of wilderness arus. Initially, environmentalislS were ensnared by the bill. A mid.1980s law- suit by the Sierra Club legal Defense Fund asking for reserved water righlS in wilderness en!\\,'ined (Wo fonneely sepa_ rate issues: wilderness and state conlTO) of Water. lbat halted progress on a new Colorado wilderness law unlillhe Wirth- Brown compromise bill specifically rejected federal reserved wilderness water rights. Environment:1lislS were outraged at the nalional precedent they feared the compromise might set. They were unable to preVent the bill from passing the U.S. Senate this summer, but have thus far sL1.lled the bili in the House. In ~ !he water rights contl'QVersy is academic. Most of !he 641,690 acres of proposro wilderness land do not !.hem. selves need protection. Eighty-seven per. cent is high<levation, headv.aters land not subject to upstream diversion. But three areas. constituting 13 per. cent of the acreage, are downstream of agricultural land; additional water diver. sions could dry up wilderness streams, although !.his is unlikely. As part of the compromise. the three lower-elevation wilderness areas would be protected through Colorado's instream flow program. In effect. a fro- era! wilderness area would depend on a stale water sYStem for iLS water. Waler developers were pleased, while environ. mentalists, who see CoIorado's instream now program as a sham, fell further beuayed by this p-etend proteCtion. The three areas take in sections of !.he Piedra. Roubideau and Tabeguache rivers. Perhaps as a way to test the work- ability of the insueam flow approach, Brown :md Wirth asked the U.S. Forest Service to quantify the water needed to proteCt the wilderness values of the three mas (HeN, 12I2fl1). On Jan. 23. the Forest Service's Rocky MoWlUin Region submiued its rec- ommendations f~ the Piedra to the Col. orado Water Conset'V3.tion Board.. which adminislers the instream flow program. The repan was 3 shocker. This fxn;t effCX1. anywhere by the F<nst Service 10 quantify wilderness water needs sur. prised even the Wilderness Society's Denver.based Darren Knuftle in iLS gen. erosity to insrream flows. The 30.page repon recommended instIeam flows up to 1,614 cubic feet per $<<ond (cfs) during peak spring flows, which have exceeded 1,800 cfs in recent years. This is well above the river's cur. rent instream flow rights of 20 to 70 cfs, designed only to protect the river's cold- water fishery. The authors, William Gabben and Katherine Foster, used a "dynamic claimft approach that tries to mimic Ihe river's actual now. It differs from the tr3d.itional stepped method that claims a fixed amount of water. Region 2 Forester Gary Cargill says the Piedra repon "represenLS the best sci- ence we know how to do," But he acknowledges thatlhe approach is simi. lar 10 th.a.t used by his agency to quantify water needs for stream channel mainte. nance. That draws the Piedra dfon into yet another fight. The Forest Service and Colorado have been in water coun for years over how much water it takes to maintain "favorable conditions of flow" in nation. al forest Streams (lieN, 9/10190). With final argumenLS to be heard in Greeley water court in March. the Colorado attor. ney general's office worries that if Col. orado agrees 10 the P1edra compromise. it could undermine the fight against channel maintenance. Wendy Weiss, the state's flJSt assis- tant attorney general. says the state "is opposed to :my flows for channel main. tenance" under the Forest Service's organic acl (The FCttst Service says iLS mission is 10 proteCt wat.erSheds, and that requires occasional high flows 10 main. lain stream channels. The $Ute opposes the Forest Service's request for high mainlCnance flows.) But Weiss also says her office "wanLS to wad wilh the Forest Service to develOp a methodologyft for the Piedra that both the state and the feW-al government can live with. Much is at stake here. 11x: stale has spent an estimated SS 10 SlO million in court to oppose the Forest Service's claims, and is not about to walk away from its position. On the other hand, a fellow st.ale agency, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, appears interested in creating a viable instream flow pro- gram. And at the moment. the Piedra recommendation is a test of the board's commitment 10 instream flow. Thet'e is also the federnl angle. The Brown-Winh compromise, whicb the water developers favor, is credible only if Ihe state shows it can proteCt wilder- ness water rights. Failure of Ihe Piedra approach could aid opponents of the bill. "The state can't have its cake and eat it too.ft comments the Colorado Mountain Club's Anne Vickery. Most Colorado environmentalisLS acknowl- edge that the Colcrado Water Conserva- tion Board wants 10 strengthen its ane. mic insueam flow program. But the Wilderness Society's Knuftke says, 'The state's water politics is going 10 make the board's job very difficult, if not impossible." Knuffke adds, "If the board with. stands !.he challenges from Sam Maynes (a Durango water auorney) and olher.;, then the legislature will get involvedft and weaken the board's ability to protect wilderness waler. "This is the trouble wilh protecting federal public values through state systems. ft On March 5-6, the Colorado Water Conservation Board will hold a public h~ng in Denver on the Piedra recom- mendations. It could delay action. But then Congress might want to take the Piedra and Ihe other two downstream areas out of the wilderness bill to pro- vide faster passage. However a spokesman for Sen. Brown says he opposes such deletions. Some environmental critics see Brown's opposition as his way of scuttling the bill. Other observers say Brown sees the Piedra as the ideal opportunity to encourage an improvement of Col- orado's instream flow program and ~ vide a believable alternative to federal reserved wilderness water rights. Copies of "Inslream Flow Needs Assessment and R~commendations (or the Proposed Piedra Wilderness" can be obuined from the Colorndo Water Con- servation Board. 1313 Sherman St., Room 721, Denver. Colo. 80203 (3031866-3441). / - UJrry MoshLr" ./ The writer free-lances from Craw. ford, Colorado. ./