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UENVERANDTHEWEsrl" SECTION B .. lilJm o n 1 i n e www.denverpost.com TilE DENVER POST Impasse imperils water' supply By Susan Greene DE!nver Post Staff Wrtl!!f versions is necessary to ensure the health oC the species. "Someone's got to put the fish firsl;' said John Hamill, Fish and Wildlife's as!o. date manager for Colorado. Environmentalists support Cederal inter- vention partly on philosophical grounds - a belief that humans have a responsibility to protect biodiversity, to preserve all . creatures. "It's a concept of stewardship. It's a question of what kind of relationship to n~- Please see WATER on 98 State, feds divided over endangered fish Talks have broken down between Colo- rado and the Cederal government over the fate of four endangered fish species, leav- ing Washington poised to impose a plan. that local water officials fear will jeopar- dize metro Denver's water supply. Having rejected paris of a state strategy to protect the fish in May, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected this sum- mer to use the broad powers of the Endan- gered Species Act to restrict how much Monday, June 29, 1998 Colorado River water can be tapped for futp.re use. I. . . . . The federal plan could send water agen- cies throughout Colorado scrambling to snag the limited river supply, which is a fraction of what they say is needed to sup- ply growth over the coming decades. It also could force Denver and several of its suburbs to rely on groundwater or other more precarious sources, making develop- ment considerably more expensive, local . officials say_ "We clm no'longer depend on the future supplies we have counted on," said Chips Barry, manager of the Denver Water De- partment., "People don't understand that a policy designed to preserve owls' and polar bears may shul off the flows to their fau- cets." . Federal officials say limiting river di- THE DENVER POST State-federal impasse threatens metro water supply WATER from Page 18 'Iure we wallt to have," said Dall .Luecke, Rocky Mountain regioual director for the Euvironmental De- fen$eFund."Wecannolongeracl in utler disregard for our impacl on these fish and other species that inhabit the Earth." The debate center$ on e{{ort~ to safeguard the Colorado squawfish, .Immphackchub,bonytailchubaud .razorback sucker. Known among many fishermen as "trash fish," tho~e l'pecies intentionally were poisoned in the 1960s by the Fish and Wildlife Service. That agency uow is restoring the fish under the Endangered Species Act - a wide-reaching law that, when necessary, put~ wildlife be. fore people or eCi:lDomics. The lcg- i~lation is pl.'rhaps best known for the controversy it triggcred in the Pacific Northwest, where it pro- tected the 5potted owl at the ex- pl:'1I5e of logging companies and their workers. Fish and Wildlife aims to restore the four specie5 parUy by keeping water levels high in a streteh of the Colorado Riv",r near Grand Junc- tion called the l!i.Mile Reach. That's downstream from where The 15.Mile Reach The section 01 the Colorado River know as the 15-Mije Reach is home 10 lout endangeredli5hspecies. , mi~ i. BI~ :)i~ ! TheDenvetPosl' Denver draws water into its sys- tem before sending it through dams and tunnels to storage reser- voirs on the Front Range. InkeepillgwithaWeslerntradi- tion that water rights be handled on the state level, Washington in the 1980sbegan relying on the stale to restore the fish. Officials with the state department of natu- ralresourceshavespentthepast decade tr)"ing to strike the difficult balance of maintaining enough flow luthe IS-Mile Reach to pro- tectthespeciesandsecuringwhat many water users see as their God- given right to continue drawing from the river. After years of public meetings, environmental studle5 and5top- and-start negotiations, the state de- vised a strategy In 1995 to achieve those goals. Under that proposal, water districts throughout Colora- do would have access to 400,000 acre-feet of river water annually above 1995 consumption levels. One acre-foot roughly serves a family of four for one year. But federal wildlife officials have just rejected that plan..s.aying it didn't leave enongh water for the fisb. "We were relying on the state to provide protection," Hamill said. "And It's just become painflllly ob- vious there's not the political will to do that.H State Natural Resources otri- cials say they based their plan on state water law, which allows pro- tection for the species only if those efforts don't hinder water agen- cies'ability to draw on their water rigbtsfordevelopment. "We canoot. we will not, put the needs of fish ahead of the needs of people,H said Peter Evans, acllng director of the state's Water Con- servationBoard. Eric Kuhn, manager of the Colo- rado River Water Conservation District. said "the feds were led down a primrose path thinking they cOllld rely on 5tate water law to settle this." He described the re. latiOllshipbetween state and feder- al wildlife offidals on I!le issue as "a shotgun marriage that just sort of broke up." In response, Fish and Wildlife is elpecledsoon to limit the thou- s.andsof Colorado water users de- pendent on the river to drawing on- Iy 60,000 acre-feet in additional supplies annually. Once that water is in use, .....ater agencies might be allowed to draw anolher60,OOOacre-feet-buton- Iyifa series of cltensive biological studies shows the fi~h are rebound. ing. Fish ami Wild1ifeof.ficials Iltc quick tonolc that only I'.he initial 60.000 acre.fe!!! would bl~ guaran- teedandthattheS('condincrement islentath'eatbest. The plan, if Implementc d, w01l1l1 trump state walcrrights--a rinl'- Iy tuned legal system lhat ha~, ~t leastunti1now,ptcvailedthrol1gh- out the history of the We~t It likely would meet ('ppositioll from the Denver Water Depart- ment,Colorado'smo~tpo\"'erfullo. cal water agency. Thed<'l'at,tment rears it will lose full ac('e~s I" 60000 acre.f('{'t of riyerwaler 1<, whiehilhasllada I('galright:'!hw~ the 1920sand 1930s.^gencyc:rc\\'s already arc tapping SO!lle' of Ih~t water and say th<,y wiil n('ed Ihe full amount (Wl:'r the next derluln to serVl'new clen'll1l'ment in Ull'ir 154.mileservlcearea. 90 *-\ ~ t f)'~ 1: