WSP12563 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

.. ,0,26.03 Orbanek: The reason will be clear if water bond issue fails 000229 H.e.. n IflIS. "Menu News Obituaries Opinion The Blotter Photos Sports Preps College Professional Outdoors Features Out & About Entertainment Games Food You said it! Announcements Health Archives Money Stocks Lottery Weather National Classifieds Employment Real Estate Automotive Merchandise Shop&Save Advertisers "How To Subscribe Buy a print ad Buy an online ad Staff directory Reach web staff Write to the editor Set my homepage Search IGJSentinel.com..r.f for I SEARCHl .i " Page 1 of: GRA~D V~I.l~Y f . ; /,4'1 f III I' t v ~ .t '" l. ~ '" CIi:k here I ile://C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\drs.DWR \Local%20Settings\ Tempora.ry<<>i<l20Intemet%20Files\OL... 11/4/200: News 10.26.03 Orbanek: The reason will be clear if water bond issue fails The Daily Sentinel Looking for another good reason to vote against Referendum A and its $2-billion bonding authority for unspecified water projects? Here's one: At virtually the same time that Gov. Bill Owens was busy telling skeptical Western Slope voters that hell will freeze over before his administration allows a single drop of water to be diverted out of the Gunnison Basin to the Front Range, a passel of state attorneys was in Division 4 Water Court last month vociferously opposing Gunnison County and the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District's recreational streamflow filing on grounds that the application - if fully granted - would sharply limit future out-of-basin water diversions. At this very early point in the narrative, readers might be tempted to conclude that the governor and Department of Natural Resources Director Greg Walcher have been engaging in the familiar shuck-and-jive hustle of politicians talking out of both sides of their mouths, all in the interest of bamboozling easy-to-bamboozle voters. In this case, that would be jumping to false conclusions because - in point of fact - the state attorneys who in the Gunnison case sought to keep the Western Slope a safe place for continued Front Range water diversions were legal beagles from the state attorney general's office. And while Walcher has time and again demonstrated a finely honed talent for telling the Division of Wildlife and the rest of the agencies under the Department of Natural Resources what to do, on the basis of all the evidence, it would be premature to conclude that Walcher has similar influence over Democrat Attorney General Ken Salazar and his legal staff. "We're doing this in conjunction with Gunnison County," said Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District Manager Kathleen Curry in explaining the filing for what is technically called a recreational instream channel diversion to support a whitewater rafting park in the town of Gunnison. The legislation providing for recreational instream channel diversions - RICDs in the baroque language of the heavy-into-water crowd - is of relatively recent vintage, having passed the Colorado Legislature in the late '90s. The Gunnison filing represents an early test case of the legislation's applicability. While citing provisions of the RICD legislation, the conservancy district filed for a recreational instream flow right ranging from 270 cfs to 1,500 cfs. The filing was designed to mimic the natural hydrograph of the Gunnison River, with the higher flow right timed to coincide with the river's natural high runoff period, ramping down steadily to 270 cfs in the fall. Describing the opposition of state attorneys who formally represented the Colorado Water Conservation Board's position that the instream flow filing should