9367 (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

interpret and apply them. To that definition, the economic, social and political forces that underlay those laws, drive the passage of those laws, and influence the judicial decisions interpreting the laws should be included. By using a definition for the Law of the River that includes all of these social, economic, and political forces, and all of the modern environmental legislation that effects water allocation, then my answer to the question, "Is the Law of the River Obsolete?", is no. It is not obsolete, it is evolving. The conference focuses on discovering where it is evolving to, how quickly, and why. With that definition as my basic assumption, and the Compact of 1922 as a cornerstone, I will go on to explicate what I have listed as eight forces influencing the overall evolution of the Law of the River. Another basic assumption is that there have been some dramatic changes in the world since 1922 when the Compact was signed. The result of these eight forces, laws, and developments is that the seven states involved in the Compact will not neatly use their precise allocation under the Compact. The allocations will not necessarily be used by the states in the manner for which they were intended by the signers of the Compact. I will focus my remarks on these eight forces. However, the audience might be able to think of others. Eight is not a nice round number. Maybe if you think of a couple more we could have ten. I will focus my look at these eight forces on how they affect whether Colorado will ever develop its remaining Compact share, roughly 800,000 acre-feet, in the traditional consumptive sense. I think these eight factors can be equally well applied to the other states with an unused share. I want to emphasize that I am going to tell you what others think, and not just what I think about whether or not Colorado will use its unused Compact share. Overwhelmingly, the loudest voices are saying, "No, Colorado will not use its unused Compact share." Here are the eight reasons I have been able to distill from reading everything from the Leqal Journal to the Popular Press and to the in-house things that we all read as to why these people are saying that Colorado's 800,000 acre-feet will never be consumptively developed first. Money A good starting point is money. Money is necessary to build the projects that would store the 800,000 acre-feet. Some simple arithmetic can be used to estimate if there is enough money around. Approximately $5,000 per acre-foot is a commonly used yardstick for development of a new water project. This totals $4 billion dollars necessary for development of Colorado's unused share. Where is the state of Colorado going to come up with $4 billion, given the problems that the state is having raising money for schools, or prisons, or the. other things that the legislature meets in special sessions to discuss. Especially in the days when the federal government is removed from the business of funding dam construction and state and local entities are called upon to fund 'those projects. The prospect of coming up with $4 billion, or any significant part of it, is pretty dim. This can be illustrated with regards to one of the water projects in the Upper Basin, Animas-La Plata, in which I am currently involved. Some refer to the project as a sacred cow project. There 20