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r Colorado Central Magazine November 1999 Page 13 Page 10 of 10 So in the summer of 1997, Arapahoe County's phalanx of attorneys came over the Divide again to face the same basic army of opposers, minus the Trampe Ranches and the High Country Citizens Alliance (the environment was not permitted to participate) -- but with the addition of State of Colorado water engineers, who had their opinions on what the Bureau's subordination meant and on how best to model the water situation. On consideration of the new evidence and arguments presented, Judge Brown found no reason to change his previous findings significantly. He concluded that when the Bureau subordinated its claim to a portion of the water in the Aspinall Unit reservoirs for use in the Upper Gunnison basin above the reservoirs, the water had to be used in the basin, not just stored there for use anywhere else in the state. He again ruled, in 1998, that there was not sufficient water for Union Park -- and Arapahoe County again filed an appeal to the Supreme Court. At this point, Arapahoe County decided that it had carried the ball far enough, having invested more than three million dollars in what pessimists were calling a dry hole. But there were other Front Range entities ready and willing to pick up the ball if Arapahoe would file an appeal. A consortium of water districts mostly from the fast-growing counties south and east of Denver, led by Chuck Jaeger of Parker's water district, are now paying the bills for Arapahoe's appeal in the Supreme Court. The new appeal again challenges Judge Brown's evaluation of the Bureau's subordination, but it also challenges the Bureau's non-consumptive rights to Aspinall Unit waters for hydropower generation. The appellants claim that, since the state constitution gives domestic uses precedence over manufacturing uses, Union Park should have precedence over the Aspinall Unit power plants (never mind that the Unit's peaking power is mostly used domestically). They also believe that the Judge's decision has "allowed exaggerations" on some of the Gunnison basin decreed rights, including the UGRWCD's refill rights on Taylor Reservoir, and some of the agricultural rights which give up to 20-plus acre-feet of water per irrigated acre of hay field -- three or four times what is actually needed to grow an acre of hay. So that appeal is pending. But all is not quiet on the Upper Gunnison front. For one thing, the aforementioned Upper Gunnison Project has come back to haunt the valley. George Sibley teaches at Western State College in Gunnison, and has lived in the Upper Gunnison drainage for three decades. Stay tuned for "The Knot Tightens, or, How do you keep water down on the ranch after it has been noticed by the big city". Return to November 1999 table of contents. http://www.cozine.com/archive/ccl 999/00690133.htm 7/9/2003