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, Colorado Central Magazine November 1999 Page 13 Page 9 of 10 provide for growth in the valley -- a vote that reflected the persisting "old utilitarianism" base in the valley. IN 1986, MILLER and company filed for conditional rights on water from the Upper Gunnison's tributaries, but they lacked an actual user for the water. Then in 1988 they sold the Union Park idea to Arapahoe County for $2.2 million. At about that same time, the "new utilitarians" and the environmentalists joined voices in the Upper Gunnison, challenging the Union Park idea. In 1990, a group of Gunnisonites, led by environmentalist Ra1ph "Butch" Clark, realty agent Gerald Lain, history professor Duane Vandenbusche, water attorney Pete Klingsmith and others, organized POWER -- "People Opposed to Water Export Raids" -- around the slogan, "Not One Drop." Shortly after this, the City of Gunnison withdrew its support for the Union Park Project, and Miller's hopes for a "win-win project" disappeared in the rapid descent into the usual us-versus-them, East Slope-versus- West Slope, country-versus-city acrimonies of standard Colorado politics. The City of Aurora dropped out of the fray soon after that, leaving Arapahoe County as the major applicant. In 1990, the water court held hearings on Arapahoe County's application to "divert, store and export waters" for the Union Park Project. A host of opponents lined up: the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, its "parent" the Colorado River Water Conservancy District, the City of Gunnison, several Taylor River homeowner associations, the High Country Citizens Alliance (an environmental organization), the Spann Ranches and the Trampe Ranches (owners of major upvalley irrigation rights), several wildlife and angling organizations -- and the United States of America, to protect its still somewhat vaguely articulated rights for the Aspinall Unit, and some unquantified rights in the Black Canyon National Monument (watch for this sleeper). The issue was -- and may be for some time -- water availability. The noble bravado of "Not One Drop" notwithstanding, conditional rights to water not otherwise committed to a beneficial use cannot be denied under Colorado law. Whether those rights could ever actually be developed in compliance with existing environmental legislation is another issue entirely, but the first step was to try to untangle the knot of decreed rights for consumptive uses, non-consumptive uses, consumptive uses that are really partially non-consumptive, existing conditional rights, et cetera, and match all of that with the basin's erratic record of water supply. A lot of attention was paid to "modeling" processes. Arapahoe County brought a sophisticated computer model that allegedly showed the cumulative water available with various supply input and use output scenarios. The opposers used a more conventional accounting process based on measured annual flows and the sums of decreed water rights. In 1991, after weighing all of the evidence, District Judge Robert Brown decreed that there was not enough water in the Upper Gunnison basin for the Union Park Project. Arapahoe County promptly appealed the decision to the Colorado Supreme Court, arguing (among other lesser things) that the Judge had not correctly interpreted the Bureau of Reclamation's subordination of 60,000 acre-feet of water for use in the Upper Gunnison above the Aspinall Unit dams. Judge Brown had upheld the opposers' claim that water was to be used within the Upper Gunnison basin. But Arapahoe County claimed that, since the Union Park reservoir would be in the Upper Gunnison basin, it should count as an in-basin use (even though the majority of the water would be used on the Front Range). The Supreme Court agreed with the applicant, on that and a few other points, and remanded the application back to Judge Brown for rehearing on those points. http://www.cozine.com/archive/ccl999/00690133.htm 7/9/2003