4202

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 4202
• Author: Wilkinson, C. F.
• Title: Colorado Water and the Lords of Yesterday.
• USFW Year: 1987.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

forests were dedicated to timber cutting as the first use and a
policy of below-cost sales was adopted to assist small timber-
dependent towns. The great rivers of the Pacific Northwest were
developed to support hydropower.
Appropriation of western water was the furthest extension of
our national and regional determination to dedicate the West's
resources to extractive use and to grant hard, vested rights to
such uses. Streams were literally zoned for consumptive
appropriation. There were no limits on dam building and flooding
of canyons. At baseline, individual developers were left to make
their own decisions on public water, even if it meant that a
stream might go dry or that a large urban area might strip a
rural community of its lifeblood. Western water, Colorado water,
was there for the taking.
This era is often painted as the heyday of private enter-
prise and, to be sure, it was marked by ample ingenuity and hard
work. Yet water development in Colorado and other western states
was energized by massive governmental support that allowed con-
sumptive users to obtain radically underpriced water. This
occurred in three fundamental ways. First, the state and federal
governments have never required any payment at all for the use of
public water. This is in direct contrast to normal principles of
public resource development and is a good example of why I say
that water policy is the most extreme form of western resource
development. When a timber company wants to use government
timber, it must pay a stumpage fee. A rancher must pay a grazing
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