Court's Whitewater Ruling Gets Spun Every Which Way

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Court's whitewater ruling gets spun every which way Page 1 of 2 S E- TINEL rtii ::: tyxts 3 Search SitelWeb enhanced ," o ' C ...., ._. F Trust Earned E very Da r . Home 1 News 1 Sports 1 Features 1 Health 1 Money 1 Weather 1 Marketplace 1 Classifieds 1 Subscri Court' s whitewater ruling gets s pun every v which way tap Jt Looking ft Wednesday, March 16, 2005 experience licensed pi Everyone is happy, or so they say. MANAGE! Enthusias person net The Colorado Water Conservation Board — the state agency that is to traditional, old -line, water buffalodom as Mount Rushmore is to oversized outdoor sculpture — says it is happy with a Colorado Acorn Tra Supreme Court decision this week reviewing the legitimacy of a Gunnison County instream recreational time, Swin (more) flow right. CLERICAI mortgage Meanwhile, kayakers, rafters, environmentalists and sundry other outdoor enthusiasts say they are happy opening in with the same decision. An attorney representing outdoor recreational interests even went so far as to exult - ---- - - -_ -- to a Denver Post reporter that this week's high court ruling amounts to "a complete victory for recreational PHYSICAI water rights." Phy I f T Oh? If this week's ruling really does represent "a complete victory for recreational water rights," why do Heavy Eqt profess to be smiling? Depending on whose spin you Operators traditional water interests on the state water board p g• p g p y Gunnison ; care to believe, up is down, black is white, soft is hard, wet is really dry and apparently forever the twain shall meet. Route Del Southern cu Lmor Anyone who cares to slog through the entirety of the Colorado Supreme Court's 47 -page ruling — we, of course, didn't necessarily care to but reading the decision is, after all, part of this corner's job — can come CNA/ NA t to only one conclusion. Namely, the high court decided very little in its ruling other than to say that the time, great Upper Gunnison Water Conservancy District (that's the agency seeking the recreational flow right), the or (mor CWCB and the original water court assigned to the case all need to go back to square one and start over ACCOUNT again. Accountir financial St The immediate practical effect of the ruling is to deny the conservancy district — at least for the time being NATCO, it — an adjudicated instream recreational water right. WELDER po (mot And, in a rebuke to the CWCB, the high court essentially said the state water board "exceeded its review authority" under the statute by arbitrarily deciding that the Gunnison instream water right should be no view more than 250 cfs and that it failed to fulfill its statutory obligation to provide relevant guidance to the water court of jurisdiction as to what the proper instream flow right should be. What should be of concern to whitewater enthusiasts and other backers of Gunnison's filing for an instream flow right is that the high court made it explicitly clear that instream recreational flow rights can be fully adjudicated only after five statutory concerns are taken into consideration. And the first concern that everyone involved in the application must consider is the effect that any recreational filing might have on the state's ability to fully utilize its compact entitlement. It's worth noting that when state water attorneys defended the CWCB's recommendation for no more than a 250 -cfs filing before the original trial judge, part of their argument was that the filing sought by Gunnison — which rose to more than 1,000 cfs during the late spring and early summer runoff — would complicate Colorado's ability to fully utilize its compact entitlement, specifically with possible future transmountain water diversions out of the basin. http: / /www.gjsentinel.com/news/ content / news /opinion/stories /2005 /03/16 /Gunnison edit ... 3/17/2005