Statement of US Rep. Joel Hefley

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http : / /resourcescommittee.house. gov /107cong /water /2002mar 19/hefle) Statement of -U.S. Rep. Joel Hefley t R- Colorado -5th District Before the Subcommittee on Water and Power of the House Committee on Resources March 19 2002 Mr. Chairman, and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the subcommittee's scheduling this hearing on my bill, H.R. 3881, which would authorize the Secretary of Interior to engage in studies relating to the enlarging Pueblo Dam and Reservoir, and Sugar Loaf Dam and Turquoise Lake of the Fryingpan- Arkansas Project in Colorado. Over the past 10 years, Colorado and particularly the Front Range of Colorado have seen unprecedented growth. Where once a motorist traveling down I -25 between Denver and Colorado Springs had his drive broken only by the town of Castle Rock, today the northern half of that drive is an almost unbroken stretch of development. The well -known landmarks of a decade ago are now lost behind new construction. Indeed, the growth has been such that Colorado will gain a congressional seat in the next election. My own district, the Fifth, had to lose almost 400,000 constituents in the recent reapportionment. This growth has resulted in obvious demands on the area's infrastructure, the most important of which is water. Over the years, the state's water needs have been met by the tireless efforts of legislators, water engineers and attorneys who first pushed for the great water projects which supply the state, then developed the legal framework in which that water could be used. But over the past 10 years, or perhaps longer, attitudes toward water storage projects have changed. About 13 years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency effectively killed the Two Forks Dam project, which would have been a privately financed reservoir to serve the needs of the Denver area. And, for even longer, we have debated construction of the Animas -La Plata project in southwest Colorado. And still the population grew, as did the need. Recognizing this need, in 1998, members of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, the operator of the Fryingpan - Arkansas project, foamed a Storage Study Committee to begin discussions on how to meet it. An initial study, conducted in late 1998, determined a need for an additional 173,100 acre -feet of storage over the next 40 years. Follow -on studies by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Study Committee examined over 30 options to meet the projected demand, including expansion of the Pueblo Reservoir. These studies detetluined that the best option was utilize the existing reservoirs. By September 2000, the Storage Study Committee's findings congealed into a Preferred Storage Options 1 of 2 3/22/02 4:48 PM