The Subsidiary, Editorial: Pueblo Chieftain

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The Pueblo Chieftain Online Page 1 of 2 or �I, The subsidiary By EDITORIAL THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN MORE AND more the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District appears to be a wholly owned aubsidiary of es. Which is to say the dev� elopers who control Colorado Springs. And their agent, unfortunately, is Jim Broderick the Pueblo native who was brought in from Arizona to revitalize the conservancy district. We had high hopes for Mr. Broderick when he first was given the job as the conservancy district's new general manager, but sadly he has proved a great disappointment. The latest cha ter in to is the Southeastern's decision to fund another "study" of the plan to build the Arkansas Valley Conduit, a pipeline to deliver high - quality water to communities east of Pueblo that was authorized in the original Frying pan-Arkansas Project legislation but not yet funded. The chutzpah here is astonishing. Originally a $200,000 study of the feasibility of the conduit was conducted by Y.. the firm GET, which concluded the project would cost $200 million. _GEI found no fatal flaw in the project as long as communities benefiting from the conduit had to pay only 25 percent of the cost, or $50 million. But now the conservancy is paying consultants Black & Veatch $25,000 for another " "study." That figure is peanuts, and leads us to suspect that the conservancy has directedB&Vlo _red. ._b -c_k that the conduit's cost would be higher that the GEI finding. Phil Re Holds, Mr. Broderick's financial chief who also chairs the conduit advisory committee, defends the " "study" as an " "insurance policy" to make sure the downstream ,communities can afford 2 percent of the conduit's cost. And Mr. Broderick insists that legislation providing the first $85 million for the conduit requires a 25 percent match. But the chief of staff for the sponsor of that legislation, Sen. Wayne Allard, said the $L5�m+l„ I an a propE a ti_Qa d,Qes -,not .e— qui.r_e._a..mztcb- Period. What's going on here isya scheme to sabotage the conduit funding because Colorado Springs wants a bill that would give the Springs and Aurora more storage space in Pueblo Reservoir and allow a study of enlarging that vessel to move forward. Sen. Allard has been withholding support of that bill because there is not unanimity in the state about it. http : / /www.chieftain.com /print.php ?article= /editorial /1092549600/1 8/16/2004