Colorado Water June 2005

• Year: 2005
• Title: Colorado Water
• Author: Water Center of Colorado State University
• Description: JUNE 2005 Issue
• Publications - Doc Type: Newsletter

mining camp town of Leadville, then in the throes of
the silver boom. After serving as principal of the local
school for two years, he decided to attend law school
at the University of Michigan, then returning to the
Western Slope, where he held a variety of local politi-
cal offices before being elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives in 1908. He won election to Congress
by taking a strong position against the growing federal
presence in the management of the West's public lands,
Taylor would serve as the Western Slope of Colorado's
sole Congressman until his death in 1941.4
Taylor's lengthy career has several themes and les-
sons where Western water development is concerned.
He is the forerunner of a strategy of protecting what is
termed today, basin or basins of origin from the politics
of inter -basin water transfers. He was the first major
Western Colorado politician to point the way toward a
strategy for protecting the Western Slope from the water
machinations of the Eastern Slope. Taylor had always
suspected the Eastern Slope of wanting to divert the
waters of the Western Slope without adequate compen-
sation. His worst fears became reality in the movement
for the Colorado -Big Thompson Project (C -BT). The
Eastern Slope had distinct political advantages —a grow-
ing population, political strength and the need to put the
water to immediate beneficial use. The Western Slope's
advantages were natural —it had the headwaters of some
of the intermountain West's major rivers, but had a
small population with little apparent political strength.
As far back as the 1880s, residents of the South Platte
Valley on Colorado's Front Range had shown an inter-
est in tapping the headwaters of the Grand River (late
renamed the Colorado) for use on the thirsty eastern
plains. In the early 1930s, East Slope newspaper edi-
tors, politicians, and water users organized into what
would become the Northern Colorado Water Conser-
vancy District to propose the C -BT. The project would
take water from the headwaters of the Colorado River
through a maze of tunnels, reservoirs, and ditches to
bring about 300,000 acre feet if water annually to the
Front Range. While the engineering challenges of the
project were nothing short of amazing, its major po-
litical obstacles would be presented by Congressman
Edward T. Taylor.'
Taylor paternalistically regarded every drop of water on
the Western Slope as his to protect and control. As the
voice of the Western Slope's twenty -two counties, he
argued that since 70 percent of all the annual flow of the
Colorado River originated high in the mountains of his
Congressional District, he could insist that every drop of
water taken from the Western Slope should be replaced
by the construction of additional storage facilities for
that part of the state. This became known as the "acre
foot for acre foot" provision, or strategy. More impor-
tantly, Taylor was in a position to make good upon his
demands. By the late 1930s he was Chairman of the
House Appropriations Committee and in a strong posi-
tion to block almost any legislation deemed damaging to
his Congressional District.6
When the Colorado -Big Thompson Project became law
in 1937, Taylor did not quite get his acre -foot for acre
foot demand, but he did get his request for compensa-
tory storage recognized. Two lessons were learned from
Taylor's experience that were instructional for later
generations of Colorado and Western water politicians:
to insist on compensatory storage in inter -basin transfers
and be in a strong political position to be able to effect
the outcome of water legislation. Taylor's example
would continue to hover over future East and West
Slope water negotiations to the present day.
The other Western Slope Colorado water leader who
influenced both the regional and national water debate
was Wayne Norviel Aspinall. Born in Ohio, he moved
to Colorado at age eight in 1904 and was raised near the
small town of Palisade where his parents bought and
operated a peach orchard. From early in life, Wayne
Aspinall learned the importance of diverting and apply-
ing water to make things grow in the and West. After
graduating first from Denver University, he earned a
law degree at the same school, owned his own peach
orchard, taught school, practiced law, and set his sights
on a career in politics. After serving in both houses of
the Colorado General Assembly for every year but two
between 1930 and 1948, the enterprising Aspinall was
elected to the U.S. Congress.'
Once in Congress, Aspinall consciously followed in the
footsteps of Edward T. Taylor. Specifically, Aspinall
learned that to remain in Washington, D.C., he would
need to advocate the case for enhancing both the West-
ern Slope and the Upper Colorado River Basin's water
storage capacity. At a time when most Congressmen
aspired to more nationally prestigious seats on commit-
tees such as Ways and Means Judiciary, or Appropria-
tions, Aspinall made an early decision to gain a seat and
remain on the House Interior Committee, the committee
that handled almost every important piece of legislation