Headwaters Fall 2004

• Year: 2004
• Title: Headwaters
• Author: Colorado Foundation for Water Education
• Description: Fall 2004 - Focus on Southwestern Colorado
• Publications - Doc Type: Other

"Sam was one of the handful of `deans' of water law and water
politics ... He was a small -town practitioner with a statewide and
national reputation."
something about the arcane world of
absolute decrees, direct -flow rights, and
prior appropriation that quickly fasci-
nated him. "With water in this part of the
world," he explained, "it became clear to
me that there was an awful lot to lose and
an awful lot to gain."
On his first trips to Washington, D.C.,
lobbying Congress in support of the pro-
posed Animas -La Plata Project on behalf
of the Southwestern Water Conservation
District — Maynes renewed acquaintanc-
es with Southern Ute Tribal Chairman
Leonard Burch, a former high school
basketball opponent. Each man had been
a talented and aggressive athlete in his
youth; each encountered something sub-
stantial and very likable in the other, and
before long they formed a fraternal bond
that endured for the rest of their lives.
Burch pressed the tribal council to
name Maynes its general counsel, and
it did so in 1968, the same year that
Congress authorized the Animas -La Plata
and a series of other massive water stor-
age projects throughout the West. As
it was then proposed, the ALP would
deliver municipal water to communities
in both Colorado and New Mexico, as
well as agricultural irrigation water to
the region's non - Indian farmers. About
a third of the project's total water sup-
ply was slated go to two Ute tribes —the
Southern Utes and the neighboring Ute
Mountain Utes. But Maynes soon began
work to secure even more water for the
tribes —water rights they claimed the
federal government granted them back in
the nineteenth century.
It was Maynes' innovative and determined
water advocacy on behalf of Colorado's two
Ute tribes that, in the end, made him both
deeply revered and sometimes reviled in the
Four Comers region and beyond. And it was
far from surprising —to his friends and detrac-
tors alike —that Maynes ultimately found a
way to serve both his Native American and
water - district clients at the same time.
The Animas -La Plata's first substantial
set -backs came in 1977 when the Carter
administration suspended its construction
— Colorado State Supreme Court Justice Greg Hobbs
along with a number of other Western
water projects whose estimated cost -ben-
efit ratios appeared to make them poor
public -works investments. Yet by the end
of the 1980s, ALP still survived on the
drawing board, in largest part due to
Maynes' legal and lobbying efforts, togeth-
er with his insistence that construction of
the ALP could lead to the settlement of
the Utes' water rights claims.
Maynes shrewdly proposed that the two
Ute tribes would agree to end their omi-
nous federal lawsuit —one filed by Maynes
himself and which, if successful could have
claimed much of southwestern Colorado's
water —if local interests and the federal
government would agree to allocate to the
two tribes the lion's share of the water in the
Animas -La Plata Project. With the steadfast
support of Ben Nighthorse Campbell, then
a U.S. Representative from Colorado's Third
Congressional District, Maynes led the ulti-
mately successful battle that resulted in the
passage of the Colorado Ute Indian Water
Rights Settlement Act of 1988, officially
incorporating settlement of the tribes' long-
standing water rights claims into construc-
tion of the Animas -La Plata project.
Although throughout the 1990s the
project remained stalled by a U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service biological opinion
claiming its construction would endanger
the Colorado pikeminnow —as well as a
series of suits filed by the Sierra Club, the
Durango -based Taxpayers for the Animas
River and Citizens Progressive Alliance
citing its environmental and economic
costs —the project remained stubbornly
alive. And Maynes himself began to joke
that the acronym ALP increasingly seemed
to stand for "A Lifetime Project."
"The Animas -La Plata never would
have reached the construction phase with-
out Sam —and without his partnership and
deep friendship with Leonard Burch," said
Lynn Herkenhoff, administrative assistant
for the Southwestern Water Conservation
District. "He knew all the players, and he
knew how to play with them all." "Quite
simply," agreed Colorado Supreme Court
justice Greg Hobbs, whom Maynes had
helped mentor early in his career, "Sam
was one of the handful of `deans' of water
law and water politics... He was a small -
town practitioner with a statewide and
national reputation."
Sixteen months before his death from
cancer, construction of a much scaled -
down Animas -La Plata project finally com-
menced. The project no longer included
any water for agricultural irrigation and
was a fraction of its originally proposed
size, but Maynes relished the triumph
nonetheless. "My dad liked to say that he
was a lousy loser, but a damn -good win-
ner," his son Sam W. Maynes, now a part-
ner in his father's firm, remembered. "He
was a fighter and he fought for the Utes
and for Animas -La Plata with everything
he had. He saw the beginning of its con-
struction as a huge victory. For himself;
for everyone he cared about."
For nearly forty years, Maynes devot-
ed virtually all his professional time to the
water districts and tribes he represented,
and although he created bitter opponents
along the way, he amassed legions of
devoted friends as well — people who, in
remembering him, speak foremost about
his robust sense of humor, his wonder-
ful storytelling skills, his deep dedication
to his family, to his particular part of the
world, and to his clients. "My dad was the
most generous person I've ever known,"
his son affirmed. "I never knew anyone
more persuasive, or anyone who made
friends more easily."
The future of southwestern Colorado
and of the people of Southern and Ute
Mountain Ute tribes have been dramati-
cally-_ shaped by this miner's son whose
skills and determination never to lose
made him legendary from Durango to
Washington, D.C. Remembered by many
as one of those larger- than -life characters
who come along only rarely, he was the
kind of person who, in retrospect, seemed
destined to cut a wide and consequential
swath through the decades given to him.
"I can't imagine the world without Sam
Maynes," Herkenhoff offered on the day her
dear friend's full life came to a close. ❑
20 COLORADO FOUNDATION FOR WATER EDUCATION