BOARD02129

• Board Meeting Date: 10/31/1973
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

attorney general of Colorado, consistently opposed the control of.
Colorado's water by the United States. As I recall reading in the
newspapers while I was still incarcerated in that monastery up in
Boulder a year or so ago, the state legislature appropriated a large
sum of money to defend against claims of the United States that
Colorado feels that should be available to the citizens of the state
of Colorado under its constitution. Consistently the board has I
opposed federal control of how Colorado develops its water. Now
it strikes me as a one hundred ard eighty degree reversal of that
position to take a position opposed to a specific entity in respect
to a specific area not only through the normal resources of the
board, but by asking the federal government to preclude that company
from proceeding with its plans by an artificial designation of a
wilderness area. I say artificially advisably. I have been up in
that area. It does not qualify for a wilderness designation.

As some of the gentlemen here may recall, when the first wilderness
bill was proposed in 1958, and I was sitting as a member of this
board, there was a very strong resolution adopted opposing the
wilderness bill originally. I was subsequently sent as a represen-
tative of the Governor of this state and of this board, and of the
Colorado Water Congress to Washington to work on that wilderness
bill precisely because of the possibility of widespread wilderness
designations adversely affecting water resource development in the
state of Colorado and the other western states. As far as I know,
that resolution has never been amended. It has never been changed
~nd I don't think that the policies, theattitudes:and the neces-
sities which caused the adoption of that resolution have changed
mat~~ially since that time, either. Therefore, I would very
respectfully suggest to the board that this is a step backwards.
It is a step that if the board takes, that is, to ask the federal
government to include an already developed area, (there is a resort
there, there are roads there, it is a flat meadowland~ it is not
part of the Flat Tops primitive area) in order to preclude the con-
struction of a reservoir, would b3 a serious deviation from a long-
st~nding policy and a serious mistake on the part of the board.

I would reiterate that I think that it would be wise, and I might
say this too, so far as ! can determine, all of the input on this
question has come to the staff from persons who are opposed to I
Rocky Mountain Power Company, tnereasons for which I have not been
able to fathom in the twelve years since I first became associated
with the project. They were opposed to it, regardless of the
stipulation that was agreed to but never entered into. I don't .
kno~ why. I do know there was a downstream senior right that would
provide part of that supply and the suggestion was that we work
together so that the Meadows Reservoir would provide the water for
that pipeline. But, I think all of the input into the staff of the

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