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<br />. <br /> <br />Efforts to include the Baca Ranch in the national park system have been tangled by a cloud on the title <br />cast by the lawsuit by a part-owner. <br /> <br />Allard wants the federal government to take title to the land soon, despite the lawsuit filed in 2001 by <br />Peter Hornick of New York, who owns 12.5 percent of the ranch and is seeking compensation for his <br />share. Hornick estimates the ranch's water is worth $160 million, placing his 12.5 percent interest at <br />$20 million. <br /> <br />If the waiver is approved, the ranch and its underground water system would join the expansion of <br />Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Preserve into a national park. <br /> <br />Money to make it happen is available, said Allard's spokeswoman Angela DeRocha. More than $30 <br />million in funding has been appropriated. A final request of$3.5 million for fiscal year 2005 is <br />pending. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />San Juan River Basin <br /> <br />'Impaired' Status For Dolores River Challenged: The Environmental Protection Agency has listed a <br />portion of the Dolores River - l2-miles below the McPhee Reservoir Darn to the Bradfield Ranch <br />Bridge - as an impaired waterway. The decision overturns a March decision by the state's Water <br />Quality Control Commission not to list the Dolores as impaired. <br /> <br />The EP A based the listing on a declining fish population, and testimony from the Colorado Department <br />of Wildlife and Trout Unlimited, which hinted of high water temperatures, sediment imbalance and <br />high nutrient levels affecting fish counts in the river. <br /> <br />The Dolores Water Conservancy District, which manages river flows below McPhee, has until Sept. 20 <br />to submit a rebuttal to the EP A addressing information and findings mentioned in the listing document. <br /> <br />Mark Pifher, director of the state's Water Quality Control Division, said two factors skew any attempt <br />of determining a benchmark for measuring impairment of the Dolores - the drought and the fact that <br />the McPhee Reservoir is a "constructed ecosystem." <br /> <br />Other state officials also quickly reacted and accused the Environmental Protection Agency of trying to <br />tell the state how to regulate its rivers and streams, challenging Colorado's sovereignty over its own <br />water. <br /> <br />Doug Benevento, the Executive Director of the Colorado Department ofHeaIth and Environment and <br />Agricultural Commissioner Don Ament called the EP A's maneuver "unprecedented," and said it could <br />hamper the state's administration of water rights. <br /> <br />The decision "could have a deep impact on rural, urban and suburban Colorado," Benevento and <br />Ament wrote in an Aug. 5 letter to Robbie Roberts, head of the EPA's regional office in Denver. <br /> <br />"Further, this potentially establishes a precedent under which (local EPA officials), not Colorado, <br />could control water allocation in the state," said the letter. <br /> <br />Also complaining was Colorado U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard. In an Aug. 6 letter to the EPA's Roberts, he <br />also accused the EP A of overstepping its authority. "The forced-listing (of the stream) by EP A <br />amountS. . . to a misguided attempt to regulate water quantity for water quality purposes, something I <br />find completely inappropriate," Allard wrote. "Water quantity is a matter of state law and is an issue <br />that should be dealt with at the state level." <br /> <br />But a top EP A official disputed the notion the agency was using water pollution concerns to enforce <br />water flows. Max Dodson, an assistant regional administrator at EP A, called the state's wariness of the <br /> <br />15 <br />