WSPC01347

• File Number: 8210.761.09.D
• Description: Colorado River-Federal Agencies-US NPS-Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument
• State: CO
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 1/1/3000
• Title: 2003 Settlement Agreement-Implementation-Why the Water Buffaloes of Colorado Are Starting to Circle Around the Gunnison
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: News Article/Press Release

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eled on the successful CBT project that delivered water
to Eastern Slope fanns while generating electricity to
pay the bills. So why did this grandiose plan get scaled
down to a fraction of its original scope?
. For one thing, the 1948 Bureau Report, one of the
last known references to the Gun-Ark Project, was
quite preliminary, based on estimates rather than hard
data and formal engineering. The Bureau was fond of
doing this - issuing a preliminary study in the hopes of
getting political support so there would be public de-
mand for the project - but there may not have been
much public demand for Gun-Ark in the late 194Os.

A FTER ALL, Colorado's capital is Denver, and
1"\:Gun-Ark wouldn't have made a single drop avail-
able to Denver, which is on the South Platte. It would
have served Pueblo on the Arkansas, and even then,
Pueblo was losing political clout.
Further, a project the size of Gun-Ark would have
put new irrigated fannland into production. On a na-
tional basis, representatives from farm states are reluc-
tant to voteto use federal money to subsidize Western
fanners\vho will then compete with their fanners. A
smaller project would merely provide "supplemental
irrigation" - water to help crops on land that is already
under irrigation, and thus it makes an easier sell to ex-
isting farmers in Iowa and l11inois, who get federal sub-
sidies, too.
And then there's Wayne Aspinall, long-time U.S.
Representative from Colorado's Western Slope who
rose to chair the House committee that oversaw appro-
priations for the Bureau of Reclamation. Aspinall's
Western Slope constituents didn't want to see any wa-
ter diverted to the Eastern Slope, but he also had to
work with the rest of Colorado's congressional delega-
tion - that is, he had to make deals, something like "if
you back off on Gun-Ark, I'll give you the Fry-Ark parr
of the project."
At this remove, it's hard to know just what deals
were made. But by the 1950s, there was no more talk of
an immense Gun-Ark project. Instead, southern Colo-
rado leaders were promoting the smaller Fty-Ark pro-
ject, perhaps because they suspected that was all they
could get. Congress was reluctant, with bills passing

Building & Design Contractors
348 G Street. Salida, Colorado 81201
719-539-2620. Fax [phone]
email: ~[e-mail]
webslte: www.cutnoslak.net

28-Colorado Central Magazine-June 2003

/

Furth€.... _ ___':.~g:
The history of the Colorado- Vig Thompson
project is covered in The Last Water HoZe in the
West, by Daniel'lYler, published in ~ 992 by Uni-
versity Press of Colorado. 'lYler says it's not an au-
thorized history, but it sure reads like,one.
There's nothing like that for the Fryin!(pan- Ar-
kansas Project, but there's a relatively s~ort but
decent history on the Southeastern webshe:
www.secwcd.orgIHistory%20%and%20Descriptioll.htm
The description of the proposed Gunnison- Ar-
kansas project is from "Project Planning Report
No. 7-8a, 49-90," issued in June 1948 by the Bu-
reau of Reclamation of the U.S. Department of
the Interior, entitled Interim Report: Gunnison-
Arkansas Project, Colorado. Many thanks to
Nancy Gauss for finding it in the depths of the
Savage Library at Western State College in
Gunnison.

the Senate but failing in the House.
To raise money for lobbying, supporters walked bur-
ros up and down the towns along the Arkansas, and
sold gold-painted frying pans: $5 for a small one, $100
for the big size. In 1962, the legislation finally passed,
and President John E Kennedy flew to Pueblo to sign
the bill on Aug. 16.
Construction began in 1964, and continued until
1990.
Even though Fry-Ark is essentially complete, and
Gunnison water forms no part of its supply, the water of
the upper Gunnison basin still attracts covetous eyes.
After all, as George Sibley once observed, the Bu-
reau of Reclamation sees its duty as fixing the mistakes
that God made in plumbing the West, and as long as
80% of Colorado's precipitation falls on a drainage
with 10% of the state's population, somebody is going
to see that as a mistake in need of correction.
-Ed Quillen

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