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(OO_^' i )~u"t 10 . - COLORADt Steve Campbell. $1 Environmental groups oppose wilderness bill Compromise doesn't guarantee acreage the 'water that sustains it' By Bill Scanlon "'.r,,:sEu,jro"l'I'lf'tltal W~itt' Colorado environmental groups yesterday vowed [0 fight the com- promise \\;ldemess bill because they say it doesn't guarantee that the 64 1.000 acres - and future acreage - will get the water na- ture bestowed. It's a bill only farmers and water developers can love, they say. "Why shouldn't wilderness be entitled to the water that sustains It?' Joanne Carter of the Wilder- ness Society asked yesterday. Joining her group in opposing the compromise bill are the Sierra Club, Colorado Wildlife Federa- tion, The LAW Fund. Sheep Mountain Alliance, Trappers Lake Group, Colorado Mountain Club and the Colorado Environment.al Coalition. Colorado $ens. Tim Wirth and Hank Brown last week carefully .;:,;;:-ved the wilderness areas to in- dud~ - with one exception - acreage upstream of any water projects. That way, the v.;,lderness areas wouldn't be threatened by :Ievelopment, even though they ....ouldn't be granted water-right guarantees. But conservationists yesterday thundered that at the ,.ery least. Colorado wilderness deserves as much protection as Arizona, Wash. lnglon, ~evada and New Mexico han' received. In those western stales, ....ilderness areas are grant. t"d Junior water rights at the time of dt>:;ignation. That way, ranch- er,.. brmers or cities \\;,th senior co .... ".', ,,,,,_r,,,,,,," t"piT use if it 'Ii f , -~ derness areas. The Colorado bill only allows wilderness to buy senior water rights from farmers. That's an outrageous waste of taxpayer money, said Tina Arapkiles of the Sierra Club, "The American public is going to have to pay for some- thing that we already own - wa. ter in v.ildemess." The precedent could harm downstream areas considered for wilderness protection in the fu. ture, say conservationists. The one dO\l.-nstream afea included in the Wirth-Brown compromise - the Piedra River wilderness area near Pagosa Springs - is proof, they say. The bill insists that the Colorado \\'ater Conservation Bo.ard maintain a high enough flow to keep the fish population in the Piedra River healthy. But that's not enough to sustain waterfalls or riparian ecosystems. Other environmentalists com. plain the carving of areas left out tracts that deserved protection, including Spanish Peaks in Huer- fano Coun1\' and a stretch near the Williams Fork River that Oem.er is eyeing for water de,.elopment. Several areas that were desig. nated wilderness - Fossil Ridge,. Greenhorn Mountain, Service Creek and others - have private ditch rights in them that must be honored. Theoretically, the OVo'll- ers of those ditches can increase diversion and dry up the wilder. ness streams. Conservationists do not want to u:.e a patchwork of wilderness ar. eas to hold up development every. where forever, Carter said. They would support a compromise that would a\low development on streams that now through wilder- ness but that would guaraJ>Cet that the wilderness retains r./ ~i , /