The federal Bureau of Land Management has issued a final Environmental Impact Statement for the controversial “Over the River” art installation.
Proposed by the artist Christo and his late wife Jeanne Claude, the project would suspend nearly six total miles of translucent fabric in various spots along a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River between Salida and Canon City in central Colorado. It has the support of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and of the Stare Parke agency, which administers much of the BLM land along the river as the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area. The Colorado Division of Wildlife, however, voted to oppose the project.
An image presented in a slide show of what Over the River would look like. Courtesy Flickr use Waltarrr.
The Bureau of Land Management is the lead agency on the project, which was first proposed about 15 years ago. The current schedule calls for the curtains to be up for two weeks in August of 2014, with about 18 months of construction before that and another 18 months afterward for removal.
The main opposition comes from residents along the corridor who are concerned about traffic and crowds, along with fishing outfitters concerned about its effect on one of the nation’s better brown-trout fisheries.
They’re organized in a group called ROAR (for Rags Over the Arkansas River), and its president, Dan Ainsworth, isn’t giving up. He told the Denver Post that “We will never stop the fight until we lie down in the highway and stop the construction trucks and get squashed like a bug. We see this as total devastation for the whole area.”
Litigation doubtless will appear eventually, as the two involved counties will have to issue construction permits, which might be stalled by injunctions.
For my part, I was rather agnostic about Over the River until its opponents cranked up various apocalyptic scenarios while accusing supporters of being driven by greed. They changed my mind; I’m for it now.
Essays in the Range blog are not written by High Country News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.
Ed Quillen is a freelance writer in Salida, Colo.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
