Dear HCN,
Heather McGregor’s
article on the proposed sale of the Collbran reclamation project
does a good job of making a complex dispute understandable (HCN,
9/15/97). Nonetheless, there are a couple of points in the article
I need to address.
I represent a dozen western
Colorado, regional and national environmental groups, as well as
the town of Collbran, in opposition to Sen. Ben Nighthorse
Campbell’s legislation (S. 725) to direct the sale of the Collbran
Project to local water districts. We oppose S. 725 for two
reasons:
* The bill freezes the public out of the
transfer, and
* The bill waives for 40 years key
provisions of the Federal Power Act and all relevant environmental
laws as they otherwise would apply to the issuance of the FERC
power license for the operation of the project’s two power
plants.
These provisions of S. 725 are bad enough
on the ground in western Colorado, but they would create a terrible
precedent for other areas of the West. The Bureau of Reclamation
has received inquiries regarding the transfer of about 60
reclamation projects in the West. If Collbran transfer proponents,
who wrote S. 725, succeed in keeping the public out of the transfer
process and waiving environmental laws for Collbran, these
inquiries will ripen into a tsunami of proposals to transfer other
federal projects (Hoover? Glen Canyon? Grand
Coulee?).
We seek to avoid such a situation. Ms.
McGregor’s article stated that our primary local environmental
concern is impact on endangered Colorado River fish. Actually, as
long as the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program,
a collaborative effort among Upper Basin states, developers,
environmentalists and federal agencies, continues to operate, the
greatest threat to the environment is not to these fish. Of course,
if the program collapses, as it threatens to from time to time, the
impact of the transfer on these fish could be serious. Barring such
a collapse, the greater threat to the environment from the transfer
is in the Plateau Valley and Plateau Creek (where the project is
located), on Grand Mesa (where storage reservoirs operated partly
for fish and recreation could be harmed) and in the Grand Valley
where the transfer, as directed in S. 725, could fuel more
unmitigated development.
We shall try to block S.
725 or to amend it and, failing that, to ask President Clinton to
veto the bill.
Bruce
Driver
Boulder, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Water project creates bad precedent.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
