Water users on Colorado’s Western Slope are
celebrating a court decision that keeps the “river” in the Gunnison
River Basin. A district water-court judge ruled that there was not
enough excess water in the Gunnison River watershed for the Union
Park project, a proposal that would have diverted 60,000 acre-feet
of water per year to the Front Range.
“Now, we
can start paying attention to how to manage the water in the basin
for the beneficial use of the basin, instead of constantly
defending it from being taken out of the basin,” says Steve Glazer
of the High Country Citizens’ Alliance in Crested
Butte.
Arapahoe County, which includes Aurora and
other eastern Denver suburbs, has been trying since 1986 to build a
reservoir in Gunnison County’s Union Park, so that it could divert
water beneath the Continental Divide via a 42-mile-long
aqueduct.
The federal government, the state of
Colorado, and local interests lined up against the project, arguing
there was not enough unallocated water in the river’s tributaries
to fill the reservoir. A 1991 district water court ruled against
the project, but the county appealed. The Colorado Supreme Court
upheld much of Judge Robert Brown’s decision, but turned it back to
the lower court on the issue of legal vs. historical
rights.
In his recent decision, Brown found that
water rights allocated to the Upper Gunnison River by the federal
Bureau of Reclamation were for in-basin use only. He dismissed the
case “with prejudice,” meaning that the case can be appealed but
not refiled.
Arapahoe County may not be eager to
appeal. County commission members have changed since the project
was first proposed, says commissioner Steve Ward, and “with one
exception, I don’t think any of us would have started this
project.” Adds Ward, “An unfavorable decision in water court was
certainly no surprise.”
*Michelle
Nijhuis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Western Slope wins water wrestle.
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