For more than 20 years, a private company has wanted
to move water from Colorado’s Western Slope to sprawling
Front Range cities hundreds of miles to the east. Now, a judge has
put a kink in those transmountain water diversion plans.
In 1984, a state water court granted Natural Energy Resources
Company conditional rights to 325,000 acre-feet of water from the
Gunnison River headwaters. The court stipulated that the company
would build a new hydropower plant to help prevent blackouts across
Colorado.
Instead, the company drew up a new plan:
building not just a power plant, but also what would have been the
state’s largest dam, on Lotus Creek, a tributary to the
Taylor River. The Union Park Reservoir would have stored 1.2
million acre-feet of water, allowing the company to deliver both
water and electricity to Denver and Colorado Springs. A Colorado
Supreme Court judge shot down the proposal in 1998, saying that the
Upper Gunnison’s water was already over-allocated to cities
and agriculture (HCN, 8/3/98: Western Slope Wins Water Wrestle).
Because conditional water rights must be renewed every
six years, the company filed last year to keep its hydroelectric
right. On Aug. 3, Division Four Water Court Judge J. Steven
Patrick, in Montrose, Colo., cancelled the company’s water
right.
Karen Shirley, Upper Gunnison River Water
Conservation District manager, calls the ruling a victory. But the
fight over transporting water from the Gunnison to the Front Range
is far from over.
Dave Miller, president of Natural
Energy, says “water in a drought is liquid gold” that cities can
always afford to buy. His company plans to appeal the decision this
month.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Judge leaves Front Range cities mile-high and dry.
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