A Colorado senator wants to make sure the
controversial and long-delayed Animas-La Plata water project begins
next year. Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell hopes to attach
a rider to an appropriations bill that requires Congress to proceed
with dam construction “notwithstanding any other provisions of the
law.”
The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which
has used environmental laws to forestall the project, fears this
sufficiency language will “whitewash and approve the Bureau of
Reclamation’s record of non-compliance” with clean water and other
federal laws.
Congress has already approved $10
million for the project in 1996, when an environmental analysis is
due. These actions come on the heels of a new Bureau of Reclamation
study revealing that the $710 million project will bring in only 36
cents for every dollar spent (HCN, 5/25/95).
Touted as the “last great water project,”
Animas-La Plata has also been called a Rube Goldberg scheme of
pumps and pipes. Its first stage would divert water 500 feet from
the Animas River near Durango, Colo., to create a reservoir. A
second stage, negotiated in part as a water rights settlement with
Colorado Ute tribes, would pump the reservoir water 400 feet uphill
to irrigate Indian and non-Indian lands. Additional pumps from the
reservoir and the La Plata River would feed nearby towns and coal
operations (HCN, 3/23/93).
The Ute water
settlement expires on Jan. 1, 2000.
* Heather
Abel
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Dam project could get a free ride.
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