Brief by Central Staff
Water – October 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Did the federal government give away some water rights it should have kept?
That question has been raised by a lawsuit filed in September against the federal government. It concerns an agreement about the amount of water that flows through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
The agreement, announced in April, was between the U.S. Department of Interior and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. In it, the feds settled for a year-round guaranteed flow of 300 cubic feet per second, along with some much larger flows in wet years.
However, Black Canyon was proclaimed a National Monument in 1933, and thus under state and federal law it could reasonably claim much more water if the feds took the claim to state water court.
And they should have, according to the plaintiffs, which include High Country Citizens Alliance of Crested Butte, Trout Unlimited, the Wilderness Society, Western Colorado Congress, and the Western Slope Environmental Resource Council.
“The park was created specifically to protect the Black Canyon’s spectacular gorges and additional features of scenic, scientific, and educational interest,” according to Bart Miller, an attorney for the groups. “The government’s own scientific analysis shows that preserving these features of the Park requires preserving the natural flow patterns of the river. Yet the government has illegally given up these flows.”
The Gunnison flow issue is complicated because the Interior Department manages not just the Black Canyon Park, but three upstream dams and reservoirs — Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, and Crystal — which generate electric power and provide storage for Colorado to meet its downstream obligations under the Colorado River Compact.
