Essay by Ed Quillen
Water – June 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
KEEPING UP WITH THE Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District could turn into a full-time job, and one that could require considerable travel, even though the district’s headquarters are in Salida.
The major current issue is a proposed expansion to include all of Frémont County. When it was organized by the District Court in 1979, the UAWCD included all of Chaffee County, and the western end of Frémont County – the portion covered by the Cotopaxi school district.
A few years later, it expanded to cover Custer County.
Although the District is supposed to serve all of its constituents — urban, rural, suburban, new, old, upstream and downstream, rancher, farmer, fisherman, and boatman — those users may have very different needs. And now, UAWCD wants to expand downriver, into a more populated region.
Water Conservancy Districts expand by petition to the appropriate district court. State law requires that the petitions contain signatures from 25% of the owners of irrigated land outside municipal boundaries, and 5% of the owners of land inside towns or cities. Such petitions have been circulating in eastern Frémont County for some time, and now they’re headed for the court.
I’ll get back to that shortly. There has also been talk of getting Lake County into the UAWCD, but so far as I know, it’s just talk; I haven’t heard of any petitions circulating in Leadville. Lake County’s commissioners were interested at one time, because the county got about 85 annual acre-feet in a settlement with Aurora, and the county didn’t have any mechanism for managing a water right. Managing water is what conservancy districts do, and so there was some logic to joining the UAWCD. But they also had reservations, since they would be handing control of their water over to a different entity.
Back to adding eastern Frémont County. It’s hard to see how expansion is a good deal for taxpayers in the existing district, especially in Chaffee County. In 1982, the county gave the UAWCD two reservoirs – North Fork and O’Haver. Those are valuable. Eastern Frémont will get a voice in their operation without paying a nickel for these assets.
And not just a voice, either, but more like control. As it is, Chaffee has four directors, Custer two, and western Frémont two, with one at-large, for a total of nine. If the UAWCD expanded, it would have 13 directors.
State law says that each county which forms at least 1% of the district’s area gets a director. (There are a few homes along Silver Creek that are in the UAWCD. They’re in Saguache County, but their land is nowhere near the 1%, so there is no Saguache County seat on the UAWCD board).
After each county’s one seat, director seats are supposed to be apportioned by population. The UAWCD currently comprises about 22,000 people; eastern Frémont has about 44,000. The director seats would go like this: Chaffee 3, Custer 1, Frémont 9. The UAWCD has proposed Chaffee 4, Custer 2, Frémont 7 – but that doesn’t seem to fit the law.
EVEN IF THE LATTER were accepted by the court, it means the UAWCD would be controlled by Frémont County. In many water matters, the counties’ interests might generally coincide. We all have agriculture and we all have municipal users. River recreation is an important part of the tourism economy in Chaffee and Frémont.
But the real divide in local water management isn’t primarily a geographic dispute between Upstream and Downstream – it’s just not that far from Buena Vista to Salida or Westcliffe. Instead, the division works like this:
Municipal. This also includes entities like the Round Mountain Water and Sanitation District that serves Westcliffe and Silver Cliff.
Agricultural. Mostly they are traditional irrigators who grow hay and raise cattle. If eastern Frémont were included, this would extend to orchards and small farms.
Developers. They buy augmentation water from the UAWCD so they can sell small acreages with well permits.
Recreation Interests. They want water in the Arkansas River so they can sell float trips.
How well has the UAWCD accommodated those interests?
It’s done a world-class job for developers, and in the process has amassed a small fortune in its “enterprise fund,” which handles the augmentation program.
I’ll be charitable on the agricultural front. The UAWCD has joined in litigation to protect existing ag users. But on the other hand, the augmentation process has encouraged suburban-style development in what used to be ag land — and it’s darned difficult to continue ranching in a region dominated by hobbyists and mini-ranchettes, and the consequent exorbitant land prices.
AS FOR MUNICIPAL water usage, the UAWCD has had a competitive relationship, rather than a co-operative one, with the City of Salida, according to former City Administrator Scott Hahn. And the UAWCD may end up litigating with Round Mountain, the water supplier for Westcliffe and Silver Cliff, because the UAWCD wants to enable a development near Westcliffe with septic systems that would sit close to Round Mountain’s wells. Poncha Springs has also been concerned about UAWCD activity in its growth area. In short, UAWCD is not working on behalf of municipal water users, and often appears to be working against them.
As for recreation, the state now allows in-stream flow rights for recreation. Late last year, the Chaffee County Commissioners agreed to file for in-stream flow rights to protect rafting and other river activities in Buena Vista and Salida. But the UAWCD voted to oppose that filing.
In ways, that’s odd, because another conservancy district, the Upper Gunnison River WCD, was the lead agency in pursuing an in-stream flow for Gunnison’s river park.
And to make it all odder and more disturbing, remember that the UAWCD and Chaffee County are both supported by local taxes, as is Salida, which is where the proposed water park is. Yet soon they may all be fighting over water rights, and local citizens will get to pay for all of the lawyers involved.
There’s certainly nothing in the charter of a Water Conservancy District which requires it to oppose the actions of elected officials, like mayors or county commissioners, but it always seems to work that way here. Of the four interests I listed, UAWCD has whole-heartedly advanced only one: developers, and has worked against two, municipal and recreation.
So how can we fix the district so that it works on behalf of the entire public around here? There’s an old American revolutionary motto, “No taxation without representation.” UAWCD collects property taxes, but we don’t vote for its directors – they’re appointed by a judge.
Or to be precise, they’re almost always appointed by a judge. It is possible to petition for an election. And that has happened several times with the Upper Gunnison River WCD, and it happened here in 2001 with the election of Jeff Ollinger to the board. He’s been a good director, and he’s seeking another term – this time, from the judge, rather than an election.
The state law needs to be changed so that conservancy district boards are treated just like other special district boards – the public gets to vote for school boards, hospital boards, fire-district boards, sanitation boards, etc. We don’t always elect the best people, sometimes there’s a shortage of good candidates, and there are often other problems. But as Winston Churchill once observed, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
Paul Weissman, a Democratic state representative from Louisville, introduced a bill two years ago to require elections for WCD boards. The Republican legislature killed it in committee. Democrats were in charge this year, but Weissman didn’t even bother, since he was assured that Gov. Bill Owens would veto it, and there weren’t votes to over-ride it.
SO PETITIONS are so difficult as to be nearly impossible, and the state law won’t change in the near future. That leaves a “work within the system” option – recruiting good candidates for WCD boards, and then hoping that the judge will appoint them.
That could happen here. The timing for this edition is such that it may go to press before the judge names three UAWCD directors to four-year terms, so I don’t know what will happen.
But it does seem clear that the UAWCD hasn’t been looking out for all of the water interests of the Upper Arkansas valley, and given that, why would a bigger district be any improvement?
The public may get a chance to speak up, though, at least in eastern Frémont County. The district collects a property tax, and people there would have to start paying that tax if the district expands.
Does that constitute a “tax increase” under the TABOR Amendment to the Colorado Constitution? If it does, then there has to be a public vote in Frémont County. Common sense would say that if a new tax appears on your bill, it’s a tax increase.
But the UAWCD says it isn’t, since the district isn’t increasing its tax rate. And the district does not want a public vote in eastern Frémont.
Sorting this out could provide lucrative employment for half-a-dozen attorneys.
Come to think of it, though, that’s how water matters usually proceed in Colorado. And in the meanwhile, we keep sending tax money to the unelected UAWCD, even though it works against the people we do elect. Is this a strange country, or what?
