Essay by Ed Quillen
Water – October 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
OUR STATE CONSTITUTION says that the water of Colorado belongs to the people of Colorado, but the people of Colorado seldom get to vote on water matters. You get the idea that water is just too important to be controlled by mere citizens and taxpayers.
So in a way, it’s rather refreshing to see statewide Referendum A on the off-year mail-in ballot this fall. And in Chaffee County, we also get to vote on a local water measure.
State Referendum A, if it passes, would allow the state to back up to $2 billion in revenue bonds for big water projects — the minimum size is $5 million. But which water projects would it fund?
We don’t know, and we won’t know before the election. The Colorado Water Conservation Board will be required to select at least two projects in different river basins, and the governor will be required to approve at least one of those by 2005.
Support for Referendum A has come primarily from the south metro suburbs (Arapaho and Douglas counties), as well as some agricultural interests along the South Platte River. Opposition is strong on the Western Slope, where Club 20 unanimously voted to oppose it.
One principal reason for opposition is that Referendum A, as written, does not require any mitigation in the basin of origin. Typically, that mitigation takes the form of “If you’re going to take 20,000 acre-feet a year, then you should build us 20,000 acre-feet of storage to protect our users.”
Since the Western Slope is the most likely place to go for water supplies, it’s little wonder that Referendum A is widely opposed on the sunset side of the Great Divide. But there are plenty of good reasons to oppose Referendum A that go beyond geography.
WE DON’T KNOW what we’re buying into. Greg Walcher, Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, says he has a list of more than 600 potential water projects in Colorado, and the Referendum A projects will be picked from that list, which will go to the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
Greg has always been truthful when he talked to me, and I believe him. But there’s no way to know which one, two, or twenty projects will be endorsed.
I mentioned this to Bob Ewegen, deputy editorial page editor at the Denver Post, and a supporter of Referendum A. “The problem with announcing the projects before the vote is that it will stir up opposition from people against a given project, and those whose favorite projects aren’t on the list will also oppose the referendum.”
That’s one way to look at it. Another way to interpret that is to say that “If people really knew what they were buying with Referendum A, then they wouldn’t vote for it.”
REFERENDUM A is not necessary, even if you believe Colorado needs more water development.
Denver has been able to build its water-supply system without any state-backed bonds, and so have Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and Aurora. Big cities have the money to build their own water supplies.
Rural areas get some help from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, as with the Fryingpan-Arkansas and Colorado Big-Thompson projects. But they haven’t needed state-backed bonds, either.
Sure, there have been some big water projects planned that were never built, like Two Forks, an immense reservoir which would have been near Bailey on the South Platte River. But those projects weren’t scrapped due to a lack of money or borrowing capacity.
Two Forks was vetoed in 1973 by Gov. John Vanderhoof, a Republican. And it was stopped again in 1989 by the Environmental Protection Agency of George Bush the Elder.
I mention political affiliation here because I’ve read some letters lately which blame Democratic environmentalists for keeping Two Forks from being built — and those letters also claim that Two Forks would have had sufficient storage to keep metro lawns green throughout the past five years of drought.
As a Democrat, I’d like it if my party could take credit for killing Two Forks. But fair is fair; these were Republican decisions.
Similarly, it wasn’t a shortage of funds which quashed Union Park. When Arapaho County went to the state Supreme Court in an effort to build a reservoir and diversion structures near Taylor Park in the Gunnison Country, the county had the money, but the water judge didn’t think there was enough available water to make the project worth the trouble.
Revenue bonds to back water projects won’t build anything if there isn’t enough water, or if a project is opposed by the state or federal government.
REFERENDUM A is being sold under false claims. In late July, I heard Gov. Bill Owens speak at the Western Water Conference in Gunnison. He’s the major supporter, and he explained some reasons for his support.
Among them was an argument that existing state agencies aren’t equipped to do this job. The Colorado Water Conservation Board doesn’t have the borrowing capacity, and the obscure Colorado Water Resources & Power Authority has never built a reservoir, he said.
I don’t know if it was ignorance or a lie, but the CWR&PA has built at least one reservoir: Stagecoach, in the Steamboat Springs area — and I’d sure feel more comfortable with Referendum A if our governor knew what he was talking about when he supported it.
REFERENDUM A puts too much power into too few hands. The decisions will be made by the Governor and the Colorado Water Conservation Board, whose members are appointed by the governor.
No matter how trustworthy you may believe Owens to be, he’s not immortal or immune to a presidential appointment, so there’s no guarantee he’ll be in office in 2005. And any governor operating in the last term of a term-limited tenure in office is not especially accountable to the voting public.
Further, if communities can get state-backed bonds through Referendum A, local governments may avoid holding elections when they want to expand their water systems — say, for example, to handle supplying a huge, new housing development.
New real estate developments generally result in higher local water rates and a diminished local quality of life, but tax proposals to fund roads, utilities, and the like, generally require an election. Referendum A, however, could provide a way to bypass public approval.
But shouldn’t we get to vote about these matters? They are, after all, about a public resource and about public money.
However, the trend is to cut citizens out of the loop (despite all of the hard work that has resulted in a few water conservancy district elections).
In the last session of the legislature, a bill passed to remove legislative oversight from loans made by the CWR&PA. And my own state senator, Lew Entz of Hooper, was the sponsor of the provision to remove the oversight.
“It’s their money,” he said. “Why should they have to go back to the legislature to get it approved.”
But it isn’t their money. The CWR&PA’s revolving loan fund was started with public money, and water is a public resource.
Last spring, the CWR&PA set aside $15 million — for a loan or possible grant — for an irrigation district in the Four Corners area that has a total assessed valuation of only $29 million. Outfits that operate that way require more public oversight, not less. And yet Colorado seems to be removing what little public oversight there is, and Referendum A would be another step in this bad direction.
…REFERENDUM A is being promoted as a way to protect agricultural water supplies — since it would help finance new water supplies for new suburbs so they won’t have to go after the farmers’ water.
Well, I like agriculture and productive open space as much as the next guy, but cities only use 6% of the developed water in Colorado, and industries use another 6%. The other 88% (or perhaps as low as 80%, depending on whose numbers you use) goes to agriculture.
If cities doubled their water usage, and took it all from agriculture, agriculture would still use at least 75% of the water in Colorado — and we would still have farms and ranches. But under those circumstances, we might avoid building some expensive new reservoirs and conveyance systems.
So there are a lot of reasons besides geography to oppose Referendum A. We don’t know what we’re getting, it doesn’t build anything useful that couldn’t be built with existing mechanisms, it’s being promoted with falsehoods, and it reduces governmental accountability.
How did such a monstrosity get on the ballot and even attract support from people who should know better?
Well, we had a drought. People were asking the state government to “do something.” The state can’t make it rain or snow, and it can hardly reduce Colorado’s population to a more modest size which the current water supply could support (especially if you consider that culling is the standard solution when wildlife exceeds the capacity of the land).
So the governor and a majority of the legislature came up with Referendum A, even though it doesn’t make much sense. But it doesn’t need to, perhaps. As Marc Reisner observed in his excellent book, Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water, “In time of drought, reason is the first casualty.”
CHAFFEE COUNTY’S local water election presents a different story, however. The Chaffee County Commissioners are putting up a ballot question: Do we want to adopt a 2% use tax on motor vehicles purchased outside the county, and use the money to buy water?
[New construction near irrigated field near Salida]
The county will get about half of the money, estimated at as much as $250,000 a year, and the other half will go to the three municipalities — Salida, Buena Vista, and Poncha Springs — with the shares based on motor vehicle registrations.
First there’s the tax question. I buy my vehicles in the county, so it wouldn’t affect me. But if you buy a pickup in Pueblo to get around the local sales tax, you’ll get hit with that tax at registration time.
While I’d prefer that taxes be somehow related to their purpose, I don’t have a real problem with this. Local dealers employ local people and pay local taxes, and out-of-town dealers shouldn’t enjoy a competitive advantage just because Chaffee County doesn’t have a use tax.
As for the municipalities? In essence, they could use their shares of the proceeds for anything above the treatment plant — more supply or storage or the like.
Currently, Salida is working to purchase Glen Vandaveer’s very senior water rights. The city doesn’t need more raw water at the moment, but if it owned that water, Salida could release it to meet river calls in dry years, and to protect the rest of its water supply. So this purchase is sensible for Salida, and if it can get some financial assistance from the county’s use tax, so much the better.
Poncha Springs could doubtless use some more money for its water supply, too, especially for projects like adding wells, which would also require buying some augmentation water. Thus more money would find good use there, too.
Buena Vista has good water rights, and a “no annexation” policy. But it could use more storage, and if there’s infill development, it might need more water.
So there are reasonable municipal uses for the money. Further, town boards and city councils are generally fairly accountable to the public — and when they aren’t, recall elections can happen quickly.
ON THE COUNTY LEVEL, however, I’m not quite so sanguine. If the county could only use the money to buy conservation easements, including water rights, on working ranches, I’d be all for it.
Much of our economy is based on scenic tourism, and preserving those green meadows is important for that.
Furthermore, every study I’ve seen says that rural residential development costs existing taxpayers — because new homes only pay about 75ยข in taxes for every dollar they cost in services. Thus conservation easements would save us money in the long run by preventing development that we would otherwise be forced to subsidize. And, the land would stay in private hands and continue to pay property taxes.
Whether you like them or not, at least with conservation easements you would know how county money is being spent and what purpose it serves.
But the county commissioners want more flexibility in how they spend money on local water.
If the county buys water rights, however, they have to put the water to beneficial use. So does that mean they’ll be selling or leasing water to developers?
And if they do get into the water business, aren’t they duplicating the job of the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District?
There was talk of using purchased water to “recharge local aquifers.” That is, to make sure there’s water in the well in rural subdivisions. Or, “pump all you want, because the county will make sure there’s always water.”
That doesn’t sound like a sensible use of public funds. And besides, there’s no way to take care of every aquifer in the county without building a distribution system — which would cost a lot more than $100,000 a year.
So I have some qualms about the Chaffee County water referendum. But I do think that we’re capable of overseeing our local elected officials, both town and county, to insure that the tax goes toward desirable ends: good town water supplies and continued scenic assets. Thus I’ll vote for it, although not as eagerly as I will vote against Referendum A.
— Ed Quillen
