Brief by Central Staff
Water – July 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
This is the centennial year for one of the biggest players in the Mountain West — the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. It was founded on June 17, 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Newlands Act, named for Rep. Francis G. Newlands of Nevada.
It represented a federal attempt to succeed where private, local and state efforts had failed in making the desert bloom. Initially, reclamation dams were to be financed by public-land sales (the land would presumably increase in value if irrigation water were available), but then electricity sales became a driving force.
The Bureau has certainly been active in this part of the world during the past century. There’s the Fryingpan-Arkansas project with the Boustead Tunnel and Turquoise Lake near Leadville, as well as Pueblo Reservoir east of Cañon City.
Another U.S.B.R. product near Leadville is the Mt. Elbert Pumped Storage Power Plant. The San Luis Valley has the Closed Basin Project.
The biggest facilities lie west of Gunnison atop what used to be the Gunnison River — the Aspinall Complex of three reservoirs (Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, Crystal) along with related dams, power plants, recreation areas, and the like.
Add all those together, and you see a force as influential as the mines and railroads of yore — and one that hasn’t received nearly as much attention.
That may change. Burec’s first century will be the focus of the annual Colorado Water Workshop at Western State College in Gunnison. It runs from July 31 through Aug. 2 with the theme “Reclamation at the Century Mark: The Legacy and the Challenge.”
Among the scheduled speakers are John W. Keys, U.S. Commissioner of Reclamation; Brit Storey, the Bureau’s senior historian; and Greg Hobbs, a Colorado Supreme Court justice. And there’s a lot more on the schedule, including an examination of the tension between the “Old West diversion culture” and the “New West in-stream culture.”
For more information about the workshop, go to www.western.edu/water on the internet. Brochures and registration are available for the asking from 970-943-2055 or water@western.edu.
