Water roundtable won’t lobby on spending bill

Matt Hildner

Daily Press Writer

MONTROSE — The Gunnison Basin roundtable will leave the legislation to the legislators.

The roundtable decided Monday to abandon any attempts to lobby for the alteration of a spending bill that would forward $500,000 to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for the study of water projects around the state. The study would look at six projects, including one that would pump water out of the Gunnison Basin.

After more than an hour of debate, in which the roundtable concluded that opening up the spending bill might be a tempting invitation to Front Range legislators, it moved, instead, to request that the CWCB include the roundtable with the scope of work to spend the money should the legislation pass.

“Do you think you’ll have the political clout at the state house to preserve what you want without somebody from the East Slope doing what they want?” asked Bill Trampe, the Colorado River Water Conservation District’s representative to the roundtable.

The request for the study, made in the fall, sprang from a statewide water committee designed to come up with solutions to projected water shortages.

One of the study’s tasks would be to evaluate each project’s ability to yield three separate amounts of water, ranging in size from 100,000 acre feet to 250,000 acre feet.

Members of the roundtable objected to studying how to pump water out of the basin, while a number of in-basin questions remained unresolved.

Yet to be determined, they argued, is the amount of water needed to satisfy downstream demands on the Colorado River’s lower basin, endangered fish species, the operation of the Aspinall Unit and a water right for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

Rick Brown, the state’s section chief for intrastate water management and development, said the language in the funding legislation would be kept broad to allow the study to look at a range of scenarios, including future downstream requirements.

“We’re not trying to make something happen. We’re trying to prevent something,” said John McClow, a roundtable member who opposed the legislation to fund the study. “We’re trying to keep the cart behind the horse.”

Both Trampe and Marc Catlin, the manager of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association, argued the roundtable shouldn’t shy away from any attempts to find out how much unappropriated water is in the basin.

“If we say we need (250,000 acre feet) of it, we might have a better shot at it than we do if we don’t do anything,” Catlin said.

Prior to the final vote, however, Gunnison County appointee Dennis Steckel questioned whether Keith Catlin, Marc’s father, would forward the roundtable’s wishes to the CWCB.

That move prompted a profanity-laced defense of his father from Marc before the senior Catlin weighed in.

“One thing I want everybody to know, is the water on the Western Slope is just as important to me as it is to anyone of you sitting around the table, and I’m not going to give it away,” Keith Catlin said.

Contact Matt Hildner via e-mail at matth@montrosepress.com