Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Reuben M. Schafir). Here’s an excerpt:
April 21, 2024
Purgatory is seeking to access federal land so that it may capture water from Hermosa Creek for snowmaking and other municipal purposes. San Juan Nation Forest has objected to the access on the basis that the diversion could detrimentally impact the native cutthroat trout population. The ruling, issued Monday by Senior Judge William Martinez in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, passed judgment on the application of the Quiet Title Act and found that the statue of limitations had expired years before the lawsuit was filed on Oct. 27, 2022. The decision did not address the substantive questions around the resort’s access to Hermosa Creek water, and it does not put the entire issue to bed, San Juan National Forest Supervisor Dave Neely said.
For over two decades, SJNF officials have expressed concern about Purgatory’s attempts to divert 4.54 cubic feet per second of water from Hermosa Creek via an in-stream diversion and ground wells. A water court decreed two water rights in 1972 and 1982, respectively. The water is to be diverted from the East Fork of Hermosa Creek and its alluvial groundwater on land on the back side of the resort area. In a 1991 agreement, the SJNF made a trade with Purgatory’s corporate predecessors and acquired that land. In exchange, the resort acquired land on the front of the mountain.
The core of the case is whether Purgatory retained a right to an easement on the backside on National Forest land – a necessity to access and divert the water in question – when it conveyed the land in an agreement stating it was “free from all encumbrances.” Purgatory sought a quiet claims action that would have definitively affirmed its rights to the water and an easement or right of way necessary to access it under the federal Quiet Title Act.