Category: 2010 Colorado Legislation

Energy policy — nuclear: Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste and other state conservation groups hope for 2010 legislation to clean up the Lincoln Park/Cotter Mill superfund site

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From The Pueblo Chieftain (Tracy Harmon):

Jeff Parsons of the Western Mining Action Project said he believes Colorado taxpayers should not foot the bill for cleanup of “bad uranium operations.” “It is common sense to require all uranium operations to clean up their toxic messes. Period,” Parsons said…

Cotter Mill Manager John Hamrick said the company spends a lot of money on cleanup projects. On tap this year are plans to place a dirt cover over the secondary impoundment, tearing out of old tanks and cleanup of sites where the company used to store ore at the mill.

Also on tap in the Legislature this year is the state health department’s plan to ask for a new penalty section on the state’s radiation-control regulation. Under that proposal, any violator (be it Cotter, an X-ray company or other radiation users) of the radiation-control act could be subject to up to $15,000 daily fines.

In an effort to raise funds for their 2010 legislative effort, Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste and Environment Colorado has scheduled a banquet from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 30 at the Abbey Event Center, 2951 E. U.S. 50. The event will feature dinner, guest speakers, door prizes, plus a live auction and silent auction. Cost is $50 to $100 per person depending on the level of support desired. Reservations are required by Monday. Call Pam Kiely of Environment Colorado at 1-303-929-8702 or visit online.

More nuclear coverage here and here.

State Representative Kathleen Curry plans to introduce bill to allow boaters access to streams running through private property

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From the Gunnison Country Times:

The debate over whether there’s actually a “right to float” in Colorado played out locally before. In a high-profile case a few years ago, an outfitter who had historically boated the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River was sued for civil trespass, for floating through private land. The company, Cannibal Outdoors, ultimately went out of business amidst the litigation.

The case was settled out of court, so the matter never became part of case law. The question of whether landowners have grounds for such civil suits has lingered in the minds of proponents of the state’s $142 million river running industry ever since. It’s widely recognized that current law protects boaters from a criminal charge if they don’t touch bottom while floating through private property. Likewise, it’s long been held that property owners of parcels through which rivers and streams flow own the underlying stream bed. “Both sides definitely have enough information to create their own philosophies about what these laws say,” said Bob Hamel, chairman of the Colorado River Outfitters Association and owner of Arkansas River Tours in Cotopaxi.

Local water attorney John Hill represented the landowners in the case on the Lake Fork, and has staunchly argued that there is no right to float in Colorado. He believes that landowners have the legal right to control access to waterways because they own the underlying streambed.

“We don’t think that’s the way it is or should be,” countered Hamel. “We’re trying to protect an industry. We’re being pushed.”

Hill, whose firm is currently representing the landowner on the Taylor River who is attempting to bar access by commercial outfitters, said that Curry’s bill is unconstitutional. Allowing commercial boaters to portage, he argued, is a “taking” with no prospect for just compensation. “This is a physical invasion taking,” he explained. “It’s authorizing people to go on private property.”[…]

Jackson Shaw, a Texas-based real estate development company, purchased what has historically been called the Wapiti Ranch, six miles up the Taylor Canyon from Almont, for $20.5 million in late summer 2007. The approximately 2,000-acre hay meadow down-river of Harmel’s Resort is now the site of a subdivision development called Wilder on the Taylor. Company CEO Lewis Shaw II is a part-time resident of the nearby Crystal Creek community along the Taylor River. Historically, Scenic River Tours and Three Rivers Outfitting have guided float trips through the section of river that flows through the new development, without cause for alarm from the previous owner. That’s changed since Jackson Shaw became the new owners. Lewis Shaw has informed the two local outfitters that they won’t be allowed to continue floating the section of river that flows through the development, threatening legal action if they don’t abide. Wilder on the Taylor is what Hill’s partner and longtime local water attorney Dick Bratton called a “recreational fishing subdivision.” Jackson Shaw has conducted improvements on the property, and in the river, to improve the fishing, he said. Similarly, the Cannibal case was over the same competing interests. The landowners maintained a fishing lease on the section of water in question, with which they believed the frequent commercial raft trips interfered. “If this guy had owned this river in his family for the last hundred years I would feel somewhat differently,” Mark Schumacher, owner of Three Rivers, said of Lewis Shaw. “But he bought the property to make it a fishing (subdivision) and he knew that people floated through it. We just don’t want anything taken away that we’ve been doing for 20 years.”[…]

Curry plans to introduce the bill — which, she said, she agreed to carry for the two local outfitters — in coming weeks. She expects a constitutional challenge of the bill, should it be written into law, but views it as necessary for protecting commercial rafting in Colorado. Bratton, on the other hand, calls the proposal a “special interest” bill, because it would only protect two companies on a two-mile stretch of one river…

“In Colorado, it’s almost impossible to float a river without touching something,” said Curry. “The statute does not realistically address normal boating conditions in this state.”

More coverage from the Fort Collins Coloradoan (Bobby Magill):

Though the controversies sparking the bill originate along the Taylor River in Gunnison County, the bill could impact all commercially navigable rivers statewide, including the Poudre. “The need is, somebody who owns property could stop you from floating,” said one of the bill’s chief proponents, David Costlow of Rocky Mountain Adventures in Fort Collins. “There are a number of businesses that could be shut down.”

The bill, the River Rafting Jobs Protection Act, would allow commercial river outfitters to float on waterways that have historically been used for float trips. The bill would prevent the outfitters from being liable for criminal or civil trespass as long as they access the waterway via a public right of way.

Rafters would also be given the right to make “incidental” contact with the riverbank or the riverbed and a similar right to portaging, all of which today may lead to a trespassing charge. “The gist of the bill is that they cannot block the river and cannot deny the right of commercial outfitters to pass through,” Curry said Monday.

More 2010 Colorado legislation coverage here.

State Representative Sal Pace plans to introduce legislation requiring mitigation for transbasin diversions

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Here’s an editorial from the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel that downplays the chances of Pace’s bill getting to Govenor Ritter’s desk during the next legislative session. From the article:

…the sort of law being pushed by Pace has historically faced fierce opposition from Front Range water organizations.

It doesn’t help that Kathleen Curry, the Gunnison lawmaker who recently dropped her Democratic Party affiliation, lost her chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee in the process. Curry, an outspoken advocate of protecting Western Slope water from Front Range attacks, will no longer have the power she once did to shepherd such a bill through that important committee.

Pace’s bill, as important as it is, will likely be swimming upstream at the state Capitol.

More 2010 Colorado Legislation coverage here.

State Representative Sal Pace plans to introduce legislation requiring mitigation for transbasin diversions

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From The Pueblo Chieftain (Patrick Malone):

Pace said Friday he plans to introduce a bill during the upcoming Legislative session that would require advanced mitigation of economic and ecological effects on originating communities when water is transferred. On the other side of the fight are the communities that would be the water’s destination. And they’ve prevailed in the past.

Presently, a water judge can only consider senior water rights in determining whether to allow transfers. Pace said it’s archaic that ecological damage is not a consideration in the process. He pointed to Crowley County’s meager average annual household income for a family of four – $18,000 – as an example of the aftermath of water transfers conducted without regard to economic or ecological impact on a region. Generally, he said, urban centers are sated at the expense of rural areas by benefiting from the transfers. Consequently, Pace’s proposed legislation would require water divisions seeking to receive transfers to reach economic and ecological mitigation agreements with the originating communities before the transfers could be approved in Water Court. If a mitigation agreement could not be reached, a judge would have to rule on one.

The existing law governing mitigation of water transfers – the Conservancy District Act – was adopted in 1937 and only requires mitigation when water transfers come from the Western Slope across the Continental Divide. Pace’s bill would extend that mitigation requirement to all transfers between two water districts. State Sen. Dan Gibbs, a Western Slope Democrat, is the bill’s Senate sponsor. A similar bill was proposed in 2004, but it died in the House.

Here’s a roundup of planned legislation from Arkansas Valley legislators, from Patrick Malone writing for The Pueblo Chieftain.

Here’s a look at some of the movers and shakers in the state legislature, from Joe Hanel writing for The Durango Herald.

Here’s a look at Northern Colorado legislators’ plans, from Bobby Magill writing for the Fort Collins Coloradoan.

More 2010 Colorado legislation coverage here.

State Representative Sal Pace plans to introduce legislation requiring mitigation for transbasin diversions

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From the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Charles Ashby):

A measure is to be introduced that would require water transfers from one river basin to another, such as the Western Slope to the Front Range, to include mitigation agreements, an issue that always creates turbulence between water users on both sides of the Continental Divide. Like a similar measure that nearly cleared the Colorado House in 2004, this bill would require anyone trying to divert river water to provide some sort of mitigation, which could come in the form of cash for a specific purpose or the promise to build a storage project in the basin where the water is taken.

Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, said he plans to introduce the controversial idea because he’s concerned rural areas of Colorado ultimately will be dried up as growing metropolitan areas on the northern Front Range continue to take water from the state’s farms and ranches. “It’s estimated that about 700,000 additional acre-feet of water will be diverted from farmland to feed population growth in Denver by 2050,” Pace said. “If that’s anywhere close to being accurate, it will turn many rural communities into ghost towns because they won’t have any water left.”[…]

Doug Kemper, executive director of the Colorado Water Congress, said his group is working with Pace, even though it vehemently opposed similar proposals in the past. While a handful of his group’s members, which consist of nearly 400 water buffaloes from around the state, have supported similar ideas, historically they’ve never come close to getting the required two-thirds majority of the Legislature to agree. “I remember the last time it was a very tight vote (in the House), but will some of the same people vote the same way? I don’t know,” Kemper said. “I would expect if it got to a (House) floor discussion that it would be similar, somewhere plus or minus six or seven votes. “The first thing we’re trying to do is better understand what the problem is that’s trying to be solved, and better define that problem. Representative Pace talks about the bill being on transmountain diversions, but I would read it to apply to all applications. That needs to be defined better.”

Pace and Kemper do agree on one thing: A new law approved by the Legislature during the 2007 session has opened the door for a full-fledged mitigation bill. For the first time in the history of the state’s complex water laws, that bill allowed water court judges to consider environmental impacts of withdrawing large amounts of water from a river. “That was groundbreaking, which helps me,” Pace said. “That was the first time that the judge could consider issues beyond just senior water users. That really opened the door.”[…]

[State Representative Kathleen] Curry said the mitigation issue needs to be placed before the Legislature, if nothing else, to have a discussion about the expected Front Range water shortage and what the state should do about it, particularly with the spectre of a multistate lawsuit. “This is a statewide problem whether we want it to be or not,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt to point out the pitfalls associated with transfers. (Pace’s) bill is an incremental approach that I think is defensible, though it doesn’t go as far as some people would like.”

More 2010 Colorado legislation coverage here.

State Representative Kathleen Curry plans to introduce bill to allow boaters access to streams running through private property

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From the Colorado Independent (David O. Williams):

State Rep. Kathleen Curry of Gunnison wants to remove the ambiguity this coming legislative session with a bill that would allow licensed outfitters to not only raft, kayak or fish on rivers and streams crossing private property, but also make contact with the riverbank without trespassing. “The bill defines incidental contact and portaging and limits [thos activities] to just when necessary for safety reasons,” Curry said. “[The definition] doesn’t include stops to eat or go to the bathroom or anything like that– that would still be trespassing– but what would not be trespassing is if there’s a low bridge and it’s too dangerous to go under it and you have to portage [carry a raft on shore] around it.”

Curry said there’s also something in the bill for landowners. It would for the first time clarify that landowners are not liable if a boater or angler is injured portaging or during incidental contact on their property.

What prompted the bill, which is backed by the Colorado River Outfitters Association (CROA), was a case last summer in Curry’s district in which an out-of-state landowner bought a parcel for development and informed two permitted rafting companies they could no longer navigate that section of the Taylor River.

More whitewater coverage here.

State Representative Kathleen Curry plans to introduce bill to allow boaters access to streams running through private property

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From the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Charles Ashby):

Though settled in other Western states, the question of whether rafters, kayakers and fishing enthusiasts have a right to use Colorado’s waterways when they go through private land remains a sticking point between those users and private landowners. While there is court precedent on the subject, exactly what it allows is still in dispute, the Gunnison lawmaker said. Curry, who shocked the state this week with her announcement she is leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent, plans to introduce a measure to allow commercial rafters to traverse private land even without a landowner’s consent.

The issue was sparked anew this summer when a Texas developer, Lewis Shaw, purchased thousands of acres of land on the Taylor River in Gunnison County with the intent of reselling it as exclusive 35-acre ranches. As a result, the developer notified two long-established rafting companies that they no longer could cross the land, Curry said…

Danny Tomlinson, a Denver lobbyist who represents a landowners’ group that routinely opposes such measures, said he only recently heard about the proposal and wouldn’t comment on it, either. He did, however, say his group doesn’t want to see anything that alters People v. Emmert, a 1979 Colorado Supreme Court case that ruled rafters who touch the bank or riverbed are trespassing, although some lawyers say that case affects even those who merely float through. “We’ve had concerns about various different floating, fishing, trespassing kinds of legislation,” Tomlinson said of Creekside Coalition, a group of private landowners that is expected to oppose this measure, too. “We haven’t seen a copy of the bill, so it’s hard to quantify what our concerns would be, but we would have serious concerns if it made significant changes to the Emmert case.”

Bob Hamel, president of the Colorado River Outfitters Association, said the issue is one of jobs and fairness. Hamel said the courts have long held that the water flowing down the state’s streams are publicly owned and that the right to float on it shouldn’t be an issue. “We’re not trying to take away the landowner’s rights, but rafting is a $142 million business in Colorado, and it employs hundreds of people. We’re just trying to protect jobs and people’s livelihoods,” Hamel said.

More whitewater coverage here.

State Representative Sal Pace plans to introduce legislation to reduce impacts of out of basin water transfers

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From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):

State Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, on Friday pitched a concept for a bill that would encourage voluntary agreements for mitigation in water transfer projects from one basin to another, rather than court-ordered conditions. “With this bill, it is my hope that generations from today our grandchildren can still enjoy a vibrant rural Colorado,” Pace told the Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District board. Pace is trying to contact as many water groups as possible before developing a final draft, which he wants to have in hand by the end of November.

Earlier this week, the Pueblo Board of Water Works indicated it would like to see some version of the bill before supporting it. The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District voted unanimously to support the concept of the bill. The Fountain Creek board reserved its comments until a more complete proposal is developed, although Pace said he would not change the basics of the bill he provided in an outline…

The bill would encourage mitigation between conservancy districts and those making water transfers between state water divisions. If agreements could not be reached, water judges could choose to apply the same sorts of conditions now available only to the Western Slope in transfers by conservancy districts under 1937 legislation…

“The traditional battle lines are municipalities vs. rural conservancy districts,” Pace said. “The bill would (provide incentives for) cooperation much like this board came together in a cooperative fashion.”

More coverage from The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):

The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District board voted unanimously to back Pace’s concept for a bill that would encourage those who take water from rural areas to work with conservancy districts to develop mitigation plans. “Our mission is to protect the water in the Arkansas Valley,” said Reeves Brown, Pueblo County director. “This does that.”[…]

The idea is to provide an incentive for urban areas that purchase water rights in other basins to voluntary agree to mitigation, rather than “rolling the die” in water court, Pace said. “I want to insure that when water is moved in the future, it is done in a responsible manner, so we don’t look like Arizona, with pockets of communities and a lot of dry land in between,” Pace told the board. The bill would provide incentives, using existing provisions of law, rather than attempting to penalize violations after the fact. It would not interfere with the ability to sell water rights or how water rights are used, Pace said. “There’s no language to limit a person’s ability to buy or sell water,” Pace said…

Executive Director Jay Winner said Pace’s legislation is timely, given the potential pressure the Arkansas Valley faces. Winner, as a member of the Interbasin Compact Committee, sees no breakdown in the West Slope’s resistance to another transmountain water project. “There is nothing in place for slowing down or stopping more buy-and-dry. We need to put a fence around the Arkansas Valley,” Winner said.

A study of available water in the Colorado River basin will find there are at least 440,000 acre-feet of water to develop, but the West Slope will claim it needs it for future development, Winner said. Meanwhile, Denver-area communities become ever more thirsty, he said. Parker has built a 75,000 acre-foot reservoir and plans by the South Metro Water Supply Authority include pipelines into the Arkansas Valley. “When 2050 hits and the state’s population doubles, we need to think how we’re going to feed all those people. We need to keep agriculture in place,” Winner said. “Sal is moving in the right direction.”

More transmountain/transbasin diversion coverage here.