The Animas-La Plata project is at the halfway point, according to the Denver Post. From the article, "This summer, the hard-fought, long-stalled Animas- La Plata water project - long a dream for American Indian tribes and farmers and a nightmare for environmentalists - is looking like a reality...
"Lake Nighthorse, named for former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a project proponent, is scheduled to begin filling in 2009. The $500 million reservoir will hold 120,000 acre-feet of water, storing it for the state's two Ute tribes and for towns in the area that choose to buy the water. The compromise reservoir, often called A-LP Lite, will pump about one-third as much water from the Animas River as first proposed. It no longer involves the La Plata River for which it also was named. And farmers, who dreamed of its abundant water supply for generations, were cut out of the project by 1998. But for many environmental groups and taxpayer advocates, local and national, even A-LP Lite was a symbol of all that was wasteful and wrong-headed about federal water policy - another big, expensive dam that would deplete a wild river, flood a wildlife corridor and feed massive residential development in a quiet corner of the West...
"Assistant Secretary of the Interior Mark Limbaugh said A-LP is a critically important project because it satisfied century-old Indian water claims. Eighty percent of the water is earmarked for tribes."
Category: Colorado Water
6:20:18 AM 
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