
The Pueblo Chieftain caught up with 3rd Congressional Representative John Salazar, to get his opinion on the 40 year contract for Fry-Ark storage for Aurora. From the article, "A full environmental impact statement is needed on the proposed contract between the Bureau of Reclamation and Aurora, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., said Wednesday. The 3rd Congressional District's representative in Washington said the expanded look at the environmental, social and economic impacts is needed to get the full picture of how water transfers have affected the Arkansas Valley. 'I can't understand why people are sweeping things under the rug,' Salazar said. 'How can they say there's not going to be an economic impact on the Arkansas Valley by taking water out of it?'[...]
"'They seem to be taking the cities' side in this,' Salazar said. What are people so afraid of? They're afraid we'll uncover the true impacts of moving this water out of the basin.' Salazar asked Reclamation to do a full EIS in his comments last fall, a move that was also requested by both the Lower Arkansas and Upper Arkansas water conservancy districts, Trout Unlimited and numerous citizens. Reclamation replied that the environmental assessment was needed to determine if a full EIS is needed."
There you have it. This battle is really about moving water out of basin, water that Aurora has rights to, and can use to extinction if they can move it.
From email from Kara Lamb (Bureau of Reclamation): "As the Final EA and FONSI on Aurora circulates, I've been receiving some good questions. An important one I thought might interest everyone has to do with the list of Reasonably Foreseeable Projects included in the cumulative effects analysis.
"In that list, we named the original No Action alternative that was under consideration for the proposed Southern Delivery System, 'SDS.' At the end of last month, Reclamation accepted a revised No Action Alternative for Colorado Springs Utilities, one of a possible four participants in SDS. The revised alternative we accepted is different from the original No Action alternative included in the cumulative effects analysis for the Aurora contract that we released last week.
"When we designed the model and the studies for the Aurora EA, we used the best information available at that time. Even though the SDS No Action alternative has changed, it changed after the conclusion of our studies. Consequently, the FONSI draws the following conclusions:
"1. Beneficiaries and benefits of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project will not be negatively impacted by the Aurora Long Term Contract.
"2. In-district entities continue to have priority for storage and exchange excess capacity in the Fry-Ark Project.
"3. We found no significant impacts resulting from the Aurora Long Term Contract."
Category: Colorado Water
5:56:21 AM
|