COMensarations
Thursday, February 23, 2006
A Train Wreck In the Making
Most politicans don’t think beyond their term limitations. And most people all to often rely on them to do the long-term thinking.
As an old adage about politicans goes...
They only hope that their world should last just beyond their departure from it.
That seems to me to be an accurate report, from what I’ve seen of history. And it seems to be the sort of mentality behind HB 1124, Water Judge Approve Fallowing Contracts [HODGE--OWEN]. This bill will, as I understand it, allow people who own water rights to lease those rights to another individual or entity for an agreed period of time.
I’m not exactly sure WHAT the current state of affairs is with respect to water rights and non-useage of such is. I’m not a water lawyer. However, based on what this bill proposes, I get the distinct impression that the current state of affairs is that the holders of water-rights can either use them or sell them. No leasing is allowed. With that understanding, allow me to go into why I think this bill is a VERY BAD IDEA....
I’m currently taking the Master Gardener’s course for Pueblo County. It’s interesting. I get to learn all kinds of great things that will help me manage my homes wonderful lawn, trees and gardens. Not to mention growing better tomatoes than I can get a Safeway. And, with a bit of luck and ingenuity, all year round; we’re talking hydroponics in the Sun Room.
Yesterday’s class dealt with Irrigation. And the guest instructor was a subject matter expert par excellent. In the early part of the block of instruction he touched on HB 1124; better sought on the State Houses’ web-site as HB06-1124. The instructor was interested in the bill and initially gave the impression that he favored it. His comment being that the people who set up the current system of water rights, back in the early 1900s, had not considered the possibility of explosive growth in Colorado.
I beg to differ. Back in the early 1900s, Colorado had not been fully occupied. There was LOADS of space for people to move into. There was plenty of water back then, all divided amongst the various water basins. But I’ll get to more on that later. Back onto HB 1124.
So, here are the large metro areas to the north attempting to change the law to benefit their particular purposes. How so? By legislative fait accompli, a very LONG TERM fait accompli at that.
Here’s how this train wreck happens.
Current situation is that Aurora, Parker, Denver, et al. need water in order to support their growth plans. More water than is available in the South Platte basin AND what they have arranged for by buying up water rights where they are available. So they are looking for water rights beyond those they already own.
Apparently there are some things in place that will not allow them to buy any more such water rights from the Arkansas basin. Probably all those water rights owned by farmers and ranchers and municipalities along the Arkansas.
Well, a lot of farmers and ranchers could make a LOT more money from leasing their rights to cities than in raising crops or cattle. So, why not use their legislative power to change the laws so that this option could be made possible. Seems reasonable at face value. Look upon it as free-market capitalism at its best.
However, as I said, most politicians don’t think beyond their end of office and passing from this life. Here’s how I see the scenario of the train-wreck.
[1] This bill goes into law.
[2] Farmers down the Arkansas lease their water to the cities for a specified period of time.
[3] The cities take the water out of the Arkansas basin to their place.
[4] Since this is not THEIR water, i.e., it is imported water, they can use it to, get this, ‘extinction’.
Here comes the ‘crash’.
[5] At a later date, say the end of the lease, the farmer/rancher decides to use his water for another purpose. Maybe he wants to raise things again. Perhaps another entity wants to lease the water right at a better price.
In this situation, the municipality has to either (1) find another source of water or (2) go dry. If it cannot find another source of water for the burgeoning population that theretofore had been supported by the leased water, what is it going to do? Imagine a city without drinking water for a quarter of it’s population.
So, here’s where the fait accompli comes into play. There IS a third option for the city. It could go to court. And in court it could point out the horrible situation that the farmer/rancher has put the population of Aurora in by REFUSING to continue the lease. What do you think the court will decide?
Well....in my opinion, considering the grave impact on the large population of the city, I suspect it would rule that the farmer/rancher MUST continue the lease, indefinitely. However, even if it was a conservative court, i.e., it believed that the law should be obeyed and told the city to sleep in the bed of their own making, the large municipalities would do what they are planning to do now; change the law to suit their purposes. They’d just go into the legislature and change HB 1124 to read that it is a permanent lease, e.g., a sale of the water right.
This touches on my pet peeve, the 1962 Warren Court decision of Baker v. Carr, where the Supremes destroyed the balance of legislative power between the municipal and rural areas by making the state senate nothing more than a glorified lower house. Whenever anything in the law displeases the large metro areas, they’ll just get together and change the law; rural areas be damned. It makes all law for the sake of Denver, Aurora, Parker et al and nothing for the state as a whole.
We’re seeing it in play now with HB 1124 and the short-sighted legislators are thinking this is great. But as I said, most politicians don’t think very far.
As I said early, someone I heard recently didn’t think that the people who wrote up our water laws a century or so ago had thought about the growth of population in Colorado we are experiencing today. I don’t agree. I think they WERE thinking of growth in Colorado. They just thought along the long-term lines. And, knowing that natural resouces drive growth, they decided to make the system a use-it or lose-it or sell-it-to-someone-else. Becuase that way, the growth would occur where the resources were.
It’s too bad such long-term thinking is not a component of our current lot. Or maybe they do. But they don’t care about Colorado. They just care about Aurora or Parker or Denver....
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