GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo., July 17 – After a year of polite discussion about a proposed pipeline that would send water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Colorado’s urban corridor along the Front Range, the gloves are coming off.

Directors of the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District are being advised by Eric Kuhn, the agency’s general manager, to oppose the project.

It’s unclear whether sufficient water in the Colorado River basin remains to be developed, says Kuhn. The legislature, he notes, has asked for a study to determine the remaining availability.

Kuhn also predicts that the transmountain diversion could harm the interests of Western Slope residents, particularly farmers, should sustained drought occur, as many climate scientists warn could happen.

Million disputes Kuhn’s logic. “I don’t believe the Chicken Little, the sky-is-falling argument,” he says. The way to address global warming-caused drought, he says, is to provide additional water storage and delivery. Flaming Gorge, although in Utah and Wyoming holds 3.8 million acre-foot that Colorado could draw upon.

“The risk is ours, not his,” says Million, responding to Kuhn’s recommendation.

Directors of the agency are scheduled to consider Kuhn’s advice at a meeting today and tomorrow. The district encompasses 15 Western Slope counties, from Steamboat to Ouray. Eagle

Meanwhile, Million has applied to the Bureau of Land Management for a right-of-way across Wyoming. He has also applied to the Bureau of Reclamation, which administers the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, for a contract for water in the reservoir.

Various Big Straws

Ever since the drought of 2002, Coloradans have been talking about big straws. Most Coloradans – about 88 percent – live east of the Continental Divide, while about 75 percent of water falls on the Western Slope. Relatively little of that Western Slope water in the headwaters near ski towns remains unspoken for, and Front Range cities are laying plans to capture those final pails.

What water that remains is far downstream, west of Grand Junction, or on the Yampa River, where Steamboat Springs and Craig are located.

Hence the visions of big straws, or pipelines.

One such straw has been advocated for decades by David Miller, who envisions a reservoir near Crested Butte at a site called Union Park. But courts have ruled no extra water exists there, so he would have to divert downstream of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, nearly to the town of Delta. The idea hangs by the slimmest of threads.

A 2003 study conducted by state officials found 15 potential big straw alignments, ranging in cost from $3.7 billion to $15 billion. The most attractive alternative is a pipeline along I-70 to the Continental Divide near the Climax Mine. The study found no fatal flaws but many problems. It has spawned no proposals.

A more formal idea was announced last year, this time by the Northern Colorado Water Conservation District. The district operates the Colorado-Big Thompson project on behalf of Greeley, Fort Collins, and other cities as well as farmers in the South Platte River Valley.

This pipeline could draw 20 percent of the Yampa River’s annual yield from a reservoir west of Craig 250 miles to the Front Range. Presumably the buyers for this water, as for Million’s water, would be cities, particularly Denver’s south metro area. Water prices have been escalating even more rapidly than real estate, in some cases hitting $20,000 an acre-foot.

The Yampa is Colorado’s most unallocated and untrammeled river. No dams block the main stem as it flows into Dinosaur National Park. In that basin, the pumpback has spawned both cheers and catcalls.

Brian Werner, spokesman for Northern, said a coalition of interests, probably including state government, must be aligned before the project can move forward. That coalition, he says, must include the Western Slope.

“The only way you ever build something like this is if you make everybody happy,” he explained.

But the Northern District is also saying that plans should be shelved until Colorado, as ordered by the Legislature last winter, conducts a study to better determine how much water Colorado retains under the compact entitlements.

The most realistic estimates, said Werner, range from 300,000 to 700,000.

Outside-the-Box Thinking

Million’s proposal for what he insists can be up to 165,000 acre-feet is the most novel of the straws.

A one-time farmer and real-estate investor, Million had returned to Colorado State University to work on a doctorate in economics. Studying at the university library one evening in 2003, Million paused before a Colorado map and began studying the Green River.

The river forms south of Wyoming’s Jackson Hole, in the Wind River Mountains, entering Colorado briefly near Dinosaur National Park.

The Green carries nearly as much water as the Colorado River when the two meet near Moab.

Million studied the map, eying the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and hit upon an idea that apparently no one had thought of before. Why not divert water from that reservoir? It’s a U.S. government facility, not the property of any one state. He envisions twin 42-inch diameter pipes sloshing the water along Interstate 80 through Wyoming.

From Laramie the pipes would descend to off-channel reservoirs near Fort Collins, and from there the water would be distributed to farms and to cities as far south as Colorado Springs.

Cities will want the high-quality Green River water instead of buying up farms for their water rights, says Million. He also argues the new supplies from Wyoming would cause Front Range cities to drop plans for additional headwater diversions from Grand Lake to Aspen.

Million says he has unidentified backers for the project, which he estimates will cost $2 billion to $3 billion. He estimates annual pumping costs at $60 million annually.

Unusual Private Venture

Million’s idea was the first major new water idea in several decades in Colorado. The reception has been polite, if in some cases skeptical. But the water committee for Club 20, the Western Slope advocacy group, gave Million a friendly reception this winter. In May, The Denver Post lent an editorial pat-on-the-back.

Without mentioning Million’s project, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregg Hobbes agreed with the concept of additional storage as an answer to global warming-induced drought.

But Million’s plan has also been met by what Ed Quillen, publisher of a Salida-based magazine called Colorado Central, calls hostility. He believes that major water organizations see Million invading what they consider to be their turf. Nearly all water projects of the last century were conceived by public or quasi-public agencies. Million’s is essentially a private venture.

“I think there is a lot of hostility to a private project,” says Quillen, who also writes columns for The Denver Post.

Doug Kemper, executive director for the Colorado Water Congress, a consortium of water interests, agrees that few people in the contemporary era are familiar with private, non-government organizations benefiting from delivery of public water resources.

That said, precedents abound. The state’s first major transmountain water diversion project, the Grand River Ditch, located north of Grand Lake, was done by Fort Collins-based company, Water Supply & Storage. Private companies delivered water to Denver for the first 60 years of the city’s existence. The Homestake water diversion project began as a private enterprise in the 1950s that then paired with two municipalities, Colorado Springs and Aurora. More recently, ski companies from Winter Park to Vail have partnered with local governments to create water storage projects.

In sheer volume, Million’s project is ambitious. The Bureau of Reclamation believes the reservoir has 165,000 acre-feet would be available, and possibly less, depending upon downstream needs of endangered species, says Dave Truman, head of resource management division at the Salt Lake office. Million believes the Green River system could, without harming other needs, accommodate a withdrawal of 250,000 acre-feet

By comparison, the Colorado-Big Thompson project, which was specifically enabled by federal largesse, diverts 213,000 acre-feet annually.

Is Water Really Available?

How much water remains for Colorado to develop under the inter-state compacts of 1922 and 1948 is unclear. Those compacts assumed more water in the Colorado River and its tributaries than has generally been the case.

Flows could drop further. Many climatologists predict that the warming climate will make drought-like conditions persistent in coming decades, reducing river volume by at least 10 percent, possibly much more.

Should this happen, Colorado could have no additional water left to develop – and indeed, some current water diversions may be curtailed in order to meet compact obligations downstream in Arizona, Nevada and California.

While that threat “may be years or decades away,” says Kuhn in a memo to River District directors, “my concern is that because the project is proposing to divert water to the East Slope, where the water could not be physically returned to the West Slope, the risks are almost entirely on the West Slope, primarily on West Slope agriculture.”

Ken Neubecker, vice president of Colorado Trout Unlimited, shares that concern. Sites such as Durango, Grand Junction and Rangely could theoretically grow now by developing unallocated water in the Colorado River system. If Colorado has no water left to develop, the towns and cities will instead look to buy farms for their water rights. Thus, Western Slope water would ultimately be sacrificed to save Eastern Slope farms.

Unlike the other projects, Million’s project is moving ahead. The right-of-way application for along I-80 is now in a preliminary phase of review, says Walt George, the national project engineer for the BLM.

He says the four federal agencies involved – the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Reclamation – are discussing which agency should have lead jurisdiction.

“More power to him if he can make it happen,” says the Northern District’s Werner of Million. “We think he has a few more hurdles in front of him than he thinks has in front of him.”