“The cost to Colorado taxpayers and our economy that would result from the development of the Flaming Gorge pipeline would be devastating. This project would also increase the risk of a compact call that would hurt our state’s water users,” the letter (pdf) from 118 affected businesses reads.

Last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reaffirmed an earlier decision to deny a rehearing of Aaron Million’s permit application to build a lucrative 578-mile pipeline, which would annually siphon 80 billion gallons of water from Wyoming’s Green River to Colorado’s Front Range.

A state task force convened in January to review the proposal and it is set to finish in December.

Protect the Flows, a coalition of over 500 small business owners in the seven-state Colorado River region, recently released a report showing that the Colorado River and its tributaries support a quarter million U.S. jobs and generate $26 billion annually in economic output. In Colorado alone, the Colorado River supports about 80,000 jobs and about $9.6 billion in total economic output.

The Green River is a principal tributary to the Colorado River. (Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism)

A study by Western Resource Advocates indicated that the pipeline would take nearly a quarter of the Green River’s flow, resulting in a $58.5 million dollar annual loss to the region’s recreation economy. That same study reported that the water delivered to the Front Range by the pipeline would have to be sold at a price that is the most expensive in Colorado’s history. The threat of diversions has made the Green the nation’s second most endangered river, according to one group.

Messages left for Hickenlooper’s spokespeople were not immediately returned.

FERC deemed the application from Million’s company, Wyco Power and Water Inc., inadequate in February but Wyco returned the next month asking the agency to reconsider.

“We are not persuaded by any of Wyco’s unsupported arguments that it should be issued a preliminary permit for its proposed Regional Watershed Supply Project,” the commissioners wrote in their decision. “Therefore, we affirm the February 23 Order and deny Wyco’s request for rehearing.”

The region’s conservation community is aghast at the prospect of the pipeline sucking 81 billion gallons of water each year from the Green River, a tributary of the depleted Colorado River.

A section of the Green River below Flaming Gorge and above the Colorado River. (Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism)

“The Flaming Gorge Pipeline has been rejected more often than a freshman before prom,” Boulder-based Western Resource Advocates analyst Stacy Tellinghuisen said in a press release. “It doesn’t matter how you try to alter the proposal, or whose name is on top. You can change the wording. You can change the font. You can print it on a different color paper. It’s still too expensive, too harmful to the environment, and just not necessary for meeting future water demands.”

Pipeline opponents are calling on state officials to send a similar message to Million.

“The thousands of people in our region whose jobs depend upon a strong Colorado River system dodged another bullet today, but it’s time to move beyond this threat once and for all,” said Molly Mugglestone, coordinator of Protect the Flows, which is a a coalition of over 400 businesses. “Enough time and public money has been spent fixating on this one controversial idea, it’s time to bring people together to come up with a smarter way forward.”

State officials have assembled a special task force to study the viability of the Flaming Gorge pipeline. The task force commenced in January and is set to finish its work in December of this year. The pipeline would include three reservoirs, nine natural-gas-powered pump stations and six hydropower facilities.

A diverse collection of voices are speaking out against the threats to the Colorado River and its tributaries that support jobs and have a meaningful economic impact.

Million’s pipeline would take water from the Green River, which this week was ranked the second most endangered river in America in large part due to development pressures. In addition to Million, Parker Water & Sanitation District manager Frank Jaeger and others have similar ideas.

“Enough is enough. This is a strong signal to the state of Colorado to focus more time and attention on proposals that — unlike the Pipeline — are more ripe for serious consideration,” said Robert Harris, an attorney with Western Resource Advocates.

Wyco officials could not be reached for comment.

Both rivers made the annual “America’s Most Endangered Rivers” report released this morning. The Green River, the largest feeder to the Colorado River, ranked second on the list while the Crystal River ranked eighth. The Potomac River — dubbed “the nation’s river” as it provides drinking water to more than five million people around Washington, D.C. — was deemed the most endangered.

The report, compiled by the nonprofit advocacy group American Rivers, cites Fort Collins businessman Aaron Million’s proposed Flaming Gorge pipeline, as well as a competing diversion proposal by Parker Water & Sanitation District manager Frank Jaeger, as major threats to the world-class recreation, rural economies, critical fish habitats, and the water supply for the lower Colorado River Basin.

“Aaron Million and Frank Jaeger remain committed to build that pipeline,” Matt Rice, Colorado conservation director for American Rivers, said Monday. “There are a hundred reasons why it doesn’t make sense, why it’s a bad idea and why it’s not a responsible use of taxpayer money. We’re calling on Utah Governor Gary Herbert and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper to publicly oppose it.”

Wyoming Governor Matt Mead has already stated the proposed pipeline project that would span 578 miles across his state to Colorado’s Front Range would be misguided and overly expensive.

Rice noted that the Green River “faces an unprecedented number of threats” that include other less publicized water diversion proposals and the pressures from water-intensive energy exploration.

A new report lists the Green as the second most endangered river in America. (Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism)

“Our rivers and streams continue to be under assault from competing interests that too often do
not consider the value intrinsic in the ecosystems that rivers and streams create, nurture, and
sustain,” said Pitkin County attorney John Ely. “If we are to preserve our rivers, public awareness of the threats and impending changes facing these ecosystems is essential.”

Creating public awareness is the focus of the “America’s Most Endangered Rivers” report, which is sometimes criticized as elevating the problems of certain rivers above those of other equally endangered ones. But the timing of key decisions that determine the rivers’ fates is a big part of how the America’s Most Endangered Rivers report, now in its 27th edition, is compiled each year.

The Colorado River Water Conservation District, for example, is expected to soon defend its remaining rights to potentially dam the free-flowing Crystal that feeds the Roaring Fork in Carbondale. The district abandoned a plan for one large reservoir last year and it has downsized plans for another.

Rice said the report is not meant to “hammer” the river districts but rather to convince them they have an opportunity to foster goodwill with the public by preserving and protecting healthy rivers.

“We’d like to build support for a ‘wild and scenic river’ designation,” Rice said.

The American Rivers report does hammer Congress for its “relentless” attacks on the Clean Water Act. It asks lawmakers to shelve legislation that would roll back longstanding clean water regulations.

Other rivers listed in the report include the Chattahooche in Georgia, the Missouri, the Hoback in Idaho, the Grand in Ohio, the Skykomish in the Northwest, the Coal in West Virginia and the Kansas.

Fort Collins entrepreneur Aaron Million recently provided the Associated Press with his business plan, which reportedly would reap a net profit between $1.4 billion and $2.4 billion.

Opposition to Million’s proposal is fierce. The region’s conservation community is aghast at the prospect of the pipeline sucking 81 billion gallons of water each year from the Green River, a tributary of the already depleted Colorado River. The plan includes development of three reservoirs, nine natural-gas-powered pump stations and six hydropower facilities, the AP reported.

A section of the Green River below Flaming Gorge and above its confluence with the Colorado River, a section popular with rafters and canoeists. (Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism)

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission deemed the application inadequate in February but Million’s company, Wyco Power and Water Inc., returned last month asking the agency to reconsider.

“Aaron Million wants to drain and destroy the Green and Colorado rivers and part of the economy of Western Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah so that he can become a billionaire. The environmental community 100 percent opposes this project and will fight it as long as it takes,” wrote Gary Wockner, coordinator for Save The Colorado River campaign, in an email to The Colorado Independent last night.

Wyco would shepherd the project through the permitting process, the AP reported, while earning a management fee that could range from 0.25 percent to 3.0 percent of money raised for the pipeline.

Million reportedly has shown the business proposal to potential contractors. The estimated cost of the project is between $2.8 billion and $3.2 billion, with annual operating costs landing between an estimated $70 million and $90 million annually paid by water users, according to the AP.

Million has cited Colorado’s growing demand for water as the impetus of his ambitious plan.

A bidding war between farmers and the oil and gas industry at the state’s premier auction recently underscored the unquenchable thirst of the state’s bustling Front Range. Oil and gas drillers are providing new competition for farmers, the Denver Post reports, as they target large volumes of water for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” that have traditionally been used to grow crops.

Yet critics of Million’s pipeline say it would only add to Colorado’s mounting environmental problems.

“This project is irresponsible, unsustainable, and insanely expensive. Instead, the Front Range of Colorado needs to meet its water supply challenges by focusing on water conservation, better growth management, water recycling, and cooperative agreements with farmers,” Wockner wrote.

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Colorado entrepreneur Aaron Million has filed a new application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which last month deemed the proposal premature and short on specifics.

The Green River passing through The Gates of Lodore in northwestern Colorado. (Image courtesy of Jim Wark/Airphoto)

“Wyco contends that it will be counterproductive and cost-prohibitive to secure all necessary permits and authorizations to construct the pipeline without confirming the locations of the associated hydroelectric facilities,” the filing says.

Critics say the pipeline would drain 81 billion gallons of water each year from the Green River, a tributary of the already stressed Colorado River, and the state of Colorado projects the pipeline could cost as much as $9 billion to build. The Colorado River Water Conservation District, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, county and local governments in southwestern Wyoming and a multitude of conservation groups are opposing the potential pipeline that Million claims is needed for Colorado to meet its rising demand for water.

“FERC made the right decision in February,” said Matt Rice, director of the Denver-based chapter of American Rivers. “It is clear this is nothing more than a speculative project that if ever built would severely harm the recreational, economic, agricultural and natural values of the Green River. Mr. Million is grasping for straws. It is highly unlikely that FERC will reverse their decision.”

Gary Wockner of Save The Poudre added that “Mr. Million seems to think this process is like an Etch-A-Sketch, where he can just keep shaking and redrawing until he finally wears down the federal agencies and the opposition. The Flaming Gorge Pipeline is a fatally flawed concept that would devastate the Green and Colorado River ecosystems — we will fight it at every opportunity.”

The Colorado Water Conservation Board recently funded a “project exploration committee” that is considering the Flaming Gorge pipeline. The task force held its first meeting Jan. 12 in Silverthorne, and it is scheduled to continue meeting to discuss the pipeline through the end of the year.

Shell in-situ oil shale research project in Rio Blanco County (USGS photo).

“Water is the defining resource in the West,” Mike Chiropolos, chief counsel for Western Resource Advocates, told reporters on a conference call this week. “There is an enormous uncertainty of what the impacts are of utilizing large quantities of that supply.”

The report, “Oil Shale 2050 (pdf), comes in advance of the Bureau of Land Management’s meetings in Colorado and Utah next week that ask for public feedback to the Department of Interior’s plan to dramatically scale back the acreage of lands available for oil shale and tar sands development. Federal officials are proposing to cut the Bush-era oil leasing inventory from 1.9 million acres to 462,000 for oil shale and from 431,000 acres to 91,000 for tar sands.

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado, however, is sponsoring H.R. 3408, the “Pioneers Act,” which would revive the Bush-era plan to open vast amounts of public lands in Utah, Wyoming and western Colorado to oil shale and tar sands production. His bill made it out of the House Committee on Natural Resources last month, and House Speaker John Boehner has said oil shale revenues will partly pay for national transportation projects in the next five years.

Oil shale production, however, has yet to be proven commercially viable.

Oil shale is not to be confused with shale oil, which is oil trapped in rock formations. Shale oil only recently became a moneymaker as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” techniques have proliferated. Oil shale, in contrast, doesn’t actually contain oil; it contains kerogen, or fossilized algae, locked in rock that requires an extensive heating process for it to be extracted and refined into oil.

Just weeks ago, Chevron abandoned its federal oil shale leases in Colorado to focus on more feasible energy plays — the latest in a long list of oil shale projects gone bust. The most infamous is Exxon’s exit from the massive Colony oil shale project 30 years ago on “Black Sunday” that left communities in western Colorado in economic ruin.

The resource’s potential keeps companies coming back. Shell recently said it had produced 1,700 barrels of oil from an oil shale project on private land in western Colorado and that it is now going to break ground on oil shale development on BLM land. The world’s most extensive deposits are in the Green River Formation, which underlies western Colorado, eastern Utah, and southwestern Wyoming.

“The history of oil shale is, quite simply, a recurring period of hype followed by bust. Interspersed amongst these cycles, and fueling dreams of striking it rich, are a litany of politicians, speculators, and news stories playing up oil shale’s great promise,” reads the Western Resource Advocates report.

The report draws comparisons between one company’s recent claim that by 2025 in Utah it will be producing 50,000 barrels of oil per day. In 1980, Exxon claimed that by 2010 it would be producing 10 million barrels of oil per day from oil shale. Exxon’s project went bust two years later.

Western Resource Advocates also notes that oil shale production — one of the dirtier forms of energy — would hinder goals to curb carbon emissions. The group says that water in the Colorado River Basin is projected to decrease anywhere from 5 percent to 20 percent by 2050 because of climate change. Sucking more water out of the rivers for energy production will pit industry versus communities, and threaten the survival of fish such as the Colorado pikeminnow, humpback chub, bonytail, and razorback sucker, the group said.

“Already, because of fossil fuel development, certain rural areas of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming have worse air quality than Los Angeles,” the report states. “The oil shale debate must, likewise, evaluate the potential impacts on our climate. As explained in this report, oil shale is projected to produce roughly 25 percent to 75 percent more greenhouse gases than comparable quantities of conventional crude oil. Colorado has adopted the vitally important goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Other states are advancing similar goals. Large-scale production of oil shale would likely undermine these important goals.”

It’s not exactly Perrier-pricey, but pretty damn close, according to opponents of the massive proposed Flaming Gorge pipeline project that would pump water out of the Green River in southwest Wyoming and suck it back over the Continental Divide to Colorado’s Front Range.

Fort Collins developer Aaron Million recently revised his plans for the project and re-filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), according to the Fort Collins Coloradoan. Million had been seeking approval of the project from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers but switched regulators this summer because he’s now including 550 megawatts of hydroelectric power.

His original plans called for moving 250,000 acre feet of water through a 500-plus-mile pipeline along Interstate 80 and then down the Front Range of Colorado – a private project the state estimates could cost between $7 billion and $9 billion.

The new plan is called the Regional Watershed Supply Project, and it has garnered opposition all the way from the southwest Wyoming towns of Green River and Rock Springs to Colorado’s populous Front Range, where conservation groups say it would be far too costly both economically and environmentally.

A report authored by economist George Oamek and released Tuesday (pdf) found that Flaming Gorge pipeline water would cost up to $4,700 per acre-foot compared to other proposed water diversion projects that would come in at around $700 per acre-foot.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board at its meeting in Grand Junction next week is expected to vote on whether to spend $150,000 on a task force to study the Flaming Gorge pipeline. A group of water users on Colorado’s Front Range also has proposed a similar pipeline project.

“The proposed task force would squander taxpayer dollars,” said Elise Jones of the Colorado Environmental Coalition. “The state of Colorado should be looking at projects that are affordable, viable, and collaborative, not spending money on gold-plated pipe dreams.”

Million first floated the Flaming Gorge idea in 2007, making the case that Colorado has the right to up to 250,000 acre-feet of the Green River under the Colorado River Compact because the river twists through northwest Colorado before ultimately flowing into the Colorado River in Utah.

But Oamek estimates southwest Wyoming could take a more than $58 million a year hit to its outdoor recreation industry if the pipeline is ever built. Not surprisingly, residents of that part of the state are mostly dead-set against the project. Million, however, has wooed eastern Wyoming residents, promising some of that water could come their way as it flows to the much thirstier Front Range of Colorado.

The editorial board of the Casper Star Tribune was not impressed:

“If there’s not enough water to support the current rate of population growth along Colorado’s Front Range without importing it from elsewhere, perhaps development should be slowed. At the very least, it would be nice if Colorado kept its internal water worries to itself.”

Editorial writers at the Pueblo Chieftain in southern Colorado, however, seem to love the idea.

“There’s growing support for the concept to pipe water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir across southern Wyoming and down the Front Range of Colorado. But impediments are being mounted. Various environmental groups are opposing even a study of the proposal.

“If the enviros are so concerned about the environment, let them visit Crowley County, where the loss of most of its water has turned huge swatches of formerly productive farmland into a giant weed patch. Do they want more of that? We certainly hope not.”

Follow David O. Williams on Twitter. ]]> http://coloradoindependent.com/98737/pricey-wyoming-pipeline-project-ratchets-up-water-worries-along-colorados-front-range/feed 36 http://coloradoindependent.com/82299/colorado-water-agriculture-people-and-ecosystems-compete-for-a-limited-supply http://coloradoindependent.com/82299/colorado-water-agriculture-people-and-ecosystems-compete-for-a-limited-supply#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2011 18:37:47 +0000 Allen Best http://coloradoindependent.com/?p=82299 According to speakers at a water forum last week, Colorado faces a difficult--if not a dismal--water future.]]>

According to speakers at a water forum last week, Colorado faces a difficult–if not a dismal–water future.

At the outset of the Metro Roundtable Reception held in downtown Denver Thursday evening, John Stulp, special policy advisory to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, cited the need to come up with a win-win solution for water.

But all testimony given later in the meeting suggested such perfection is not easily attainable. If you move water to accommodate a rapidly growing population, you inevitably take it away from some other purpose.

The bigger losers in this water-soluble game of Chinese fire drill are agriculture, which currently uses 85 to 90 percent of the state’s water, and natural ecosystems, such as the vast complex of life along waterways.

Some 500,000 to 700,000 acres of agriculture are projected to be dewatered in coming decades as cities buy farms for their water rights, a process informally called “buy and dry.” That process was described by Stulp as the status quo – and one he says is unacceptable.

Already, much water originally allocated for farms in the Fort Morgan and Sterling areas has been sold to water providers in the Denver metropolitan area, said Joe Frank, executive director of the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District.

“It’s not very visible yet because the water hasn’t been removed from the (agricultural) land,” said Frank, whose district distributes water from Fort Morgan to the Nebraska border.

But while these transfers have occurred in the free market of willing buyer and sellers, he called for a step back to question “whether it is really the best way to find new water supplies.” A better answer, he suggested, was to detain lingering spring runoff, which last year was estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 acre-feet.

But John Sanderson, water program director for The Nature Conservancy, pointed out that free-running rivers during spring also have value. “Those high flows are important to maintaining habitat,” he said.

Sanderson noted that 15 percent of aquatic species found in and along Colorado’s creeks and rivers by the first settlers have been extirpated form this region, while another 40 percent are now endangered, threatened or otherwise at risk.

“If we don’t get this right, we run the risk of this figure being much higher 40 more years from now,” he said.

Everybody, of course, also cites the economic contributions of their sector. Agriculture, by some definitions, is the second most important industry in Colorado. But Sanderson said studies have found that water in streams also has significant economic benefit to the state.

Sanderson pointed to the need to raise money to preserve water and riparian habitat similar to Great Outdoors Colorado, the initiative that uses proceeds from the lottery to preserve open space.

And, like Stulp, The Nature Conservancy sees benefits from collaboration. Sanderson pointed to benefits accrued to multiple constituencies in the planning of Elkhead Reservoir, near Craig, and now to similar efforts to meet multiple needs in management of the Dolores River below McPhee Dam, in southwestern Colorado.

Many of these issues had been evident in the 1990s, but the drought of 2002 triggered new efforts at collaboration. Responding to the drought, Colorado released a broad study called the Statewide Water Supply Investigation in 2004, with a second iteration in 2007.

Then, in 2005, Russell George, a former water lawyer from Rifle who then headed the Department of Natural Resources, explained his vision of a new process, which has led to the formation of roundtables of people from the various river basins in Colorado, and then discussions among the various basins, with the statewide body called the Interbasin Compact Committee.

While any true success from that long, laborious process has yet to be seen, most participants concede benefits of what Stulp described as the bottoms-up approach.

“It doesn’t mean we all agree. It just means that we’ll sit in the same room and talk,” said Stulp at Thursday evening’s meeting. “Five years ago, they didn’t want to even talk.”

Jennifer Gimbel, director of the state’s leading water policy agency, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, noted several recurring questions in the water world. Stopping growth is not an answer, she said, as half of the population increase is expected to come from in-state, with births outpacing deaths. “It’s more a question of how we grow,” she said.

Improved water efficiency and conservation alone are “not the silver bullet,” she said. And as for removing water from farm lands, the vast majority of which is used to grow corn to be fed to cattle in feed lots, Gimbel cited the need for “food security.”

Instead, speakers said Colorado needs a portfolio of solutions that includes reuse of existing supplies, limited ag transfers, and new water storage projects to hold back spring runoff.

Among the new ideas to emerge since the 2002 drought was development of water in the Green River in either Wyoming or Utah. The water later passes through Colorado for about 20 miles, giving Colorado an arguable right to water in the river even if it is diverted to another state.

Aaron Million, a Fort Collins-based entrepreneur, came up with the idea and continues to pursue it. But the South Metropolitan Water Supply Authority later proposed a similar idea, drawing on either Flaming Gorge Reservoir or Fontenelle Reservoir, both located on the Green River.

Rod Kuharich, executive director of the South Metro group, said his group has met with people from the Wyoming cities of Cheyenne, Casper, Torrington and Green River, but he ultimately sees the deal being a state-to-state transaction, if it ever occurs.

“I subscribe to the all-of-the-above energy policy, which means nuclear should be a big part of our future, and the benefit of nuclear power is its green footprint,” freshman U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said. “I recognize it comes with great risk, but if you’re serious about greenhouse gasses, then you should be a serious supporter of nuclear development.”

That sentiment echoes those of Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat, who has introduced a bill aimed a sparking a nuclear power revival in the United States despite serious trepidation about potential accidents and waste storage nightmares among both environmentalists and the general populace.

Nuclear power currently accounts for about 20 percent of the electricity in the United States (mostly on the East Coast), but following accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in the Ukraine in the 1970s and 80s, no new nuclear plants have come online in the U.S. in decades.

Chaffetz wants to see 100 new nuclear plants built around the country in the coming years, and he’s confident technology can mitigate past contamination problems linked with mining and milling uranium – historically a big industry in far western Colorado and eastern Utah – as well as waste-storage issues associated with spent fuel rods.

Utah is currently embroiled in a storage controversy related to trainloads of depleted uranium from Cold War-era weapons production being stored at an Energy Solutions facility in Clive, Utah. And communities in Colorado have banded together to fight both a uranium mill proposal near Montrose and a uranium mine plan near Fort Collins.

New uranium claims have been filed across the West in anticipation of another nuclear power boom, as the industry finds more and more bipartisan support because of lower greenhouse gas emissions and a growing rep as an alternative to dirtier-burning coal, oil and natural gas. But opponents are concerned about impacts on national parks and other wild places and the risks of transporting yellowcake and nuclear waste across state lines.

Even though his Third Congressional District doesn’t include Green River or the historic uranium-mining hotbed of Moab, Chaffetz supports a statewide push to revive the industry. He said fears of increased mining impacting tourism in and around the state’s great national parks in southeastern Utah – a frequent recreation destination for Coloradans – are overblown.

“That’s a scare tactic that’s more rooted in hyperbole than it is reality,” he said. “The reality is we have borders for these national parks. These environmentalists argue there needs to be some big buffer zone, and I don’t buy into that. If we don’t want to be left beholden to the terrorist nations around the world, we’re going to have to get serious about nuclear development.”

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The 150-mile stretch of Interstate 70 between Rifle, Colo., and Green River, Utah, sits atop the world’s largest known reserves of oil shale, not to mention huge quantities of natural gas and significant supplies of uranium. Under the headline “Road to riches,” the Sentinel’s Gary Harmon explores how developers and local governments along the alley are looking to cash in on the nation’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for new energy sources.

But the series takes a much more statistical, business-oriented approach to the topic – to be expected from the leading news source in the conservative stronghold of Mesa County – and gives little play to environmental concerns likely to shape the debate over how best to exploit the vast mineral resources in Energy Alley.

Water is the great limiting factor when it comes to oil shale development, an industry that has yet to prove its commercial viability. And water, or the lack thereof, will also play a huge role in any revival of the nation’s nuclear power industry – long dormant but still supplying 20 percent of the country’s electricity needs.

A proposed nuclear power plant near Green River is currently working to sew up its water rights, while uranium mining and milling is seen as a panacea by some in economically depressed sections of western Colorado. Environmentalists, however, are working hard to remind Colorado residents of uranium’s toxic history in the state.

The Sentinel points out two of the top uranium sources globally have stopped production recently, with the Cigar Lake Mine in Canada flooding and the Olympic Dam Mine in Australia shut down because of an accident. Supply factors and growing support for nuclear as a virtually carbon-free power source have energy companies speculating on a uranium boom in the United States that some experts, according to the paper, aren’t sure will materialize.

“The bigger issue for uranium is: Will a significant portion of the world choose nuclear power as the clean fuel of choice?” Dr. Rod Eggert, director of the division of economics and business at Colorado School of Mines, told the Sentinel. “Right now, there’s a lot of speculation, but exactly how large demand will grow, no one knows.”

As for oil shale, opponents argue it would consume far too much water in the already endangered Colorado River Basin and that the billions of dollars in research and development needed to make it commercially viable would be better spent on proven renewable energy technology.

Still, despite those concerns and the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar putting the brakes on Bush administration policies meant to boost oil shale speculation, many proponents remain convinced the Green River Formation is the future of America’s energy independence.

“The public doesn’t realize what we have here,” Jeff Williams, a Mesa County developer, told the Sentinel. “I’ve had engineers call this the OPEC of the United States.”

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