Both of the Republican lawmakers recently referenced the Centennial State’s relatively weak winter in their arguments to build more reservoirs and knock down perceived regulatory roadblocks.

At Tipton’s request, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water and Power held an oversight hearing last week to examine bureaucratic barriers that block water storage projects.

“The natural cycle of rivers in the West is one of boom and bust, surplus and drought. But with proper water storage, economic cycles do not have to be boom and bust, recreational opportunities can be reliably provided, and water can be allocated where it is best needed to meet environmental, species protection goals and support our farm and ranch communities,” Tipton said in his opening statement.

Conservationists, however, believe the congressional hearing was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to further undermine environmental laws. Instead of building new reservoirs, they encourage the conservation and recycling of water, and the modernization of Colorado’s aging infrastructure.

Windy Gap Reservoir in Grand County, Colo. (Photo via www.NorthernWater.org)

“Much of that infrastructure is over a century old and is in need of serious repair,” Midcap wrote. “We believe these repairs to dams, canals and diversion structures can be done in a way that provides benefits to both irrigators and the streams, as has been demonstrated in many areas of the western U.S. These kinds of projects are the most likely to win strong public support and produce the kind of benefits that will last far into the future. While new water storage may be needed in some limited situations, it must be done in a way that protects the values we all hold in common: economic efficiency and healthy rivers and streams.”

The hearing focused on storing water to grow enough food to keep up with the West’s mushrooming population, but Family Farm Alliance President Pat O’Tool noted domestic energy requires H20 too.

A new report (pdf) projects hydraulic fracturing in Colorado will spike from 4.5 billion gallons of water used in 2010 to more than 6 billion gallons of water in 2015 — a 35 percent increase. The study assumes the number of oil and gas wells in Colorado will remain relatively flat and attributes the increased water use to escalated vertical oil drilling, which sucks more water than horizontal methods. Agriculture is the biggest drain on state water supplies, accounting for more than 4.6 trillion gallons, or 85.5 percent, of water use in 2010, followed by municipal and industrial uses at 7.4 percent. Hydraulic fracturing — chemically treated water pumped into the earth to release deposits of oil and natural gas — accounts for .08 percent. Coal, natural gas, uranium and solar drink .03 percent, according to the report prepared by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and other state agencies.

Oil and gas development is prevalent in Gardner’s home district in Northern Colorado where drillers are busily flushing oil and gas from the Niobrara formation with powerful cocktails of fracking fluid.

At a town hall meeting in Berthoud last month, the congressman cited Colorado’s lean snowpack as the reason behind his latest push to build two new reservoirs, pump plants and pipelines tapping the Poudre River, also known as the Northern Integrated Supply Project (NISP).

“If we are going to have a long-term outlook for economic growth, we must have the water that is necessary to survive and grow,” Gardner reportedly said. “That’s not only to meet the needs of the population, that’s to meet the needs of agriculture and industry. That’s why I think we need to go forward with projects like NISP, and we need to go look for other new projects.”

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement, however, says that NISP “would not likely change land use or zoning plans of participant communities, increase employment opportunities, or increase other growth pressures.” Caring for the river instead of developing it could actually create more jobs.

“A strong case can be made that a well-structured no-action alternative relying on water conservation, water-sharing agreements with farmers and water recycling would provide more long-term and higher-paying ‘green jobs’ that protect the Cache la Poudre River and protect our region’s future,” Gary Wockner, director of Save the Poudre, wrote in a recent Coloradoan guest editorial.

Residents would have to fund NISP through higher water rates and tap fees, he added.

“It seems like every few months Gardner flies home from Washington D.C. and takes a quick tour of Northern Colorado to rant about NISP. And every few months, his rants have no basis in fact,” Wockner wrote. “If NISP is built, it won’t provide any more jobs than if NISP is stopped dead in its tracks. And, NISP won’t increase economic activity in Northern Colorado, but will cost Northern Coloradans more of their hard-earned dollars — about a billion of them.”

Gardner and Tipton claim environmental regulations are slowing down U.S. water storage plans but, ever since 1966, the Bureau of Reclamation has needed an act of Congress to build a reservoir.

Michael Gabaldon

“The most frequent reasons center around economics or an inadequate potential water market associated with the given facilities,” he said. “In other cases, environmental, safety or geologic challenges came to light during a project’s development, and rendered its construction, completion or operation unfeasible. Political opposition often contributed, leaving the facilities ‘on the books’ awaiting further action.”

Sustainability activist from Food and Water Watch joins with local activists to enjoy an organic feast. (Boven)

Sen. Michael Bennet urged Pres. Barack Obama late last week to finalize and implement rules to even the playing field for small ranchers and chicken farmers in competition with corporate giants in the industry. Sustainable food advocates, who have been traveling the country asking legislators to sign on to similar letters, claimed the senator’s move as a minor victory in what they see as a battle between David and Goliath.

Bennet renewed his support for the speedy implementation of the amended Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, a rule that has long been difficult for the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration (GIPSA) to implement, in a letter signed by the senator.

“I write to underscore the value of a fair and transparent market in which all livestock and poultry producers compete on a level playing field,” Bennet said in the letter. “For these reasons, I strongly oppose efforts to stop the USDA from implementing the rule and urge you to prioritize the rule’s finalization.”

Bennet said that while the new rules were not perfect, the new Farm Bill, which is currently being targeted by legislators for budget cuts, would serve to allow lawmakers to make any necessary changes.

Bennet sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

The Packers and Stockyards Act was passed by Congress in 1921 as a series of anti-trust laws on the meat and poultry industry. However, rules that defined “undue or unreasonable preferences” in the act were never created by the USDA causing it to lose much of its strength. Small farmers and sustainability advocates say corporate interests caused the law to simply sit on the books unenforced for years.

The new rules, drafted to bring the 1921 laws up to date with modern times, are a response to provisions in the 2008 Food Conservation and Energy Act that called for the establishment of criteria for the USDA’s GIPSA to determine if unreasonable preferences are being used in the industry.

However, the comment period on the rules was extended to November of 2010 amid considerable controversy. According to Food and Water Watch, since 2010, Washington has been slow to finalize the rules due to industry lobbying efforts.

The National Pork Producers Council has said that there will be “a chilling effect on innovation and flexibility” if the new rules are implemented. According to the industry group there will no longer be a method for packers to justify tiered rates on hogs, which they say could ultimately lead to higher vertical integration in the industry.

Small farmers and food advocates disagree. They say the industry has been forcing small livestock producers into poverty for years by causing many producers to enter into contracts instead of delivering competitive prices through bidding, while offering competitive forward contracts only to larger producers.  While some say the move has stabilized the market, others explain that it has lowered the price of meat to the point where many small producers simply can no longer compete.

The new rules would work to stop price premiums and prevent preferential contracts from being given to large factory farms, prevent a single buyer from representing multiple meat packers at an auction and provide protections for poultry producers.

Food and Water Watch, the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union and others said their coalition had put together a petition with over 3,000 signatures urging Bennet to request the rules be implemented.

While their letter also called for his pledge to defend many programs that help family owned farms, sustainability projects, and nutritional subsidy programs for the poor, Sam Schabacker, Mountain West regional director, Food & Water Watch, said they were ecstatic that he had at least committed so far to the new GIPSA rules.

“It is not everyday that a group of people can get a senator to do something that could directly influence the president,” Schabacker said. He said that the Obama administration, which first pushed for the rules, has been going “really slow” and responding to companies such as Monsanto in the finalization of the new anti-trust legislation.  But he said that in this case the voice of Colorado residents have been heard.

He said that his organization along with a host of others hoped to bring more members of the Agricultural Committee on board.

Still, Schabacker told a small gathering of food sustainability advocates attending a potluck in Longmont on Friday that they would continue to fight for programs they see as helping both the poor and small food producers.

“This fight is not over, there are so

Activists listen to Farm Bill discussion. (Boven)

many other important programs that we want to make sure and defend in the farm bill,”  Schabacker said.

He listed a number of bills he expected to see cuts to. Some of those have been targeted in the President’s 2012 proposed budget while others have found there way in to House proposals including direct farm ownership loans that primarily benefit beginning and minority farmers, Rural Business Enterprise Grants, Farmers Market Nutrition Program, Community Food Project grants, and expected cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program among numerous others.

While Bennet has been in the Middle East, his office responded to questions concerning the Senator’s response to possible cuts by providing this quote from a speech earlier this year.

“We are going to have to ask hard questions and figure out how to do more with less,” Bennet said. “This will mean having discussions about whether to continue to provide farmers with a little bit of help every single year or to provide more substantial assistance when it is needed most. We will also have to identify gaps and overlaps in the different programs that comprise the farm safety net and better integrate these programs while making them more user-friendly.”

Despite the acknowledgment that the country remains in uncertain economic times, advocates were less than enthusiastic about cutting programs to help small farms.

“It is hogwash,” Amy Fontenot, a resident of Longmont who attended the potluck, said concerning possible cuts to sustainability programs.

“It is the issue that spans across the board,” Fontenot continued. “It means taking the power away from a few corporations and giving it to a few farmers who are sustainable and are going to connect people back to the earth with our food.

According to the Associated Press, the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union placed ads in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Pueblo Chieftain, the Alamosa Valley Courier, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle and the Casper Star-Tribune over the weekend.

Salazar earlier this month announced a second round of much smaller research leases being offered on public lands in the Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, also calling for greater accountability on progress in extracting oil trapped in shale formations and an investigation of BLM rule making under the Bush administration.

Industry officials were quick to condemn the Obama administration policies on oil shale at the time, and National Oil Shale Association Executive Director Glenn Vawter told the AP over the weekend that “semi-commercial projects” are needed to fully explore all the questions still surrounding the unproven oil-shale production technology.

The agriculture industry and conservationists point out there simply is not enough water in the arid West to support full-scale, commercial oil shale production in the region.

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