CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Ruling Class’s Ongoing Destruction of Nature in Colorado, a Sign of the Times

Bar sign, Durango, Colorado. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

On April 21 managing engineers at Denver Water announced they were going to drain Antero Reservoir, the first water body in that public agency’s chain of reservoirs comprising its massive mountain storage system. The system serves about 1.5 million customers in the Denver area and is the state’s largest domestic water purveyor.

But numbers and system descriptions are merely Gradgrindian fact mongering. What is most important is that this agency’s proposed actions will destroy a body of water that is a place of stark and irreplaceable natural beauty. It belongs to everyone and everything. It satisfies Thoreau’s definition of wildness.

Denver Water announced it was going to drain this high mountain reservoir so as to eliminate the reservoir’s annual evaporation loss of about 5,000 acre-feet in a time of drought.   The destruction, it said, would begin on May 1, thus foreclosing on any public discussion about reasonable alternatives, moral limits, and folly.

The public has every right to demand this kind of discussion since the surface water in this state belongs to the people. The state was denied ownership by the framers, people of a pronounced populist bent, who feared the state would more willingly give it away to the high and mighty. Neither does Denver Water, and other users own it. Still, they all have very strong use rights, but they don’t have absolute dominion.

In fact, in this state the test of beneficial use must be demonstrated before the state, acting on behalf of the people, can issue a water use right. So given these legal realities, a very serious issue arises: can destruction of a public water resource of almost unique beauty and affection be willfully destroyed, turned into a mudflat, and still be deemed a beneficial use of public water? Let us look now at other issues that begin to surface with this question.First, while it is true this proposed action would result in the agency having “new” water for sale, not by building a new reservoir, in a region of rapidly diminishing snow pack and rainfall, but by destroying one, and thereby, in the mythic serpent-like way, starting to eat itself.  This in turn begins to expose the law of limits relentlessly imposing its will.

Denver Water reportedly charges its users about $2,000 to $3,000 for an acre-foot of water. By destroying Antero it will have realized a very dicey and exaggerated one-time savings to its revenue stream of about $15 million.. Moreover, this is a primitive form of problem solving and a hopelessly incomplete........

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