Aspen voters asked to vote for river money
ASPEN, Colo. -- Voters in Aspen and Pitkin County will be asked in November to approve a sales tax of a penny on a $10 purchase for use in water matters.
The money, calculated at $1 million for the first year of collections, is to be allocated to maintaining water quality in rivers and streams, buying new water rights to guarantee sufficient water for recreation, wildlife and environmental needs, and to promote water conservation.
There are no active threats to water in local streams, though large transmountain diversion projects already take substantial amounts of water to farms and cities on Colorado's Arkansas River Basin. In the drought year of 2002, portions of the nearby Roaring Fork River almost dried up.
Water diversions subject of protests
GRAND LAKE, Colo. -- Few people now living can remember a time before major transmountain diversions from the headwaters of the Colorado River to the state's Eastern Slope.
The largest of those 20th-century diversions—what Telluride native and historian David Lavender called a "massive violation of geography"—came in the 1940s and 1950s. That diversion, the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, diverts water via a tunnel from Grand Lake, at the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, to a reservoir near Estes Park, at the park's eastern entrance.
Benefitting from the diversion are cities from Fort Collins to Boulder and farms along the South Platte River as far as Nebraska.
But there have been costs, as several witnesses with first-hand experience testified in recent hearings held in Granby and Grand Lake. The greatest concern, reports the Sky-Hi Daily News, is increased impact to the water quality of Grand Lake. Adjoining the lake is a resort town of the same name.
"The water quality has totally degraded," said Gay Shaffer, who has spent 73 summers in Grand Lake.
The clarity of the water has been compromised by the series of reservoirs created to contain water from spring runoff. The interconnected reservoirs allow the water to warm and accumulate organic material that sullies the water clarity in Grand Lake.
But quantity, not just quality, is also at issue as a consortium of cities and farmers propose to divert more water in a project called the Windy Gap Firming Project. Fishing shop proprietor Mitch Kirwin said the Colorado River system is already stressed.
"Our economy is tied to our ecology," he said.
Instead of diverting more water, opponents say, the Front Range districts should take less.
Those testifying from the headwaters counties also feel aggrieved that more stringent conservation measures have not been embraced by the Front Range water districts.
"I can say, a great deal more conservation needs to take place on the Eastern Slope," said Sylvia Hines, who has vacationed at Grand Lake since the 1930s.
Another increase in diversions is also being studied by Denver Water, which owns water rights in the nearby Fraser River Valley, where Winter Park is located. It, too, is being protested.
Tourists want adventure, not danger
BEAVER CREEK, Colo. -- "Experiential adventures" are a growing trend in the travel business, according to a speaker at a recent tourism conference.
Daniel Levine told attendees at the conference that a hotel in Finland has glass-topped "igloo" suites so guests can lie in bed and watch the Northern Lights, reports the Vail Daily. A guide company in Lisbon, Portugal, offers tours in which customers wear blindfolds and are led around the city by blind people to experience the sounds, smells and feelings of the city."
"You're creating bragability," Levine said.
But the key, he added, is to provide adventure without too much danger or effort.
