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Just saw this article. A Colorado entrepreneur is proposing to divert massive quantities of unappropriated Green River water and pipe it from Flaming Gorge to the front range of Colorado. Sounds like he is well down the road in concept development and preliminary planning. Can't be good for the fisheries in the Gorge, the Green, or Lake Powell! Get ready for a fight!
Here's the link: [url "http://tinyurl.com/nt4nw"]http://tinyurl.com/nt4nw[/url]
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Unappropriated Green River water? Is there such a thing? Whose water is it to sell to CO? WY?
I'll bet CA has something to say about this.
CO is looking everywhere for water for the greater Denver area. We in UT must take every share we own every year to keep our rights. Even if we just dump it out on the ground.
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The developer is calling the Green "the largest underutilized river in the West" which I'm sure is news to all of you and all of California and Arizona. He says that "the unappropriated water in the Colorado portion of the Green River will be the basis for a request of a water supply contract from the Bureau of Reclamation from Flaming Gorge Reservoir." I certainly wasn't aware there was any "unappropriated water" in the Green, either.
Can't be good for fishermen, agriculture or any downstream users of Green River water.
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Paul, (Fishing Waters) is probably the best person to ask for sure. I did read a few years back that the Green has never used the water shares appropreated to the farmers in SW Utah. A movement was underway back then to give those shares to Ca., under a temporary basis. Back then it amounted to several millon cubic ft a year. Please keep us informed, I might even get involved in politics over this proposal.
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Thanks for passing on the info. Don.
Aaron Million should spend his PhD time studying how to tell people who live in the west that we don't need lawns anywhere except schools, playgrounds, parks, and high-dollar golf courses. There's plenty of water for all if we'd just quit squirting it everywhere to make a desert look green; and just drink it, flush it, and wash with it. He should keep his water-stealing head in Ft. Collins 'cause he's liable to lose it for stealing water around here.
That said, the article did imply that Colorado has some rights to upper Green River water??? Doesn't sound right, but hey, that would be "your government at work" sometime in the past. Nothing any state or federal bureaucracy does, or has done in the past, would suprise me. "Government intelligence", you know. Unfortunately, the money usually wins. Heck, Utah DWR will probably find a way to blame the lake trout for it!
If you want a lawn, go to a park or move to Seattle. Otherwise, rip out the grass, water the crops, use only what is necessary, and the lakes will overflow. And Mr. Million, conserve the water in your own state and leave ours alone. We use too much in every western state, and need every drop.
And this goes for Vegas and the rest of the far west, too. We're all using the same watershed that ends up in the Colorado River.
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