Is Ken Salazar Trying to Soak Colorado Springs?

Gazette Editorial Page Editor Wayne Laugesen must be a very alert reader. One would have to be in order to pick out this paragraph, buried near the end of a long Pueblo Chieftain story, for special attention:

"Collins explained that federal laws give Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar broad concessions to set rates, and did not attempt to argue the basis with the Colorado Springs team."

The passage jumped out at me, too, because it at least hinted, if not strongly suggested, that Inferior Secretary Ken Salazar had some direct involvement in the exorbitant, some might say extortive, rates the Bureau of Reclamation wants to charge Colorado Springs for storing water in Pueblo Reservoir, which is part of a water project local taxpayers heavily bankroll. I appreciate Laugesen's effort to drill a little deeper (so to speak) into this potentially-troubling possibility.

Having a Coloradan as inferior secretary should be a help, not a hindrance, to the folks back home. If Salazar is trying to soak Colorado Springs for using the reservoir, while other users, like Pueblo, enjoy discount rates, we need to know about it.

Salazar's muppet denies the secretary is so intimately involved in such decisions, and denies, as well, that Salazar has any anti-Colorado Springs bias . . .

“The secretary has had no involvement in the development of the rate proposal,” Interior spokesman Daniel DuBray wrote in an e-mail. “The Secretary has delegated this authority to the Bureau of Reclamation. The federal negotiating team, led by Mr. Michael Collins of the Bureau of Reclamation, developed the proposed rates for storage, conveyance, and exchange of non-federal water within the federally-owned facilities of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s Fryingpan-Arkansas Project.”

DuBray denied that his boss sides with Pueblo to spite Colorado Springs.

“It has been Secretary Salazar, more than any other elected or public official in recent memory, who has tried over the years to bring Pueblo and Colorado Springs together to work cooperatively on water issues,” DuBray wrote.

. . . but I find it extremely hard to believe that the bureau is making such significant decisions in the secretary's home state without implicit or explicit approval from Salazar. And the fact is that Salazar sometimes has been a divider, not a uniter, in the Pueblo-Colorado Springs water feud. As senator, Salazar did seem to walk a middle ground, at least publicly. But before that, while serving as attorney general, he played a much more divisive role. It was AG Salazar who urged Pueblo County and other SDS obstructionists down south to use so-called 1041 regulations to delay or derail the project. And Pueblo County made the most of such advice.

Obstructionists have used this and whatever other levers they have to shakedown Colorado Springs for various "concessions" (it's Colorado Springs' water, for instance, that helps keep a kayaking course in downtown Pueblo frothy), driving up the price tag on an already-costly project. So this would be the latest, but perhaps most outrageous, of numerous shakedowns Colorado Springs has endured while simply trying to run a pipe north from Pueblo Reservoir. We have tried to be good neighbors. But some of our "neighbors," in Pueblo and points south, aren't content to borrow a cup of sugar, but seem to want a pound of flesh. At some point we need to fight back.

That's all water over the dam, perhaps, but it's important to remember that Ken Salazar and his brother, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, have always been more closely aligned with Democrat-leaning Pueblo than with Republican-voting Colorado Springs. The anti-Springs bias of brother John (who serves on the House Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, which puts him in a strong position to influence bureau decisions) is overt. But Ken, when he was senator, needed to appear more even-handed.

Michael Collins could have said that federal law gives the bureau broad latitude to set such rates, but he specifically used Salazar's name, which raises suspicions that the inferior secretary is more deeply involved than his muppet lets on. That suspicion grows when the bureau can offer no clear and coherent explanation for how it determined that this city should pay $50 per acre foot of stored water, when Pueblo pays about $22 per acre foot. The missing methodology makes the charge appear arbitrary and capricious -- almost as if the number were pulled from a hat, by someone very high up the federal food chain.

This particular food chain, if you follow it to the top, stops with Ken Salazar.

Calling All Water Warriors

Just what Colorado needs: another invitation to fight over water.

State Rep. Sal Pace, a Democrat from Pueblo, apparently doesn't believe there's enough water-related conflict in Colorado. That's why he'll introduce a bill in the 2010 session that seems designed to ratchet tensions to new highs. The measure will prohibit district-to-district water transfers unless the recipient can negotiate a "mitigation agreement" with the originating district addressing ecological and economic impacts. It invites one water district to shakedown the other, in short -- which may explain the appeal in Pueblo -- despite the fact that these are private transactions between willing buyers and willing sellers.

Measuring the alleged ecological or economic impacts of water transfers can be a tricky business, since this often confuses chicken with egg. Most rural areas are economically depressed not because residents are selling water rights; residents are selling water rights because rural areas are economically depressed. Cash transfers from urban areas to rural areas -- which is what this is all about -- may make rural folk feel less like victims, temporarily. But it won't revive the agricultural sector or address its root economic problems. Like many other forms of government intervention -- farm subsidies, price supports, ethanol mandates, milk quotas -- this will be a temporary crutch, not a long-term answer.

Pace's bill will erect new barriers to a statewide water market, drive up costs for water users, gum-up water transfers in red tape and create more conflict -- while doing little to enhance the long-term viability of rural economies. It penalizes water sellers as well as water buyers, since sales could be delayed or derailed if mitigation agreements can't be agreed upon, or if they end up in court.

The freedom of people to sell or buy water will be impaired, which amounts to an impairment of their water rights -- which are really property rights. And we all suffer when these rights get watered down. So let's hope Sal Pace's bill goes gurgling down the drain.