A Case Study Examining the History, Economics, and Politics of the Controversy Surrounding the Proposed Development of the Animas River in Southwestern Colorado

Ode on a Federal Water Project*

1.

Thou still unravish'd Ridges Basin,
Thou foster-child of red tape and slow progress,
A-LP, who canst thus begin
To confound as deeply, or with such duress:
What spotty politics haunt about thy dam,
Of senators or mortals, or of both,
In Durango, or the halls of D.C.?
What laws or lawyers are these? What Indian hopes?
What mad enviros? What struggles of a man called Sam?
What pumps and pipelines? What twisted complexity?

. . .

5.

O massive shape! Big project! With ongoing actions
Of relentless men, and political battles about them all,
With the West at stake and countless seething factions;
Thou, unbuilt dam, dost teach us much of human law,
As doth little else: Animas-La Plata!
When old age shall your players waste,
Thou ought remain, for students who would know
The great perplexity of water, to whom thou say'st
'Truth is liquid, liquid truth,' - that is all
Ye know of earth, and all ye need to know.

---

Inscribed on a wall outside of the Governor's offices in Denver's Capitol Building are the prophetic words of Colorado's poet laureate, Thomas Hornsby Ferril, who wrote: "Here is a land where life is written in Water." To be sure, there is no more significant issue in the western United States than the precarious distribution of water. Water is the life-blood of the millions who have staked claim to these arid lands and we depend entirely on it for our existence. With this concept vaguely in mind, the twenty students in Mark Smith's eighth-block Environmental Economics class embarked for the western slope of Colorado to explore a tenuous federal water project known as Animas-La Plata. Initially contemplated around the turn of the century, this project has stimulated relentless controversy and to this day resides in an unhappy limbo between the damning outcries of environmentalists and fiscal conservatives and the damming aspirations of American Indians and water developers in the Four Corners region. Speaking with representatives from all sides of this issue over the course of an intensive week, we students sampled the profound complexities of law, politics, economics, environmental activism, and essential human nature as they relate to water, the fundamental commodity of the West. While none of us discovered an ideal, or even satisfactory solution to the muddle, we may have discovered something far more valuable: a world beyond academia, where truth belongs to no one and flows like liquid past us all.

This page represents our attempt to elucidate some of the numerous complexities we discovered while exploring the Animas-La Plata river project. We have tried our best to remain objective and to describe as many sides to every story as we could include.

How should each party's claim be ranked against all other claims?

Who has the most to gain from ALP? Who has the most to lose?

Does social justice take precedence over environmental justice?

Is growth and development good? Should it be hindered?

To what degree should a sitting government be responsible for redressing the mistakes of previous administrations?

Is America still repressing Native Americans?

Can or should a value be placed on the preservation of an endangered species?

*(with sincerest apologies to John Keats whose Ode on a Grecian Urn inspired the author)