A plan to get much-needed water to Colorado’s Front Range has come back to life, although a coalition of ten conservation groups is hoping it’s short-lived. The Flaming Gorge Pipeline proposal is sitting before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, after being dropped by the U-S Army Corps of Engineers earlier this year. Billions of gallons of water from Wyoming's Green River would be piped to Colorado. Duane Short with the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie is a spokesman for the coalition – which has filed to intervene.
The company proposing the pipeline, Wyco Power and Water Inc., has touted its job-creation benefits – plus, there are hydropower construction plans. Short claims the hydropower was only added so FERC would look at the permit. He says the project will use much more power than it generates, because the water has to be pumped uphill across Wyoming and over the Continental Divide. The developer also recently announced some of the water would be used for hydraulic fracturing.
Short says the list of objections is long, and includes violations of the Endangered Species Act and landscape destruction to build the pipeline, as well as downstream impacts of removing so much water from the Green River – which connects to the Colorado River in Utah.
The Colorado River Keeper’s Coalition intervention is one of several being filed.
The company proposing the pipeline, Wyco Power and Water Inc., has touted its job-creation benefits – plus, there are hydropower construction plans. Short claims the hydropower was only added so FERC would look at the permit. He says the project will use much more power than it generates, because the water has to be pumped uphill across Wyoming and over the Continental Divide. The developer also recently announced some of the water would be used for hydraulic fracturing.
Short says the list of objections is long, and includes violations of the Endangered Species Act and landscape destruction to build the pipeline, as well as downstream impacts of removing so much water from the Green River – which connects to the Colorado River in Utah.
The Colorado River Keeper’s Coalition intervention is one of several being filed.
No comments:
Post a Comment