Town of Nederland leaders loved their wild watersheds so much they passed a resolution for “rights of nature” to protect local rivers, and bolstered that by appointing two “guardians” who could question dams or other threats to clean, flowing water.
Until Nederland remembered it might want to build its own dam.
Now, Nederland’s town board will vote whether to repeal the rights of nature concept for local watersheds because it may be used “in ways that could jeopardize the town’s water security,” according to a memo written by Mayor Billy Giblin.
Supporters of rights of nature are now using the semi-official role “as a point of leverage against the town and its neighbors in the community,” and may no longer “be a good fit for the town,” Giblin wrote as part of the board agenda for Tuesday night’s repeal discussion.
Giblin said in an interview he is an environmentalist seeking the least harmful ways to secure water, but that he and town leaders must also “balance those ideals with the practicality and reality that we must reserve our water rights and store our water for the sake of the present and future welfare and security of our community.”
Clean water advocates are furious at the potential Nederland retreat just months after approving the guardian appointments on Jan. 2. Speaking up on behalf of clean, free-flowing water was exactly what rights of nature was meant for, they say, and Nederland should not turn and run the first time a big dam or development project makes the discussions uncomfortable.
“Fighting dams and protecting rivers is what we do and we’re not going to stop doing it, regardless,” said Gary Wockner of Save the World’s Rivers, formerly Save the Colorado, who supported the Nederland rights of nature resolution and has helped bring similar resolutions to other Colorado towns. “Dams destroy rivers. That’s what they do.”
One of the two appointed guardians, Alan Apt, said in an email Monday that “repealing rights of nature is unnecessary. The guardians and rights of nature are not involved in the reservoir debate. The guardians are providers of watershed information, not policymakers.”
Nederland’s second thoughts come as the town refreshes its longstanding application in water courts for the right to build a dam on Middle Boulder Creek and take advantage of a conditional water right that allows it to hold a senior right on the creek until a reservoir is completed. Nederland has held and renewed the storage right for years and has not acted on it, but development pressure at Eldora Ski Area and contamination questions from the upstream Cross/Caribou mine could push the town to consider moving dirt sooner than later.
Nederland’s renewal application in water court has more specific steps than in past filings, Giblin said.
“We have made much more concrete steps in improved relations, and moving along with dialogues that definitely get us to the point of actually creating physical water storage,” Giblin said.
Nederland’s water rights include new storage on Middle Boulder Creek near the high school. The town is now considering whether the reservoir would be on the stream itself, or “off stream,” to the side, which protects clean water in the reservoir against wildfire runoff or a mine contamination incident.
Nederland’s current storage rights are in Barker Reservoir, which is controlled by “a large city downstream of us that could want our water, in a world where that could be a thing,” Giblin said, referring to the city of Boulder. (Boulder owns and controls Barker Reservoir as part of its water system that takes two-thirds of the city supply from Middle and North Boulder Creeks.)
Giblin said Wockner and Save the World’s Rivers have moved around Colorado persuading communities to pass rights of nature resolutions, then filed legal objections against a number of potential projects. The river group is more interested in its own publicity than in partnering with town officials, he said. Giblin, who was mayor when the guardians were appointed, said he supports river protections but not in the way Wockner’s group is wielding them.
“I have major concerns with an outside organization fighting to dictate conditions to local communities in our efforts to secure our water rights,” Giblin said.
Save the World’s Rivers’ objection to Nederland in water court includes warnings that in order to move forward on storage plans, the town would have to spend the equivalent of its entire annual budget on engineering studies alone. Building the dam could cost millions of dollars, without any identified source of money, the objection states.
“We fight dams all over the state of Colorado, in the Southwest, and across the U.S,” Wockner said. Giblin’s move to repeal the rights of nature resolution “is sort of punitive,” Wockner added. “He’s just upset that we challenged the water rights diligence filing, and this is what he can do to punish us for doing that. They want to grow, quickly.”