Almost EVERYBODY opposes the Flaming Gorge Pipeline

Conservation Groups, Chambers of Commerce, City Councils, County Commissions, and over 250 Businesses Oppose the Flaming Gorge Pipeline

One of Save the Colorado’s campaigns is to help stop the proposed Flaming Gorge Pipeline. Costing up to $9 billion, this pipeline would take 80 billion gallons of water out of the Green River in Southwest Wyoming each year, pipe and pump it 500 miles across Wyoming, over the Continental Divide, and down to the rapidly growing Colorado Front Range (from Fort Collins to Denver to Pueblo) to subsidize and fuel new population growth.

Over the past few months, dozens of entities including conservation organizations, chambers of commerce, city councils, and county commissions in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah have spoken up to oppose the pipeline.   The opposition list (also called “intervenors” in the pipeline’s permitting process) reads like a dream-come-true coalition that spans the political as well as the Western culture aisle.  Of note, a coalition of over 250 businesses also has spoken out to oppose the pipeline.  You can read about it in the Wyoming Business Report here.

“We depend on anglers, rafters, birders and hikers coming to our communities to fuel our economy,” said Lisa Jenkins, executive director of Grand Lake Area Chamber of Commerce in Colorado. “This massive siphoning of water will decrease flows in the Green River by 20—25 percent, and cripple the annual $10 billion recreation-based economies that communities like Grand Lake depend on for our survival.” (quoted from the Wyoming Business Report)

Save the Colorado opposes the pipeline because it would be bad for the Green and Colorado Rivers, bad for the Southwest’s recreational economy, and would further endanger fish and wildlife downstream all the way to Mexico.

The State of Colorado has appointed a committee to study the Flaming Gorge Pipeline. Because the environmental community does not support the pipeline, we also do not support wasting the public’s money on the efforts of this State committee, and thus we have boycotted participating in the committee’s meetings.  Instead, we support common-sense water conservation programs in cities and water-sharing agreements with farmers — these programs and agreements would be cheaper, faster, and more sustainable solutions to address Colorado’s future water supply needs.

Sometimes you have to take a stand — it appears almost EVERYBODY has taken a stand to oppose the Flaming Gorge Pipeline.