PRESS RELEASE: “Gambling For Dams and Fracking” Is Climate Denial — Save The Colorado Strongly Opposes House Bill 19-1327

For Immediate Release
April 19, 2019

Contact: Gary Wockner, Save The Colorado, 970-218-8310

“Gambling For Dams and Fracking” Is Climate Denial — Save The Colorado Strongly Opposes House Bill 19-1327

Colorado River: Yesterday, a bill was introduced in the Colorado State Legislature to potentially legalize sports betting in Colorado to pay for new river-destroying dams supported by the Colorado Water Plan. House Bill 19-1327 (see link here) — also supports using the gambling money to buy Colorado farmers’ water to try and save Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell in Arizona which is extremely likely to be drained by drought and climate change.

“This ‘Gambling For Dams’ bill is a climate-denying, river-destroying scheme pure and simple,” said Gary Wockner, Director of Save The Colorado. “To think that Colorado can dam its way out of climate change is a gamble of the highest stakes.”

The Colorado Water Plan is extremely controversial and supported building more dams on Colorado’s rivers to store 400,000 acre feet of water — the Plan was even nicknamed the “Colorado Dam Plan” (see link here). The Plan was projected to cost $40 billion (see link here), some portion of which included damming and destroying more of Colorado’s already threatened rivers. One dam scheme includes using the water for even more fracking, and even for oil shale (see link here).

Save The Colorado will be following the bill closely through this session of the State Legislature which ends in two weeks, on May 3rd.

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