PRESS RELEASE: Zombie “Flaming Gorge Pipeline” Rises From The Dead?

For Immediate Release
Feb 22, 2018
Contact: Gary Wockner, Save The Colorado, 970-218-8310

Zombie “Flaming Gorge Pipeline” Rises From The Dead?

Colorado River, USA: Yesterday, the “Flaming Gorge Pipeline” made a reappearance in Colorado River history. The pipeline’s proponent, Aaron Million, from Fort Collins, Colorado, filed for a water right with the State of Utah, proposing to once again divert water from the Green River and pipe it all the way across Wyoming and over to the sprawling Front Range of Colorado.

The application (posted here) asks the State of Utah for 55,000 acre feet of Green River water to be “exported” to the Front Range Corridor of Colorado. In 2012, a previous application for a Flaming Gorge Pipeline was “dismissed” by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) (see details here).

“Save The Colorado played a key role in helping to kill this project in 2012, and we will take another key position against it in 2018,” said Gary Wockner of Save The Colorado. “Continuing to drain and divert the Colorado River is insanity and this project joins a list of other projects that all would combine to nearly completely destroy the river.”

Save The Colorado is the primary organization in the Colorado River basin fighting against all of the new dams and diversions. Over 10 proposed new diversions (posted here) would take at least 250,000 acre feet of new water/year out of the river. The Flaming Gorge Pipeline now joins the list of serious threats to the river.

At the very same time that the Colorado River basin is facing a record drought with threats of cutbacks of water, every proposed project would accelerate the threats and political chaos on the river.

“We will continue to fight every project as hard as we can, and we will continue to try to protect this river for future generations of people and all the human and non-human critters that depend on it for survival,” said Wockner.

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