Editorial: Thwarting the law

FEDERAL BUREAUCRATS do what federal bureaucrats want to do, even if they are proscribed from doing so by law. A new example is a water grab by the U.S. Forest Service. In issuing permits for ski areas on national forest lands, a new clause assigns water rights at the area to the federal government. Colorado Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet and Rep. Scott Tipton have urged the Forest Service to suspend the new clause. The agency declined, and so the National Ski Areas Association is planning to sue. This new clause is an attempt to get around the law. In the 1980s and ’90s, then-Sens. Bill Armstrong and Hank Brown fought the feds over what the bureaucrats were claiming as reserved water rights. After a period of years, Congress passed legislation denying federal reserved water rights and ordering the government to apply for rights through Colorado’s appropriation system. That entails lining up like every other applicant and filing for rights in a water court. Michael Perry, president of the ski association, notes, “Water rights in the West are part of the asset base of the ski areas that they have acquired in the marketplace and they are an important part of the balance sheet of a ski area.” In November, water lawyer Glenn Porzak testified on behalf of the ski industry, telling a subcommittee of the U.S. House Natural Resource Committee that water rights in Colorado are a matter of state law. But that argument has fallen on deaf ears at the Forest Service, which claims the feds know what’s best for Colorado. We hope the ski association can prevail. If not, then the increasingly intrusive federal government will be tempted to grab even more control of Coloradans’ water. Pueblo Chieftain