What Happened To American Rivers?
“Brave acts of conservation aren’t achieved by those who stake out weak-kneed and middling positions.” — attributed to Stuart Brandborg
Over the last 18 months, I have watched the river conservation group, American Rivers, veer dramatically off course with its work in the Colorado River basin. Instead of working to protect and restore the Colorado River, American Rivers has taken disturbing actions, aiding and abetting the increased damming and destruction of the entire Colorado River system.
First, American Rivers published a blog post on April 7, 2017, supporting refilling Lake Powell and keeping Glen Canyon Dam operational for another 20 years. In the post, the organization’s spokesperson also derided and degraded other conservation groups, environmental writers, and scientists who have been engaged on this issue for fifty years.
Second, a week later, American Rivers named the “Lower Colorado River” as the “Most Endangered River (MER) in America”. While I would agree that the Lower Colorado River is a mess, calling it a “river” is really a stretch. Starting with Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, the Lower Colorado River is mostly a string of reservoirs that serve to completely — 100% — drain and destroy the Lower Colorado River. American Rivers’ naming of this stretch as a “MER” sets the focus on the protection of the reservoirs and the management of water supply, rather than protecting the river itself.
Third, over the last 18 months, American Rivers seems to have become focused on helping the State of Arizona get all the water it can out of the Lower Colorado River. Arizona’s farmers will be the first cut back when “shortages” are declared on the water supply, but why is American Rivers — a river conservation group — obsessed with promoting and supporting Arizona in its effort to help completely drain the Colorado River?
Fourth, American Rivers has begun actively campaigning for proposed new dam, diversion, and reservoir projects, including two that would drain the headwaters of the river in the state of Colorado.
1) American Rivers has publicly supported the “Windy Gap Firming Project” which would drain and divert a new 30,000 acre feet of water out of the Upper Colorado River at the base of Rocky Mountain National Park, pillaging that water for the sprawling bluegrass lawns on the northern Front Range of Colorado.
2) American Rivers has publicly supported the “Moffat Collection System Project” which would also drain the headwaters of the Upper Colorado River, just upstream from Windy Gap, and build the tallest dam in the history of Colorado to stash that water high above Boulder. American Rivers even called this massive dam project a “major cultural shift”, when the truth is that building massive new dams is a 100-year old dinosaur of an idea. In this support of this massive dam project, American Rivers doubles down on non-factual, unsubstantiated arguments that other organizations refute.
Fifth, American Rivers has failed to speak out against the biggest proposed new diversion of water out of the Colorado River system, the so-called “Fontenelle Dam Rip-Rap” in Wyoming. The re-engineering of Fontenelle Dam on the Green River proposes to divert up to a new 150,000 acre feet of water out of the Green River. Of note, the biggest funder of American Rivers’ work in the Colorado River basin, the Walton Family Foundation, has come out in strong public support of the Fontenelle Dam Rip-Rap project, and so far every Walton Family Foundation grantee, including American Rivers, has stayed silent. Further, American Rivers has also stayed silent on numerous other proposed new dams and diversions in the Colorado River basin.
Finally, just last week, the Colorado River program director for American Rivers published a column in the Boulder Daily Camera filled with non-factual claims about both the Windy Gap Firming Project and the Moffat Collection System Project. This column had the gall to call the Moffat Collection System Project a “temporary impact” to the people and decision-makers in Boulder County. The Moffat Project would:
- be the biggest and most environmentally destructive construction project in Boulder County history lasting up to seven years,
- build the tallest dam in the history of Colorado, on top of South Boulder Creek, that would last at least 100 years,
- clearcut over 200,000 trees,
- cause large-scale health, safety, quality of life, and property value issues for several thousand residents living around the dam and along the curvy mountain roads that would be used by several thousand tractor-trailer truck trips during construction,
- use a few thousand truckloads of coal ash as aggregate for the dam, all to be transported up the curvy mountain roads along ironically named “Coal Creek”,
- and on and on…
It’s gut-check time for American Rivers: Are you going to protect and restore the Colorado River? Or are you going to support further damming and draining it?
