Scanlon Replaces Gibbs

11 thoughts on “Scanlon Replaces Gibbs”

1. My best to Christine Scanlan, for a short time to be the newest Rep in the State Legislature!  (Newest until Daddy Bruce decides to get off his chair in the El Paso Commissioner’s office and make his way up to Denver, anyway…)

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2. It will be interesting to see how or whether she deals with state water issues that pit her constituencies against other communities.

   Yesterday’s Denver Post described how folks in Summit county were prohibited from using their household wells to fill hot tubs because rights to that water are held by communities on the Rront Range.

   Said differently, our state water policy is that it’s perfectly appropriate to use government police powers to prevent people in mountain communities from filling their hot tubs from their household wells so that there’s enough water for lawns in Denver, Boulder, Aurora, Broomfield, etc.

   Here’s the link to the article:

   http://www.denverpost.com/sear…    

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   1. You don’t have to agree with it (as many do not) but it is the law.  

      Water from these wells is subject to senior water rights (wherever and by whomever they are held) and a junior right is always going to take a back seat to a senior right.

      This is not any different than what happened to some eastern plains farmers who were pumping water out of irrigation wells to water their crops.  When the amount of water that a senior water right holder was diminished by this pumping the state engineer forced these farmers to stop pumping in order to ensure that a senior water right holder did not lose his share.

      The fact is that the water coming down the south Platte is all spoken for and if your right is junior to someone elses, you cannot use that water.

      This is also similar to the restriction on Denver metro water users from reclaiming ‘gray water’.  That is using water that you have bathed in or washed dishes in and then collected in a bucket or some other device and used to water your plants or yard with.  You do not have that right.  You can use that water once, but not twice.  

      You may think this makes no sense (and again there are many who would agree with you) but it is the law and a long (well  over 150 years) well-established law.

      By the way, it is also why Colorado has no navigable streams within its borders.

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      1. Western Water Law is a great occupation for lawyers.  You can enjoy a great livelihood for life.  
         
          As a start you can figure out what will be the result of an owner of a 1/4 acre miner share trying to water their garden plot if the ditch isn’t running water.

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         1. If the garden plot is inside your house, watering it probably considered household use and is OK.  (big grin)

            I know it sounds really silly, but that’s the issue in Summit county — people cannot fill their hottubs if they are outside their houses, but it’s OK if the hot tub is inside.

            The “rationale” (if rationale can even be applied to this sort of government action) is that the communities downstream (like Denver, Boulder, Aurora where most the water usage is for watering lawns) have prior appropriative rights to the water you might temporarily put in your hot tub.  To protect those prior rights, you can be fined and subject to criminal penalties for filling your hot tub from your own well.  But, not if the hot tub is indoors.

            From an economics perspective, the allocation of water rights and water use ought to go to the use that is most valuable, not to the “first in time” use.  Achieving efficiency for society is not, not, however, how government bureaucracies (like water rights administration) work.

            IMHO, a new legislator like Scanlan ought to be focused on changing laws that inhibit and penalize her constituencies for no good reason, like the hot tub police.

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      2. My PhD disseration was on the economics of water rights, so I do know a fair amount about the topic.  It is the law, but that does not mean that the law (first in time, first in right) yields economically efficient allocations.  In fact, it does not yield an efficient allocation of rights because it typically locks in inefficient uses.

         For example, in California, a common gold mining technique was to use water cannons to wash gold out of the hills.  Because that was the prior use of water in the Sacto foothills, it had priority over agricultural uses and urban uses long after the use ceased to be beneficial.

         Remember the movie “Chinatown”?  It dealt with LA’s purchase of ranch lands to secure the prior water rights held by the ranchers in the Owens River Valley.

         When I lived in CA, thanks to the doctrine of prior appropriation, rice farmers in the LA basin were growing rice with $3/acre foot water while their urban neighbors were enduring water restrictions and paying $250/acre foot.

         Water laws are a product of the political system, and those laws can be changed.  

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         1. For many years, Aurora was buying property and water rights for water in the lower Arkansas river valley.  The farmland went fallow and dry, the economy in places like Rocky Ford suffered because the farm economy is pretty much all that sustains down there.  It was an economic disaster for the valley.

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            1. Because water rights are not allocated based on economic principles — highest and most valuable use — there are loads of examples like this.  Can we really claim that watering lawns in Aurora is a more valuable use than farmland in Rocky Ford?  

               In California, a shooting war erupted in the Owens River valley where the city of LA bought farm land and leased it back to the ranchers.  The city bought the land for the water rights knowing that it would need that water to support development.  Then, when it needed the water, it cut off the water to its tenant ranchers and the shooting started.

               California’s water laws have been augmented to a degree that allows the state engineer to end uses that are abandoned or wasteful.  It’s pretty messy, and involves a lot of objectionable, political social engineering, but until Colorado does something similar, limited water resources will pit one community (Denver v Summit county) or use (urban v agricultural) against each other.

               The most sensible approach I’ve heard is to use or recharge the front range undergound aquifers to store water in wet years.  Don’t have to build dams, don’t have to worry about evaporation.  But, rather than address a substantive issue that affects everyone in Colorado, the legislature choses to fight about unions, smoking and regulating a myriad of businesses (art therapists was prominent last year).  Grrrr.

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3. I know nothing about Ms. Scanlan but Rep. Gibbs set the bar pretty high for that district….being a do-nothing pretty boy that looks better suited to be on the cover of the latest American Eagle fashion catalog than under the dome.  For the Republican’s sake, let’s hope Scanlan maintains that standard.

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   1. You have portrayed Dan poorly. He is for real. Yes, he is ambitious politically. But, he spent last session working on meaningful stuff for his district; forest health and chain laws being just 2 examples. There is no reason not to expect much of Ms. Scanlan. She has already shown her willingness to work for the public on the school board. That is a pretty thankless position.

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4. They dont wear worn hokey Cowboy boots in those ads!

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