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Promoter Now Says Green River Water Transfer Is Good for Wyoming? Could He Be Right?

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Aaron Million insists he is not a bad guy. And above all, he claims he is not a “water thief.” This is the guy who has been working since 2003 to suck water out of Wyoming’s Green River and pump it to cities on Colorado’s front range.

“I am just a family guy doing my job. The seven-state Colorado River Compact allocated that water to my state and, up to now, we have had no way to get it,” he says.

Now he thinks he has figured out how to get the water. And he believes that Wyoming people will be happy to hear this newest version of his plan.

Million is tired of Wyoming people being mad at him. He points out that by the time he gets access to the Green River water under his new plan, it has already completely passed through all of Wyoming. He implies that if Wyoming wants to use that water, then go ahead and use it.

His new plan involves installing a headgate on the Green River in Utah that captures the water just south of the Flaming Gorge dam and diverts it through a 325-mile pipeline. Most of the pipeline will go back through Wyoming, ultimately showing up in Denver and the thirsty cities on the Colorado Front Range. The pipeline route follows what is called the Kinder-Morgan right of way that currently includes natural gas pipelines. It is an audacious plan.

Million touts this as a $2.5 billion construction project for Wyoming that creates jobs and will provide never-ending property tax revenues to the counties and to the state.

I have been one of Million’s biggest critics ever since he originally unveiled the plan about pumping water out of Wyoming’s Flaming Gorge back in 2007. He originally had his eureka moment about this water diversion back in 2003, while working on an advanced degree at Colorado State U.

Although I am still skeptical, it is appearing that Million is now pushing most of the right buttons to convert his opponents into supporters with his new plan.

Here are a three of his important points:

First, if successful, his plan would only take 1.3 percent of the water out of the Green River, which flows 4.2 million-acre-feet per year. He wants 55,000 acre-feet. Recently, the Bureau of Reclamation announced it is taking more than 10x that amount, 500,000 acre-feet of water out of Flaming Gorge, and sending it downstream to the imperiled Lake Powell in Arizona.

Second, this could be a big economic development project for Wyoming, with construction jobs and tax revenue. Cost could be over $2.5 billion, most of which would be spent in Wyoming. Million thinks the Cowboy State economy could use a boost like this. He said he has a Fortune 500 pipeline company on his team plus the endorsement of the two biggest pipeline unions in the USA, including National Pipeline Union 405, which has a local presence in Wyoming.

“We saddled up the horse again and put together a new management team. We are ready to go.”

Third, there still is a possibility of Wyoming cities and towns along the way getting some of the water. This could be a boon during times when access to potable water is getting scarcer in some places. His pipeline would enter Southwest Wyoming south of Rock Springs and travel across the state to the Cheyenne area where it would turn south toward Colorado. There are already seven natural gas and other fuel pipelines that follow that route. It effectively follows Interstate 80.

Million’s project is also timely because of actions being taken on three gigantic reservoirs on the Colorado River and its tributaries.

From north to south, they are Flaming Gorge in Wyoming-Utah, Lake Powell in Utah-Arizona, and Lake Mead in Arizona-Nevada.

The dams at Mead and Powell generate electricity and water levels have fallen so low, that their ability to generate has become threatened. Million says the reason the levels have fallen so low has very little to do with a supposed drought. It is because of too much over-use of the water by the lower basin states, he says emphatically.

The surface elevation at Lake Powell is now at 3,522 feet, which is the lowest since it was originally filled in 1966. If its water level falls to 3,490 feet, its power station would cease to function.

Flaming Gorge, which was completed in 1964, on the Green River, will release half million-acre-feet of its water this spring as a way to provide more water for Lake Powell. The water level at Flaming Gorge could drop 10 feet by August and 15 feet by the end of summer. This will not affect fishermen but could put stress on marinas and recreational users. Meanwhile, Lake Mead near Las Vegas, which is the largest man-made reservoir in the country, is also near its lowest point. It was created by Hoover Dam in 1935. This reservoir was named for pioneer Wyoming water allocation legend Elwood Mead of Cheyenne.

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    Clark Guelde

    May 16, 2022 at 12:40 pm

    This sounds very similar to some of the things that happened in California back in the early twentieth century when the cities more or less stole water from rural California and turned a lot of it in to desert. I hope Wyoming can manage to avoid repeating that history here.

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