Water Wars and Courage

Mike Saccone has an excellent article in the Grand Junction Sentinel on water as a potential issue in the November contest between Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer. It essentially says that old news is...old news.

It does, however, reinforce a theme that we have often repeated here. Mark Udall is a coward when the interests of his favorite special interest, the environmentalist lobby, conflict with the interests of Coloradoans:

[ Josh ] Penry said an examination of [ Mark ] Udall’s voting record shows he also has made some bad decisions on water.

During a July 2000 vote on the House Resources Committee, [ Mark ] Udall voted “present” on a more than $343 million water storage project that drew from the Animas and La Plata rivers.

Penry, who worked for the bill’s sponsor, Congressman Scott McInnis, R-Colo., said everyone was stunned upon hearing Udall’s vote.

“Mark Udall didn’t vote yes, he didn’t vote no,” Penry said. “He voted present.”

Penry said that vote shows that Udall’s priorities on water storage are much closer to groups opposing all water storage than those of widely revered Congressman Wayne Aspinall, D-Colo.

We say that it was just another example of a lack of courage by Mark Udall. Does it remind anyone of Mark Udall's refusal to buck the environmentalists to authorize the needed forest roads to create fire breaks in our dead and dying pine forests, even when that refusal has already cost lives and will cost more?

Can anyone say "Mark Udall, (D-Sierra Club)?

Water Storage Issue

Yesterday, we ran across more name calling by a left wing blog. Since we don't do any linking to blogs that engage in name calling, we won't be linking to them.

They opined that Bob Schaffer could be attacked because he had supported a referendum that would have spent $2 billion for water storage projects. Since that blog is part of the big blue lie machine, they claimed that it was $4 billion, but what is a little exaggeration among friends?

Today, we discover that Bill Ritter is talking about water storage to the corn farmers.

"Really, we can help ourselves a great deal with conservation, with re-use, with shared use between municipalities and agricultural land," said Ritter after his speech. "And then we have to decide at what level we embark upon greater water storage."

That is going to make it very difficult to play the water storage card against Bob Schaffer.

Mark Udall, A Practiced Liar

It should make people outside Colorado angry when they read a statement like the one Mark Udall recently issued promoting his very limited bill to thin Colorado forests:

“As quickly as the beetle epidemic is spreading throughout Colorado, the needs related to forest health and fuel reduction in our national forests are vast and urgent. These funds are critically important for the health and safety of our forests and communities--and ultimately the west, as Colorado stands at the source of life giving rivers that can be impacted by our unbalanced forest condition," said Rep. Mark Udall.

That statement is very impressive until one realizes that Udall's bill does nothing to promote fuel reduction in "our national forests" except close in to mountain towns. In fact, he and the Sierra Club strongly oppose "promoting forest health and fuel reduction" in our national forests

Colorado, as Udall correctly states, is at the source of rivers that can be impacted by "our unbalanced forest condition." Neither Mark Udall nor his environmentalist extremists give a whit about those rivers or the 17 downriver states they irrigate. Instead of allowing the management of the forests in a way that would protect those rivers, Udall wants to make the forests into wilderness areas that cannot, by law, be managed.

Udall's bill does allow and fund very limited fuel reduction near Colorado ski towns and some very local watersheds. No roads are to be built. His goal is to get elected US Senator. Having ski areas burned out before the election wouldn't help. That is why he is so willing to give the Sierra club what it wants while publicly pretending his bill does something it doesn't do.

Fouling up the Planet by the Numbers

In what was obviously a warning to Bill Ritter and Mark Udall without mentioning either by name, the Rocky Mountain News said the following about corn ethanol:

"This dramatic expansion has substantial implications for already strained water and grassland resources in the Ogallala Aquifer region [eastern Colorado]," the report states, calculating the additional withdrawal of water from the most depleted parts of the aquifer at 59 billion to 120 billion gallons per year - comparable to the amount of water consumed by Denver Water Board customers in a year. Another potential consequence, it warns, is the loss of fragile grasslands...

Lawmakers need to recognize that alternative fuel programs come with a price that is not always obvious, and could create larger problems than the ones they're intended to cure.

Isn't it interesting that the same Mark Udall who has done so much to kill off Colorado's forests might also eventually take the blame for permanently turning eastern Colorado into a dust bowl? And he has done all of this while claiming to be an "environmentalist!"

A Most Precious Commodity

Mark Udall is working in Congress, with Ken Salizar, to give Colorado Water to New Mexico. There are some Republicans in on the game, to their shame, but Udall appears to be trying to aid his New Mexico cousin, Rep. Tom Udall, while selling Colorado "down the river."

But there is still more. In a more recent House hearing on its version of the Navajo settlement act, HR1970, Colorado congressman Mark Udall, apparently acting as surrogate for his cousin, New Mexico congressman Tom Udall who is HR1970's sponsor, lit into the fretting Bob Johnson, Reclamation's new commissioner, who is obviously only carrying stinging coals for OMB.

Declaring himself the undying friend of the Indian, Udall said OMB had to get over its queasiness about how the public was being asked to spend its money, for after all hadn't Governor Richardson promised at least $75 million toward a tax bill that will easily exceed $1 billion in construction costs alone? Wasn't that enough he intoned? Never once did Mark Udall, the man who would be the next Democratic senator from Colorado, ask questions concerning the baffling hydrologic study; never once did he elicit concern over the adverse impact this settlement would have on Colorado's legitimate rights to water in the Colorado River under the interstate compact; and never once did he show concern that more irrigation for the Navajo might actually cause them to lose more money than presently.

This is came from a long article by Phil Doe, who once worked in the Interior Department, and is chair of Citizens Progressive Alliance in Littleton, Colorado. Read it all, and weep!

Cornfused

Just a week ago, Mark Udall was touting his corn subsidies for Colorado ethanol production.

This site pointed out that the water intensive process of growing corn to produce ethanol in a water intensive refining process didn't seem like such a good idea in a state that always seems to be short of water.

CSU, which is a leader in research into ethanol production, reports in its college paper:

... ethanol experts and politicians are beginning to agree that corn-based ethanol may not be the magic energy solution many have come to see it as.

"When you start thinking about what kind of plant you should grow to best utilize its biomass, corn is not the answer," said Ken Reardon, a Colorado State University chemical and biological engineering professor who researches ethanol production.

"Because corn uses a lot of water, people are now looking at crops that take less water to grow and produce more mass per acre than corn...”

Fort Collins Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer said alternative and renewable energy is a “national security” issue and the advances being made in ethanol production will play a big role.

“We seem to be right on the cusp of being able to crack the next step,which is to allow a wider range of organic material to be used in the development of ethanol,” Schaffer said. “Once that is cracked, we will be able to see everything from wood chips and switchgrass to other crops that will result in higher yields.”

Schaffer’s opponent, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, called corn ethanol a “bridge” to the new energy future.

One week, corn is THE answer, and the next, it is only a "bridge." Is anyone else cornfused?

This just raises more questions for Mark Udall: Why would any profit oriented entrepreneur want to build a corn ethanol plant in Colorado if it is only to be a temporary "bridge?" Where in Colorado do you propose to put a corn ethanol plant and which city's water do you intend to appropriate for it? Environmental Impact Studies will doubtless slow the construction of a corn ethanol plant to well past the period when the "bridge"no longer needed, so why are we trying to grow more corn if there are to be no local corn ethanol refineries?

Energy Questions for Mark Udall

The left is already complaining that Udall is working with Musgrave. They hope to beat her in 2008 and think Udall's cooperation doesn't help their cause. The two recently held a joint forum that will doubtless stir comments in the left wing blogosphere. Even so, the subject was of more interest than the format.

We have energy questions for Mark Udall:

If the lack of water resources is a serious problem in Colorado, and it is, why are we providing incentives to grow a crop that will gulp water when it is turned into biofuel? Do you plan to ship the corn to another state with more water and ship the fuel back? Has anyone really thought this one through?

Wind farms in Colorado are a great idea! Have you talked to Ted Kennedy about why he hates the thought of wind farms outside Martha's Vinyard? Better yet, sponsor a bill that provides Federal funds and a mandate for farms in both places and see how many of your environmentalist left friends in Congress vote for it.

Wouldn't Colorado provide more energy independence by developing gas wells on 350 acres of the Roan Plateau at a time?