DENVER – Rep. Scott Tipton had one of his greatest successes in his two years in Congress last month when the House overwhelmingly passed his bill to promote small hydroelectric projects on canals and pipelines.
But it turns out the bill will not help one of the dams in the Cortez Republican’s own district.
Gary Kennedy, superintendent of the Mancos Water Conservancy District, will go to Washington on Thursday to testify for a new bill that’s intended to allow his district to build a 500-kilowatt-per-hour power plant on one of its canals. The small plant could earn $50,000 for the water district to help rehabilitate its reservoir.
It’s exactly the type of project that Tipton had in mind for his Hydropower and Rural Jobs Act. The bill waives environmental reviews on small power plants placed on man-made canals, because the canals already went through environmental reviews when they were built.
The bill cruised through the House on a 416-7 margin, and its companion bill is making headway in the Senate. But because of a bureaucratic tangle that dates to the 1930s, it will not help Mancos.
Most big reservoirs in the Western United States were built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and that’s the agency that Tipton’s bill addresses. But the Mancos water district’s Jackson Gulch Reservoir is one of 11 water projects nationwide that were authorized by a completely different law, the Water Conservation and Utilization Act of 1939.
The law permits only the federal government to operate power plants connected to the reservoirs. No other water project in Colorado falls into the same trap.
Earlier this year, it became clear to Kennedy and others that Tipton’s bill would not apply to the 11 projects.
They considered an amendment to Tipton’s bill, but they worried that amending a completely separate federal law would complicate Tipton’s fairly simple bill and bog it down in Congress.
“We’re back to the drawing board in trying to get this figured out,” Kennedy said.
A second bill is necessary because the Mancos situation deals with a separate law from the bill Tipton sponsored, said his spokesman, Josh Green.
“Congressman Tipton believes these are both important commonsense pieces of legislation,” Green said in an email.
So Kennedy is backing a new bill by Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont., that would help all 11 projects. It was introduced last Tuesday and already has a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Because most of the bill mirrors the language of the bill Tipton just passed, backers are hoping it sails through on the coattails of the original legislation.
jhanel@durangoherald.com
