{"id":105444,"date":"2016-04-28T17:53:10","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T23:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/legislature-kills-bill-benefiting-ranchers-and-farmers\/"},"modified":"2016-04-28T17:53:10","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T23:53:10","slug":"legislature-kills-bill-benefiting-ranchers-and-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/legislature-kills-bill-benefiting-ranchers-and-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislature kills bill benefiting ranchers and farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A bill that would have banned introducing new evidence in groundwater disputes appealed before a water court judge died Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/span>Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 A measure that aimed to level the playing field for farmers and ranchers appealing groundwater rights rulings drowned in the Legislature on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The legislation would have prohibited entering new evidence on appeal after a state commission makes a decision on groundwater disputes.<\/p>\n

The Senate Judiciary Committee initially failed to vote on the bill, but then came back later in the meeting to officially kill the legislation on a unanimous vote.<\/p>\n

The bill had powerful opposition from former Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, and Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig boy politics at its worst,\u201d lamented Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, who co-sponsored the bill in the House, where it passed 60-5, with the support of Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio.<\/p>\n

The 12-member Colorado Ground Water Commission issues decisions on disputes. Appeals, however, are handled by water court judges in district courts across the state.<\/p>\n

State law allows for new evidence to be entered upon appeal when the issue hits water court, though such appeals are rare.<\/p>\n

At that time, larger water interests \u2013 often those that try to transfer water from agricultural to municipal use \u2013 rely on water engineers and other experts to stack evidence in the case, say proponents of the bill.<\/p>\n

Smaller farmers and ranchers \u2013 who are fighting for their water rights \u2013 are forced to invest in attorneys to combat the insertion of new evidence. Costs can become unbearable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt finally puts a stop to the games being played by those looking to take advantage of our designated basin system,\u201d Marc Arnusch, a member of the Ground Water Commission, said of the legislation.<\/p>\n

\u201cA case must be heard again completely from the beginning, which causes a great deal of time and money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coram assumed the measure would be a simple fix to an obvious problem. But that was before it became embroiled in politics.<\/p>\n

Since leaving office in 2007, Owens has worked on water and land resource issues, including proposing water sales to municipalities. Coram gave Owens and Cadman \u201c100 percent credit\u201d for the bill\u2019s troubled path in the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked on things in this building that\u2019s taken me two, three years to get through. I\u2019ll be back,\u201d Coram said.<\/p>\n

Critics of the bill \u2013 including Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango \u2013 say the measure would erode an unbiased appeals process before a judge. They point out that most of the commission members are political appointments by the governor, unlike a court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a stacked commission,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you go to court, there is an independent judge \u2026 there are procedural differences.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Measure helped producers in water appeals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[94,13,295],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-105444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-water"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105444"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}