{"id":71866,"date":"2017-03-06T21:26:50","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T04:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hermosa-bill-hits-rough-water\/"},"modified":"2017-03-07T04:26:50","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T04:26:50","slug":"hermosa-bill-hits-rough-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hermosa-bill-hits-rough-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Hermosa bill hits rough water"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Tipton\"
Tipton<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton recently released a potential amendment to the Hermosa Creek Watershed Protection Act, changing the House bill from the agreed-upon wording drafted by community consensus.<\/p>\n

The original bill had the support of La Plata and San Juan counties, and had been carefully crafted by people who live there.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are very disturbed that this process, which was designed locally and has very strong local consensus with support from Congressman Tipton, has become a very different piece of legislation,\u201d said Jimbo Buickerood, the public-lands coordinator at San Juan Citizens Alliance, an environmental protection group based in Durango.<\/p>\n

Buickerood joined the Hermosa Creek Workgroup, an initiative of the River Protection Workgroup, that discussed protection of this area. He said the intention of the plan for the area had been to \u201ckeep it just as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Josh Green, Tipton\u2019s press secretary, said the bill is inherently the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amendment will in no way change the outcome of the legislation\u2019s goals agreed upon by the stakeholders,\u201d Green wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

In changing the language, Buickerood said the will of the community has been ignored.<\/p>\n

The amendment has removed a small paragraph on \u201cUse of Conveyed Land.\u201d Currently, certain areas are open to hard-rock mining and logging. The five-line paragraph that was removed acted as a safeguard against future exploitation of the land.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing in here that says they couldn\u2019t turn it over to a developer of oil or a developer of gas,\u201d senior director of the Wilderness Society Jeremy Garncarz said of the effect of dropping the paragraph.<\/p>\n

Green said the omission does not deviate from the stakeholders\u2019 aims for that section.<\/p>\n

The amended bill will be marked up by the House Committee on Natural Resources today.<\/p>\n

The frustration stems from years of work the Hermosa Creek Workgroup had put into creating comprehensive, locally driven legislation.<\/p>\n

The bill had been a collaboration involving two counties, multiple conservation groups and outdoor recreational groups, and more than 200 local businesses in La Plata and San Juan counties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amendment guts it,\u201d Garncarz said. \u201cIt throws all of that work out the window.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Senate bill remains unchanged from the version created by the drafting committee in conjunction with Sen. Michael Bennet\u2019s office. Support for the Senate bill continues to be bipartisan.<\/p>\n

Potential Amendement H.R. 1839 (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n

Original H.R. 1839 (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tipton\u2019s proposed deletion raises a ruckus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,1562,199],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-71866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-san-juan-county-colorado","tag-san-juan-national-forest"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71866","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=71866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71866"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=71866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}