Revenue Streams - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 121

suburbs such as Thornton and Aurora reach farther and farther afield for water, they
have resorted to using agents to acquire millions of dollars' worth of land, held predawn
meetings with water brokers, traded water-use credits with towns hundreds of miles
away, and reseeded thousands of acres of farmland as native grassland, all to protect
their water sources.
“Do I choke at the price of it?” asks Peter Binney, Aurora's utility director. “Yes. But
it's the cost of doing business.”
While the region's growing demand for water is straining municipal supplies, hydro-
entrepreneurs see it as a golden opportunity. Many dream of bringing water to the Front
Range from sources far away through pipelines.
Since the mid-1980s, Dave Miller , a retired air force colonel, has pushed a plan to
divert water from the Gunnison River, in west-central Colorado, to Denver; in 2005, a
federal judge ruled against him, but he has not given up. In 2003, a study of the Western
Slope defined five potential pipeline sites, with costs ranging from $3 billion to $15 bil-
lion; none of them have been developed, so far, but their supporters continue to push
them.
Bob Moran knows a lot about these pipeline controversies, in part because his father
was a major player in one of them back in the 1950s. But he also lives in Golden, just
outside Denver, which is the busiest water market in the United States. “Most of the big
Western rivers have their headwaters in Colorado,” he explained. “There are more water
lawyers—and water fights—in Colorado than in all of the other states combined.”
Bob Moran is a hydrogeologist, though I prefer to think of him as an Indiana Jones
of freshwater. In a typical year he will travel to half a dozen states, from New Mexico to
Alaska, and several nations, from Ghana to Indonesia to Romania, conducting hydro-
logical mapping, assessing water quality, and liaising among regulators, attorneys, and
policymakers. After a stint at the USGS in the 1970s, he became an independent water
consultant. His clients include players from across the water spectrum—industry, gov-
ernment agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), tribes, environmentalists,
and private investors. Some of the latter have what Moran terms a “specialinterest in
hydrology.” These men tend to be wealthy, influential, secretive, and ambitious.
“There was this one guy—well, this is a wild story,” he began, and he launched into a
tale about a mysterious billionaire's pipeline dreams. Then Moran invited me to go have
a look for myself, to see what had become of Baca Ranch and its legendary aquifer.
“WATER IS GOLD”
What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.