Revenue Streams - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 126

ing county in the nation, not to mention one of its driest. Stockman's Water Company
proposed to deliver 150,000 acre-feet of water to the region annually, for a cool $750
million a year.
To blunt criticism, Boyce claimed that his pumping plan was totally different from
Strong's because he would take only “a small percentage” of the water from the Confined
Aquifer. If any of his neighbors was hurt by his water pumping, Boyce promised, he
would compensate them. To mollify environmentalists, he said he would establish a
wildlife refuge and protect his two fourteen-thousand-foot peaks from development.
Once again, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District rallied the troops, painted
signs, held bake sales, called legislators, and went to court to block two ballot initiatives
backed by Stockman's Water Company. They accused Boyce of “water mining”—the de-
pletion of groundwater faster than nature can replenish it—and warned of the dangers
of “out-of-state investors.” The dispute had a distinctly ad hominem edge. Lewis Entz ,
the local state representative, characterized Boyce as “a drugstore cowboy” driven by
revenge: “He's still mad at the potato farmers because they had a few more dollars to
spend than he did when he was a kid. He's bitter and vindictive. So now he's gonna get
even with us spud farmers come hell or high water. It's a personal deal with him.”
Boyce, blowing cigar smoke, smiled wryly. “That's the way they are down in the San
Luis Valley. Those kinds of [attacks] have always worked for them…. What you've got is
a bunch of corporate farmers who are taking advantage of the system. I'm simply saying
that's not right.”
In 1998, state attorney general Ken Salazar—a fifth-generation native of the San Luis
Valley, and now President Obama's interior secretary—strongly opposed Boyce's initi-
ative. That year, a law passed by the Colorado legislature and the defeat of Boyce's ballot
initiatives ended Stockman's Water Company's bid to export the valley's water. Boyce
blamed “uninformed voters” who did not understand the complex issues. Lewis Entz
had another explanation: “When people come down here and try to start trouble, we
work them over.”
In April 2001 Boyce and Farallon agreed to sell their Baca holdings to the Nature
Conservancy for $33 million. This was more than twice what they had paid for it
only six years earlier and would have represented a 40 percent profit. But in January
2002, a union report noted that Farallon's Vaca Partners was 50 percent owned by Yale
University . This revelation hit like a mortar round. Yale was excoriated for a “secret in-
vestment” in a project many people deemed morally compromised. The story set off a
pyrotechnical display of criticism, made national headlines, and embarrassed the uni-
versity.
Yale agreed to donate $4 million to the Nature Conservancy from the university's
profits from the sale of its Baca holdings. But in early 2004, Yale reneged, saying it