Revenue Streams - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 127

would reduce its charitable donation to $1.5 million. Students wrote impassioned edit-
orials in protest, pushed the university to define its ethical investing, and picketed the
university's investment office. In the end, Yale donated $1.6 million in profits from the
ranch sale to the Nature Conservancy. (Thereafter, Yale stopped including the names
and addresses of companies it invests in on its tax returns.)
In September 2004, the Nature Conservancy led the federal acquisition of the
151-square-mile, 97,000-acre parcel of Baca Ranch, for $33 million. The Great Sand
Dunes was officially designated America's fifty-eighth and newest national park. One
section of the park was deemed so ecologically sensitive that it was designated the Baca
Wildlife Refuge and closed to the public. At last, the water under Baca Ranch appeared
to be protected forever. To tap into the Baca's aquifer, the federal government must ap-
ply for water rights from the Colorado state court. “There will be no change in the way
the water is used,” said Charles Bedford, the Nature Conservancy's state director. “There
will be no pumping.”
But as he squinted up at the Great Dunes in August 2007, Bob Moran said, “I wish
I could be so optimistic. Maybe I have a touch of my dad in me. But I've seen enough
to know how the world works. Politicians come and go, laws change. Nothing is per-
manent—especially when it comes to water. Someone is always going to try to game the
system.”
As I later discovered, Lexam Explorations, a Canadian energy company, had an-
nounced the previous December that while the federal government owned the surface
of the park, Lexam and its partner, ConocoPhillips , had owned the mineral rights be-
neath the surface long before the park was protected. Under Western law, this gave them
“senior” rights to the underground resources. Lexam also had a surface-use agreement
in place, meaning they were allowed to drive heavy equipment into the preserve and
drill in the area deemed so ecologically sensitive that the public is not allowed to visit it.
In drilling for gold in 1992, Lexam had discovered oil and gas reserves on the western
flank of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Oil and gas drilling uses lots of water and
often spews toxins into the environment. The company planned to drill two fourteen-
thousand-foot test wells in the Baca Wildlife Refuge and said on its website that “the
potential of the prospect is promising.”
Valley citizens, Indian tribes, historians, and environmentalists were outraged. In
2008, over forty-seven thousand public comments were filed about the plan. he San
Luis Valley Ecosystem Council filed a lawsuit charging that the US Fish and Wildlife
Service had a duty to protect the refuge, to involve the public in the discussion, and to
establish environmental safeguards.