Western lawmakers are pushing the U.S. Forest Service put a time out on the new water rights policy that will affect major ski areas.
The new water rights clause would affect major ski areas in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming.
All water rights would be federally owned and controlled that were previously used by ski areas for snowmaking, irrigation, restrooms, lodging facilities, and culinary purposes.
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In a Dec. 1 letter to Cheif Tom Tidwell of U.S. Forest Service, Senators Mark Udall, John Barasso, James Risch, and Michael F. Bennet ask for a moratorium and further review of the new 2011 water rights clause.
“All water rights owners should be concerned,” Porzak said, claiming that the change would require ski areas to transfer ownership of several types of water rights to the Forest Service.(Summit County Voice)
There are significant changes in the new clause in comparison to the previous wording of the 2004 clause where it gives ski areas almost all control of water rights associated with ski area operations. There have been no issues with the clause for the past seven years.
The National Ski Association is claiming that the new 2011 clause is a "water grab" while the U.S. Forest Service claims its for simplification. In NSAA's testimony to the House Natural Resources Committee's Subcommittee on National Parks, Forest, and Public Lands their attorney Glen Porzak gave testimony.
"Ski areas invest hundreds of millions of dollars on water rights to support and enhance their operations. Water is crucial to ski area operations and ski area water rights are considered valuable assets to ski area owners.
"However, the Forest Service is now imposing a new water clause that requires the ski areas to transfer exclusive ownership of many types of water rights to the federal government. These are valuable private property rights which the Forest Service now wants for Free."
"Not only would ski areas not be compensated for these valuable water rights, they would also lose the ability to control the uses for which this water is applied in the future. If these water rights are owned by the U.S. government,the ski area would have no guarantee that the water will continue to be used for ski area purposes in the future," said Porzak..
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