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Citizens Progressive Alliance Petitions for Rehearing as Colorado Supreme Court Ignores Law

Posted by Steve Cone on 4:23 PM October 27, 2008.

Press Release October 27, 2008

The Citizens Progressive Alliance Petitions for Rehearing as Colorado Supreme Court Ignores Law & Evidence in Corrupt Animas-La Plata Project Ruling

In a terse, one-line order, the Colorado Supreme Court has upheld a lower court decree for state water rights sought by proponents of the Animas La Plata Project [“ALP”]. There is no author or signature on the Court’s cursory order, and it was not published. Citizens’ Progressive Alliance [“CPA”] believes these irregularities indicate the Court knows it has shirked its duty to decide this case. Early on, conflicts of interest forced the recusal of three of the Court’s seven justices.

CPA has filed a petition for rehearing, in frustration, since it did not even get an initial hearing.

CPA Chair Phil Doe said, “How many more of these special-interest outcomes can this country endure? We filed a public-interest lawsuit 6 years ago, not because we didn’t have anything else to do with our limited money or our time, but because we were convinced great injury was being done to the public’s money and its water resources.

“The Court, with its dismissive one liner has told us, in effect, that the public has no right to know why the project is needed and what purpose it will serve. It has simply thumbed its nose at a host of long-standing state and federal laws, including those dealing with fraud, fiscal responsibility, the environment, and the public’s-right-to-know.

“I can’t help but bleakly wonder,” Doe added, “if Justice Greg Hobbs’ long and open support for ALP and its backers didn’t carry some weight in the Court’s decision.

“I think we have to admit to ourselves that in this state justice isn't blind. It's weighed down with special-interest favors instead."

By this ruling, CPA contends the Colorado Supreme Court ignored, if not defied, a United States Supreme Court decision that CPA made a central issue in its legal briefs. CPA showed ALP involves rank water speculation in violation of state law. CPA contended ALP is really not a “water project.” There is no delivery system. There are no uses for the water. There is only a hole in the ground, Nighthorse Reservoir, to which water must be pumped 500 feet at public expense to evaporate, and go to waste. CPA showed that over 100 objectors to the application for the reserved water rights were denied their rights as parties and that as many as 6000 unsuspecting water users might be injured by ALP diversions.

“This order has a distinctive odor to it,” said CPA's Steve Cone. "That the Court could find no irregularities in the lower court's decision is mind boggling-- especially since after two weeks of trial, lower court Judge Gregory Lyman in Durango was still openly confused about the meaning of the term ‘consumptive use.’ This is a basic term in water law. Yet the higher court would have us believe, as an article of faith, that Judge Lyman never missed a beat. For any of us who witnessed the lower court proceedings, this is preposterous-- an unqualified outrage!"

Father John Kiernan, another CPA member, warned that the Gilded Age had nothing on the present times. "This Court opinion is just a continuation of the great public robberies we've recently come to expect from the ruling elite. You know, there's probably over one billion dollars in public money at stake here. Shouldn't that be worth more than a wave of the judicial wand over a few odd words of approval from the state's highest court?"

Contacts:________________________

Phillip Doe Steve Cone
Littleton, CO Farmington, NM
303 973 7774 505 237 0743

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