August 17, 2011
RE: Elbert and Highway 86 Commercial Metropolitan District
Dear Commissioner Schwab and Commissioner Shipper,
I recommend that you do not approve Nyquist’s statewide entity for conducting public water operations. I have 3 reasons.
First, Nyquist went before the Prowers County Commissioners in 2009 to get a gravel pit approved. He had apparently previously acquired water rights in the Lamar Ditch. The gravel pit was never built and is now, apparently, planned to be used for storage for treating Lamar Ditch water. It looks like the ultimate usage of the gravel pit was kept from Prowers County Commissioners at the time it was approved.
Second, the water rights Nyquist holds underneath Wild Pointe were originally adjudicated by the Reynolds and Woodard families for use on the land overlaying the various water formations. All of the well permits pulled by Nyquist for deep aquifers reference that case, and those permit applications also specify the water to be used on Wild Pointe land. Clearly, the determinations of water rights granted to Nyquist were predicated on the water being put to beneficial use on that property and not anywhere else like Colorado Springs. I spoke with the groundwater office at the Colorado State Engineers office and they said that groundwater from designated basins may only be used on the land that the grantee specifies in applying for the water right.
Nevertheless, Nyquist has been in negotiations for some time with the Cherokee Metropolitan Water District in Colorado Springs for the sale of water from the aquifers below Wild Pointe that were not adjudicated or decreed for beneficial use in Colorado Springs.
Third, all of this has apparently been going on coincident with the presentations Nyquist gave before the Elbert County BOCC on July 13th and July 27th, and none of it was mentioned in those presentations.
There seem to be multiple instances where material matters that might tend to discourage approval have been left out of various discussions and public forums. While it’s certainly reasonable for an entity to act in its’ own best interest, the pattern with this group suggests some problems with timely disclosures depending on which forum they’re in, and this begs questions of what other material matters might remain to be discovered.
The governing statutes referenced by the “Third Amendment…” are broadly drawn and require only the most general specificity about the purpose of the special use district. As a result, you have before you a 100+ page plan that contains no information about the actual projects it is intended to govern. An average citizen coming to the county for approval to put a garage on his house needs to provide more substantive information about his intended operation than this group provided.
If Nyquist’s statewide water economics are truly of such a compelling beneficial interest to Colorado, he should have no problem finding a friendly commissioner forum in another affected county. I recommend the application not be approved here.
Sincerely Yours, Brooks Imperial
cc: http://elbertcounty.net