87% of Wyoming residents sampled in a new poll say they’re against a proposed 550 mile water pipeline linking that state’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Colorado’s booming Front Range. The phone survey conducted over the summer by Public Opinion Strategies sampled 400 registered voters in Wyoming and was funded by Trout Unlimited.
Dave Glenn runs the group’s sportsmen’s conservation project in Lander, Wyoming. He says the project would lower water levels in the reservoir and the Green River and potentially harm fish and wildlife habitat.
"With Wyoming there’s just too much uncertainty with drought, growth, future needs," Glenn says. "The concept of giving away water to Colorado on something like this, critical fish and wildlife habitat would just be crushed or devastated by having this thing go through."
But the project’s backers, including Fort Collins entrepreneur Aaron Million, have said Colorado could legally be entitled to some of the water in the reservoir, and they say new water sources need to be found given Colorado’s growing population.
The federal government is currently planning an environmental analysis of the project.
