“Frankly, litigation may be the best way forward on this issue,” Ed Ryerson wrote in a letter last week to Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), defending his ex-employer’s ability to regulate water on forest lands.

In his letter, Ryerson, who coordinated the Forest Service’s ski area program from 1992 until his retirement in 2005, excoriated “the ‘bad actors’ in the ski industry who welshed on their agreements with the United States, and obtained water rights, justly belonging to the American people, through fraud and deception. These are the ski areas on who’s behalf NSAA has been lobbying.”

Udall, along with Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo), John Barrasso, (R-Wyo.), James Risch, (R-Idaho), and Rep. Scott Tipton, (R-Colo.), recently asked the Forest Service to suspend a new clause in its permitting process that ski resorts contend is an illegal taking of valuable water rights.

The Forest Service did not act on the advice of the politicians. Federal officials say the National Forest Ski Area Permit Act of 1986 concedes water rights on federal forest lands to the U.S. government. They also cite statutory authority based on the Organic Administrative Act of 1897, and other laws.

But in 2004, high-level meetings between ski industry executives and Bush administration officials resulted in a new policy that awarded permit owners joint ownership of water rights on federal lands.

“The 2004 water rights clause was implemented during my tenure and accordingly, I experienced how the ski industry exploited the lax regulatory environment that characterized the Bush Administration to attempt to effectuate the transfer of valuable water rights, that justly belong to the American people, to private ski areas,” Ryerson wrote in his letter to Udall. “The 2004 water rights clause is the legacy of this effort and should be seen in the context of that administration’s regulatory failures that allowed greed to jeopardize our economy and environment.”

Before the 2004 clause, there was a particularly cantankerous meeting between Ryerson, accompanied by a Department of Agriculture’s Office of General Council (OGC) lawyer, and NSAA.

“They reacted to every concern we voiced with hostility and let us know that they had the support of the Under Secretary’s Office to make the  changes they wanted,” Ryerson wrote of the NSAA officials. “Following this unproductive meeting, all discussions on modifying the clause were conducted between NSAA representatives, the Director of Recreation in the Chief’s office, and the Under Secretary’s staff. Agency permit specialist and water rights experts with OGC were excluded from the meetings that resulted in the development of the 2004 water rights clause.”

When the Forest Service tried to convey water rights under the 2004 joint-ownership policy, officials say agency lawyers learned Colorado’s laws wouldn’t allow it. That led to the 2011 interim directive, which authorizes the Forest Service to begin to wholly reclaim water rights at ski areas through permit actions. The new directive is limited to new permit requests and it is only valid for 18 months.

Ryerson’s letter questions whether any ski areas have intentionally deceived the Forest Service.

“If, in fact, some ski area operators signed their permits under the pretense of agreeing to transfer these water rights to the Government, when their intent was not to do so, they knowingly and willfully deceived the Forest Service and defrauded the United States,” he wrote. “Accordingly, these ski area operators risked criminal penalties under 18 USC 1001, as well as termination of their permits. That they would resort to such reckless behavior clearly illustrates the power of greed.”

Asked for a response, Geraldine Link, the policy director for NSAA, emailed the Colorado Independent to say “the 2011 clause – is retroactive in nature. It resurrects old, invalid and replaced clauses that are no longer in effect. It resurrects them from the past even though at this time the ski area and the water rights could very well be owned by a different entity who was not a party to the permit from 3 decades ago. The 2011 clause also applies to water that originates on private land and other non-USFS lands. Talk about shifting political winds. The ski industry is frustrated with the pendulum swinging back and forth between administrations. It is not good for business.”

Ryerson has a much different perspective but he agrees with NSAA officials on at least one point when they say they are going to sue the Forest Service: Let the dispute play out in court.

“It will be advantageous to the public’s interest to get the Justice Department involved in this matter,” Ryerson wrote in his letter to Udall, on which Bennet was copied. “It will provide them an opportunity to become familiar with the facts of the matter to help them determine if criminal prosecutions should be pursued, and to expedite acquiring title to water rights that justly belong to the American people.”

Photo: Flickr/Nashoba Valley Ski Area

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (Flickr Creative Commons/Jeffrey Beall)

According to a poll released Thursday by Public Policy Polling, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is the second most popular governor in the country. Also, according to the poll, if an election were held today, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mark Udall would cruise to victory.

Hickenlooper trails only Mississippi’s Haley Barbour of those governors polled by PPP this year — 53 percent of voters approve of him, compared with 23 percent who disapprove.

Democrats are pretty much unanimous in their support for Hickenlooper’s work (73 percent/10 percent), and independents are very positive, as well (53 percent/20 percent), said PPP’s Tom Jensen in an email. What really sets Hickenlooper apart from most of his colleagues across the country is that even with Republicans he comes pretty close to breaking even, with 31 percent of them approving of him compared with 39 percent who disapprove. “It’s been a very successful first year for Hickenlooper in the court of public opinion,” Jensen said.

Udall also has solid approval numbers, with 41 percent of voters approving of him, compared with 31 percent who disapprove. Udall was first elected in 2008 and will be up for reelection in 2014.

With no Senate race on the ballot in Colorado next year,  PPP took a very early look at how Udall would fare at this point against a pair of potential 2014 opponents. He leads Congressman Mike Coffman by 14 points (48 percent/34 percent), and 2010 primary runner-up Jane Norton by 17 points (50 percent/33 percent).

Michael Bennet has a 38 percent approval rating, with 33 percent of voters disapproving. As with Udall, 29 percent have no opinion about Bennet’s job performance.

He compared that with the approval ratings of British Petroleum during the Deepwater spill (quite a bit higher) and with the percentage of people who think America should become communist (a little higher). He took care to note that he was not in that group.

“I get the feeling that people don’t think people are watching.” Wrong, he said. They are watching and they aren’t liking what they see. “At a minimum they would like to see us prevent things from getting worse.”

Talking about the impasse over the debt ceiling, which resulted in a downgrade of America’s credit rating, he said, “There is not a mayor in Colorado who would threaten their town’s credit rating for politics, not a one, not a Democrat, not a Republican, not a Tea Party Republican, not a one.”

The resolution to disapprove the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules was defeated in the U.S. Senate today.

The resolution would have repealed the net neutrality rules issued last year by the FCC that go into effect this month. Net neutrality is the idea that consumers should have access to all Internet content and services, not limited by Internet service providers “that want to treat them differently so they can charge you more depending on what you use.”

“An Internet that honors basic standards of net neutrality is key to the free exchange of ideas, the health of our democracy and the future of Internet innovation,” said Colorado Senator Michael Bennet. “I’m glad the Senate has not intervened to prevent the FCC from supporting the even playing field that has made the Internet such an important part of our business environment, learning and culture.”

Marco Rubio, R-Fla. voted for repeal while Bill Nelson, D-Fla., voted against it. The overall vote went along party lines, with 46 Repubican senators voting yes and all 52 Democrats voting not to support the resolution.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, sponsored the resolution of disapproval in the Senate. The House version of this resolution was approved in April.

Democrat John Rockefeller — chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation — issued the following statement after the Senate vote:

I am pleased that the Senate voted down this misguided resolution. By keeping the Open Internet rules in place, we can protect consumers, inspire innovation, and foster investment in the broadband economy. These rules are the product of hard work, consensus, and compromise. During this process, the agency received written input from more than 100,000 commenters, 90 percent of which supported adoption of the Open Internet rules. So at the end of the day, the FCC’s light-touch approach to network neutrality prevailed, and that is a good thing.

Scot Kersgaard contributed to this article.

Charred school buses in the wake of Boulder County’s Fourmile Canyon Fire. (Photo by Eric Peter Abramson, area resident)

The Sugar Loaf Fire Protection District Land Exchange Act, sponsored by Colorado U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, would swap 5.7 acres of fire district land for federal land in the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest between the communities of Boulder and Nederland – land where two of the three fire stations in the district are already located.

The area is in an extremely fire-prone part of the state susceptible to massive wildfires like the Four Mile Canyon blaze last year.

According to a release from Udall’s office, the bill had no Senate opposition but was held up “by gridlock and conflicts about unrelated issues.” He cited it as yet another example of non-controversial legislation such as his ski area summer activities bill that has been held up because of political bickering.

In the Boulder County case, however, public safety was a serious concern.

“The Sugar Loaf Fire District protects thousands of Coloradans, but instead of being able to focus on fighting fires they’ve been wrapped up trying to resolve a land issue with the Forest Service,” Udall said. “This bill is critical to public safety in Colorado, and I’m extremely glad that we were finally able to get past the gridlock that is slowing down progress on everything here in Washington.”

Udall went on to point out the major role Sugarloaf firefighters played in battling the Fourmile Canyon blaze, which was the most costly in terms of property damage in Colorado history.

“As we saw in last year’s disastrous Fourmile Canyon Fire, firefighters are essential to keeping people and property safe. The Sugar Loaf Fire District firefighters were crucial in fighting that fire, and this bill would help them continue to do their jobs well,” Udall said. “Now we need to get it through the House, so the fire district can finally put aside this land dispute with the Forest Service.”

A similar bill still needs to be passed by the U.S. House.

“Our firefighters put their lives on the line to keep us safe, and we owe it to them to make sure they have the resources and support they need to get the job done,” Bennet added. “This bill will allow the Sugar Loaf Fire District to make essential upgrades and improvements it needs to better keep Boulder safe.”

“We’re batting around a lot of different ideas,” state Representative Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, told the Colorado Independent. “We’ll be looking at where there’s common ground. We’ll be talking with county clerks to find the best way to reach out to voters and to establish a system where all Coloradans have equal access to the political process.”

Duran was speaking generally about conversations taking place among members of the Democratic caucus in the state House, but she added that she’s confident there would be bipartisan support for any well-crafted bill that fairly addresses the question raised by Secretary of State Scott Gessler when he sued Denver County last month to prevent Clerk Debra Johnson from mailing ballots to legally registered but “inactive” voters.

“The overall goal has to be to facilitate the right to vote. Voting is an American value that people cherish. Expanding the franchise is the goal,” said Duran. “I mean, we have GOP county clerks like Sheila Reiner in Mesa County who agree that Gessler’s action was an overstep.”

Gessler, a Republican who made a career as a private attorney championing partisan interpretations of election and campaign finance law, argued that state law requires clerks mail ballots to only active registered voters. Gessler said he was seeking to prevent fraud but he supplied no evidence that any fraud had occurred in Colorado in recent elections, much less fraud that suggested mailing ballots to inactive voters in any way increased the likelihood of fraud.

Inactive voters in Colorado are those who have registered but who have failed to cast a ballot in the previous even-year election.

Roughly 2.4 million Coloradans voted in the presidential election of 2008. The 2010 midterm election, however, drew only 1.8 million voters. There are now roughly 1.2 million voters categorized as inactive in Colorado. A disproportionate share of those inactive voters live in Democratic Party dominated Denver County.

Mailing ballots to inactive voters has been demonstrated to increase participation. Voters are much more likely to cast ballots they receive in the mail than they are to track down a ballot or request one to complete and return.

In Denver last year, Clerk Johnson estimated that mailing to inactive voters translated to 10,000 votes. That same year, Democratic US Senator Michael Bennet defeated Republican Ken Buck by only roughly 15,000 votes statewide.

On October 7, Judge Brian Whitney threw out Gessler’s lawsuit, ruling that the Secretary of State’s interpretation of election law in the case was insupportable. Gessler has not said whether or not he plans to appeal the decision.

That Gessler’s actions seemed rushed and even slapdash bolstered the impression among legal analysts and members of the press that Gessler was acting baldly to suppress votes in the state, joining Republicans in states coast to coast who this year have spearheaded an historic raft of similar efforts.

Maps of inactive voters in Denver broadcast by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow highlighted the fact that Gessler’s injunction against mailing inactive voters ballots, had it been upheld, would have overwhelmingly affected minority voters in the city, voters with less access to the internet, for example, who move often and who are clustered partly in Representative Duran’s House District 5.

“I’m watching this very closely,” Duran said. “This is just incredibly important. There’s no reason why legally registered voters should have to jump through additional hoops.”

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“The new law is an important step toward addressing the pervasive problem of bullying against Colorado’s most vulnerable young people. It sends a clear message that bullying is no longer an adolescent rite of passage but a serious problem that will not be tolerated in our schools,” said Brad Clark, executive director of One Colorado Education Fund, the organization that produced the video..

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Tahoe’s Squaw Valley, the legendary ski area that hosted the Winter Games in 1960, announced on Monday that it’s merging with adjacent Alpine Meadows, creating a ski complex encompassing 6,000 acres, which makes it larger than Vail.

The new Squaw Valley Ski Holdings LLC has no immediate plans to connect the two ski areas by chairlifts because of separate ownership of the connecting ridgeline, but Squaw Valley President and CEO Andy Wirth, a former Steamboat executive, says “that vision doesn’t escape us,” according to the Associated Press.

The move escalates the snow sports arms race in the Lake Tahoe region, where last year Broomfield, Colo.-based Vail Resorts bought Northstar-at-Tahoe to add to its massive Heavenly ski area in South Lake Tahoe. Vail Resorts recently signed Olympic and X Games gold medalist Shaun White to serve as a spokesman and train at Northstar.

Squaw Valley was bought late last year by Denver-based KSL Capital Partners, which is spending $50 million on the resort over the next five years.

The merger also increases domestic competition for the next available Winter Olympic Games in 2022. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper last month expressed serious interest in going after those Games, but U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) officials say they won’t submit a bid until a revenue sharing dispute with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is resolved. Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet earlier this month fired off a letter urging a quick resolution to that dispute.

USOC CEO Scott Blackmun, speaking in Colorado Springs recently, said it’s high time for the United States to host another Olympic Games (the last time was Salt Lake City in 2002). Bid books for 2022 would be due in 2013, with the IOC set to make a decision in 2015. Colorado and Reno-Lake Tahoe are considered the two U.S. frontrunners.

“I think 20 years is long enough,” Blackmun said, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. “It’s important that we host the Games in the United States as a way to keep Americans connected to the team … I don’t think there are limitations on our ability to participate in a 2022 bid right now.”

Tahoe may have an advantage in that it previously hosted the Winter Olympics in 1960 and did not reject the Games after being awarded them by IOC the way Denver voters did in the early 1970s.

California hosts the second most skier days per year in the United States, according to AP, at a little over 12 percent. Colorado is the most skied state in the nation at more than 20 percent of the skier days in the nation every year.

Even if the IOC does decide to submit a 2022 bid and Tahoe wins, Colorado connections would abound. Squaw Valley is owned by the Denver-based private equity firm KSL Capital Partners, a company founded by former Vail executives Mike Shannon and the late Larry Lichliter.

Vail and Beaver Creek would likely play a prominent role in any 2022 bid for Colorado, with work already under way to add a women’s alpine skiing downhill course next to the existing Birds of Prey downhill course at Beaver Creek. All of the alpine skiing events for the 2015 World Alpine Ski Championships will be held in Beaver Creek, where the men’s course has become one of the most famous on the World Cup circuit since it was built in 1997.

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U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet are reintroducing the San Juan Mountains Wilderness Act, which enjoys support from all three affected counties — San Miguel, San Juan and Ouray — and most stakeholders. Udall and Bennet previously introduced the bill in 2009 along with companion legislation from then U.S. Rep. John Salazar, but it didn’t gain enough traction to become law.

“Unfortunately Congress failed to pass any wilderness bills last session,” the Telluride-based Sheep Mountain Alliance said in a statement posted on its website. “While we will continue to work with the senators to help this bill through committee, we also need to continue to educate (Salazar’s successor) Congressman (Scott) Tipton on the merits of this broadly supported land conservation proposal.”

Tipton is hosting a “listening session” for the proposal this Friday at Ridgway Town Hall.

The bill would designate 33,000 acres as wilderness — mostly as expansions of the existing Lizard Head and Mount Sneffels wilderness areas — in addition to adding mid-elevation lands to the system with a new area around 7,933-foot McKenna Peak, where imposing sandstone cliffs jut out of the plain.

The San Juan Mountains Wilderness Act would also designate about 22,000 acres as a special management area allowing some outdoor recreation activities such as hiking, hunting and fishing.

It would also withdraw over 6,000 acres within Naturita Canyon from oil and gas development.

Last Dollar Pass (John Richter) 

“Not only will this bill ensure generations of Coloradans will be able to enjoy its stunning beauty, but it will also help create jobs and boost the economy of the entire area,” Udall said. “Hikers, outfitters, hunters, anglers and others interested in wildlife and the outdoors will continue to be drawn to the area, sparking more hospitality and recreation-related business. Despite the down economy, outdoor recreation is a strong and growing sector of the economy — one we should nurture and that will benefit everyone in the state.”

Preserving places of peaceful contemplation is an ethic the senator said he learned from his mother, Patricia “Sam” Udall. In his opening remarks at a National Parks Service subcommittee last week, Udall cracked a smile as he revealed that his mom was a member of the National Rifle Association.

“Many people are familiar with my father Congressman Mo Udall and my uncle Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and their work to promote conservation across the country. … But in my passion for conservation I often generally think more about my mother and how she was the real conservationist in our family,” Udall said. “She was a Coloradan, she raised six kids, she was a member, I found out later in life, of the NRA. She was a sharpshooter, a marksman, an angler and an equestrian as she encouraged my five brothers and sisters and me to get outside, to get dirt under our fingernails, to look at and also tackle the steepest climbs, to strap on our skis on the coldest days and on the coldest mountains.”

The subcommittee Udall chaired heard from National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis, whose agency issued a new forward-looking report as it prepares to turn 100 years old in 2016.

There are 36 action items in “A Call to Action: Preparing for A Second Century of Stewardship and Engagement,” which include an initiative to prevent lights from polluting the night sky around the Colorado Plateau; a program to enable 100,000 children a year to visit national parks; the overhaul of interpretive signs to provide more accurate information; and a goal of doubling, over 2009 levels, the amount of renewable energy generated within national parks and used by park facilities.

Rather than requesting new federal appropriations to reach its objectives, the National Park Service is looking to set up an endowment fund with a goal of generating $1 billion over the next 25 years.

“If you think about any other major institution in this country, whether it’s the Smithsonian or Harvard, they have an endowment that allows them to carry forward their programs in times of austerity and it provides a point for giving from an extremely philanthropic American people,” Jarvis said.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., sounded support for the endowment, even recommending a benefactor.

“Oh my goodness, you’re not asking for more money. I love it,” Paul said. “There’s this guy I keep hearing about in the news who has a lot of money and feels under-taxed, Warren Buffet. You ought to talk to him.”

Their message: Congress is getting too radical on Capitol Hill.

Extreme skier Chris Davenport, Olympic snowboarding silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler and big-mountain ripper Jeremy Jones will be in the nation’s capital tonight with U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Jared Polis to discuss their firsthand accounts of climate change. Then on Thursday, the athletes will deliver a letter to Congress asking lawmakers to chill out on their assault against the
Environmental Protection Agency and its ability to continue to regulate greenhouse gases.

“As a winter sports community, we’re starting to see the effects of climate change already. Keeping these regulations in place is one of the last, and most effective chances we have to protect our lifestyles, our jobs and the economic vitality of our mountain communities,” the snow riders’ letter states.

Unless curtailed, carbon dioxide pollution is likely to cause a steep decline in snow and trigger significant economic losses to the $66 billion-a-year snow sports industry, they will tell Congress.

The trip is the second in as many years for Jones, who founded Protect Our Winters — a nonprofit organization dedicated to reversing the global warming crisis by uniting the winter sports community. Auden Schendler, vice president of sustainability for the Aspen Skiing Company, and Antonia Herzog, a climate and clean air specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, will be along for the ride.

More and more, winter sports athletes are speaking out about climate change and how they need the planet to stay cold and snowy enough to protect their livelihoods. Jones is said to have even forsaken helicopters and chairlifts when he goes snowboarding to demonstrate his commitment to the planet.

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Geological Survey released a study that suggests snowpack declines in the Rocky Mountains over the last 30 years are unusual compared to the past few centuries. Warming is projected to worsen in the 21st Century, foreshadowing a battle royal over water supplies.

“With a few exceptions (the mid-14th and early 15th centuries), the snowpack reconstructions show that the northern Rocky Mountains experience large snowpacks when the southern Rockies experience meager ones, and vice versa. Since the 1980s, however, there were simultaneous declines along the entire length of the Rocky Mountains, and unusually severe declines in the north,” the USGS eported.

Although this year’s La Niña unleashed plenty of powder in the northern Rockies, and left the southern Rockies thirsty, the “gains are only a small blip on a century-long snowpack decline,” the USGS said.

Researchers estimate that between 30-60 percent of snowpack declines in the late 20th century are likely due to greenhouse gas emissions. The rest is attributed to “natural decadal variability in the ocean and atmosphere, which is making springtime temperatures that much warmer,” the USGS said.

When it comes to legislation designed to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over pollutants, there are quite a few bills that Davenport, Bleiler and Jones aren’t too stoked about.

One of them is H.R. 910, which would amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency “from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change, and for other purposes.”

The House passed the bill in April with support from Colorado’s four Republican congressmen: Mike Coffman, Cory Gardner, Doug Lamborn and Scott Tipton. The state’s other Reps. Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter and Polis, all Democrats, voted against H.R. 910. The bill heads to the Senate floor this fall.