By Janelle Holden and Jim Mamiaga
Journal Staff Writers

The year 2000 will certainly be remembered in Montezuma County for everything but a Y2K crisis. A calm entry into the new century ushered in a year of heated rhetoric over devastating wildfires, a new national monument, proposed gravel pits, fiber-optic construction, and plenty of other events.

The following were picked as the county’s top news stories by the editorial staff at the Cortez Journal:

On June 9, after a year of debate and much local hand-wringing, President Clinton acted on Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s recommendation to change the BLM’s 164,000-acre Area of Critical Environmental Concern to a national monument. The new monument lies west and northwest of Cortez, and surrounds 18,570 acres of private land.

Colorado legislators Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Rep. Scott McInnis at first tried to head off the designation by introducing legislation that would have made the archaeologically-rich landscape a National Conservation Area. But after local landowners and environmentalists protested the measure (for different reasons), Campbell withdrew his support of the bill in March.

The June proclamation allowed most of the monument’s traditional uses, such as grazing and oil-and-gas extraction, to continue. However, motorized and non-motorized travel has been restricted only to established roads and trails, so that managers can monitor current travel.

The monument has yet to draw a rush of new tourists to the area, and so far its most visible local advertising has been the "No National Monument" billboard signs placed along county roads by private residents.

Currently, LouAnn Jacobson, the former director of the Anasazi Heritage Center museum, is the interim manager of the monument. A permanent manager and several new employees are expected to be appointed this spring, along with a federally mandated local advisory committee.

A rain of ash and smoke fell on Cortez this summer when large wildfires fed on tinder-dry conditions and burned close to half of Mesa Verde National Park as well as portions surrounding public and Ute Mountain Ute lands.

On July 20, lightning struck a tree on the John Bircher property in the Mancos Valley. The fire then ripped through a hay field, traveled up the mesa, and spread into Mesa Verde National Park, where it wreaked havoc for the next eight days. burning a total of 23,600 acres.

The beginnings of the Bircher Fire were a source of local controversy — some residents questioned the Park Service’s initial response to the fire. A later National Park Service investigation revealed that a bulldozer would not have been able to build a line around the fire in time to safely contain the fire’s spread to the park.

Mesa Verde had only been reopened for one day when the Pony Fire ballooned out of control from Pony Canyon, forcing the park’s closure once again on Aug. 4. The Pony Fire threatened the park’s museum and residences on Chapin Mesa, and eventually burned over Wetherill Mesa. The park, which lost 19,709 acres of land in the Bircher Fire, had an additional 1,373 acres scorched by the Pony Fire.

In addition, Pony burnt a total of 3,911 acres of Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park land.

The 2000 November elections did not inspire as much political drama within the county, as they did in Florida. The one race no one seemed to be able to call beforehand, however, was the contest for district attorney. In the end, Republican Joe Olt beat out incumbent Mike Green by a significant margin. Green’s first term had been marked by controversy over some decisions he had made — including dropping underage-drinking charges against two sons of Sheriff Joey Chavez, a decision Green defended as necessary because of legalities involved.

Olt had campaigned on a "get-tough" platform of demanding fewer or stricter plea bargains and increasing accountability for criminals. He plans to have three full-time attorneys, counting himself, in the office rather than having some part-time deputy DAs, as Green now does.

Kent Lindsay and Kelly Wilson were re-elected as Montezuma County commissioners, and representatives Mark Larson and Kay Alexander won second terms in the Colorado legislature. The overthrow of county official term limits was rejected by voters, and a proposal to retain the Re-1 school district’s mill levy went down as well.

The controversial issue of gravel pits reached a boiling point in 2000 when the Line Camp Pit was approved in September by the county commission amidst substantial resistance from those living nearby.

Situated at the convergence of nature, encroaching residential development and gravel resources in the scenic Dolores River Valley, the mine and its human and wildlife neighbors represent the pressures this era of rapid growth is having on communities across the state.

Several heated public hearings were held on whether Four States Aggregate and landowner Val Truelson should be granted a high-impact permit from the county to operate the 18-acre mine and conduct reclamation. According to the county land-use plan it will exceed threshold standards established for development, including for traffic, noise and dust.

The permit was granted unanimously, but with mitigation caveats to deal with the impacts and neighbor concerns. Hours of operation were limited to the standard work week, unless special permission from commissioners was granted; a local committee will be formed to oversee reclamation efforts are adequate after the mine is tapped; and a $10,000 reclamation bond is required to insure completion.

Additional permits must also be obtained from the state mining office and the department of transportation.

But that was not acceptable for gravel-mine neighbors Carol Stepe and Jack Akin, who persistently argued that allowing the project to go forward would damage their property values and unfairly disrupt their lives. In November they filed suit against the county commissioners, claiming that the procedures for allowing high-impact permits under the county code were not legally adhered to on the decision. The case is pending.

With the completion of Pathnet’s fiber-optic highway stretching from Albuquerque to Grand Junction, and its likely activation by early spring, county and city governments spent the year debating how to connect to the highway.

Fiber-optics will allow large amounts of information to be transferred from point to point at high speeds.

Currently, the city of Cortez is considering building a fiber-optic infrastructure within the city to connect each of the government entities and help provide services to local businesses. If approved, they may award a contract to Cortez-based Fone.Net in January.

In addition, Empire Electric Association’s telecommunications company, REANET, may take over several of the rural electric cooperative’s small shares in the fiber-optics highway soon, despite recording $3.2 million in losses this year. In October, a proposed takeover of REANET by TCOM failed because of TCOM’s current financial status.

In March, a 12-year-old girl, Kiley Duran, was killed by a pickup while she was trying to cross the highway near the intersection of U.S. Highway 160 and Highway 184 in Mancos.

The intersection had been the scene of three other traffic deaths in recent years, but after Duran’s death local residents’ complaints were finally heard.

After a new Wal-Mart Supercenter opened for business in January, plans began for building a new Safeway on Main Street next to Golden Corral. The construction of Safeway will make it the third supermarket in Cortez.

In May, construction began on a $1.5 million addition on the Cortez public library. The addition will double the size of the library by adding 10,000 square feet for new books, computers, and offices. The addition is expected to be completed by this winter.

Numerous new restaurants, laundromats, and car washes are also being built. At a recent city-council meeting, council member Karen Garner commented, "We’ve got car washes and laundromats coming out the wazoo."

After years of political negotiations and lawsuits, a scaled-down Animas-La Plata water project passed both houses of Congress by mid-December.

A-LP, a $279 million project to build a 120,000-acre-foot reservoir south of Durango at Ridges Basin, would settle Southern Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Navajo water claims.

The reservoir, a pumping plant across from Santa Rita Park, and a pipeline from the plant to the reservoir are scheduled to be completed within seven years.

The Utes have no official plans for the water, but have proposed power plants, strip-mining, golf resorts and a dude ranch.

The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that will construct the reservoir, won’t begin any actual construction until Oct. 1, 2001, the start of the fiscal year.

President Clinton is expected to sign the bill, but Congress must still fund each year of construction, and environmentalists may challenge A-LP in court.

On Jan. 11, Greg Allen Morris, a 38-year-old Cortez man, was gunned down in his Piñon Drive home in the first area homicide of 2000. Following an alcohol-fueled argument, Morris’s roommate, Bradley Scott Cassels, shot Morris nine times, five times in the back, with his 9mm handgun at their shared apartment. He then called police and surrendered.

Cassels, 46, was convicted of second-degree murder in October and sentenced to serve 40 years in prison.

Matt Gray, a 23-year-old man who plead guilty in May to reckless manslaughter, was sentenced to 90 days in jail and an extended probation despite a recommendation from the Montezuma County Probation Department for a prison term.

In February, Gray surrendered to police for shooting Kenneth Wayne Dugan III, who died from a gunshot wound to the chest at the home of his ex-wife, Lindy Kennedy Dugan, at a trailer on Road 25.

During an attempted eviction of one of Lindy Dugan’s renters, Douglas Jay Hackett, a confrontation broke out and Gray unintentionally shot Dugan.

Gray then fled from Colorado and remained at large for several days before returning to Cortez and surrendering to police.

Expanding agriculture has long been a goal of Colorado’s Water Conservation District. And this fall, it approved a $7.2 million loan for the Dolores Water Conservancy District to increase the amount of irrigated farms in Montezuma and Dolores counties by 4,000 acres.

The Phase I project would construct $5 million worth of additional laterals on the Dove Creek Canal, and a pumping station at Totten Reservoir. The water, 6,000 acre-feet worth, would be purchased from the Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company for $2.2 million for delivery via the Dolores Project.

But, the art of managing water resources stored in the taxpayer-funded Dolores Project in order to accommodate not only farmers, but anglers, downstream fisheries and rafters has those different users vigorously fighting for their perceived fair share.

Stepping up for the interests of fisheries and rafters on the Dolores River are Environmental Defense and Trout Unlimited. This month, both national environmental groups challenged DWCD data that showed there is no water available for improving fish habitat below the dam.

The environmental groups point to a recently released hydrology study showing McPhee Reservoir does have enough unallocated water that should flow downstream to benefit natural habitats. And that the purchase water from MVIC should also go downstream because it is water saved as a result of a federally funded water conservation effort to reduce salination.

The DWCD disputes those charges, calling the study seriously flawed, and says the only way to provide the extra water is to build Phase II, or Plateau Creek Dam on a tributary of McPhee Reservoir.

If Plateau Creek Dam is built, rafters say, there will be less water released from McPhee, and hence fewer rafting days during the spring runoff. The DWCD board’s position is to protect allocated water rights from flowing downriver for the development of downstream towns and states.

DWCD board members have vowed to fight in court if necessary if either project is held up by environmental concerns, which appears to be a possibility. Trout Unlimited and Environmental Defense have also indicated that the issue should go to the courts if a compromise cannot be reached.

Some other major stories that occurred in the county in 2000, in no particular order:

• Nine people, including three Cortez residents, were killed over the Fourth of July weekend in three separate highway crashes. Seven persons died in a two-vehicle crash on Utah Highway 262 between Montezuma Creek and Aneth, Utah, around 4 a.m. while traveling at high rates of speed. Alcohol was involved.

• Congress passed legislation to transfer ownership of Joe Rowell Park in Dolores from the U.S. Forest Service to the town of Dolores.

• In December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of violation and compliance order to Mountain Sun Organic and Natural Juice Company in Dolores for violating its town wastewater permit.

• Ongoing sewage problems at Lakeside Mobile Home Park and Estates are still in limbo, despite new ownership. Richard Norton transferred the property to Drew Cleland in February. Cleland is reportedly working on repairs, but they are still far from completion.