A taste of things to come

A taste of things to come

April 3, 2001

Capitol Report
By Senator Jim Dyer

Last Wednesday afternoon I got a taste of things to come in my life when I was a panelist at Gov. Bill Owens’ "Electricity Summit."

Convened at the Governor’s Mansion were 12 representatives, including people from Tri-State Generation and Transmission (where we in western Colorado get our power), Xcel Energy (the major Front Range electricity producer), rural electric associations, the sitting members of the Public Utilities Commission, other industrialists, and me. Of course, we had California on our minds.

"I want to make sure that we are doing everything we can in Colorado to prevent this from happening here," the governor said in his opening remarks.

And what followed were heartening, short-term reassurances that we are in somewhat good shape statewide and in fine shape on the Western Slope. In fact, the Western Slope has an excess of power that will likely be sent westward since the transmission lines going to the east over the Continental Divide can’t handle an additional load.

Of course the reassurances came with an asterisk: A major heat wave coupled with a generating plant failure could lead to shortages.

Longer term, seven years and beyond, it appears we have adequate power generation coming on line, but our transmission grid is showing the strain. Another trend that could skew the neat demand projections for Colorado is the probability that high-tech companies will be looking to escape the uncertainties of West Coast power availability. (Hydroelectric power generation in Washington and Oregon is suffering through a drought that cut production by 40 percent.)

With our trained work force and desirable surroundings, one speaker predicted that Colorado will be a relocation target.

I was surprised to learn how much power e-commerce, computers and telecommunications consume. And that is where our new growth will come from.

Speaking of growth SBA-148 passed out of the Senate, including my aye vote. This is a very complicated, imperfect, 80-page piece of legislation. I’m sure that eventually it will end up in a joint House-Senate conference committee sometime in early May. If it doesn’t make sense for Southwest Colorado at that point I’ll vote no.

It is apparent to me that the growth we see around us is dependent on the availability of water and electricity. These may be more realistic controllers of sprawl than artificial boundaries on a planner’s map.

The governor’s summit was the second energy briefing I’d had that day. At 7:30 a.m., the joint Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee me and listened to the chairman of the PUC and several energy suppliers and energy fuel producers.

An astonishingly large crowd assembled for this energy morning event, including 25 legislators.

Clearly the message from California has our attention.

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Thursday morning the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee met. We acted on the three oil and gas bills that came over from the House in February.

Only House bill 1088 survived. This would set up a system of mutual notification between surface owners and mineral estate owners.

House Bill 196s, "Compensation of Land Surface Damages," was the most important of the three bills. Our local star, Rep. Mark Larson, was House sponsor. He developed an amendment to the bill that I believed fairly valued the surface owner’s land while not allowing speculative valuation.

Predictably, the sensitive squad of oil and gas industry boys howled at the indignity of surface owners being equals. Their spokesman said, in effect, the industry has the legal right to do whatever it wants, and it is only out of good neighborliness that there is any compensation at all. Harrumph.

Mark has promised to carry on the good fight.

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I’m Senate sponsor for 17 pieces of House legislation. Only five are still pending. I’ve sponsored nine Senate bills and only two remain to be acted on. This is manageable even given that this week will see us dealing with the $13.5 billion state budget.

Two items of particular importance in the budget are keeping alive the $5 million-plus for tourism promotion, and keeping the funding for the drug court pilot program intact., With the Corrections Department growing this year by 12.6 percent, twice the rate of other departments, I believe it is ever more important to find alternatives to more prison cells.

Jim Dyer is a state senator from Durango. He can be reached in Durango at (970) 259-1942, or t the Capitol in Denver at (303) 866-4884.