Preasident's Beat

March 23, 2008

Ken Eis

Presidents Beat

Well, the Poudre and Big T are fishing well. Clear low water is already stimulating dry fly action until the Spring runoff dumps cold ice melt into our front range rivers. So get out and enjoy the sport.

The Chapter is getting active with a June Big T river cleanup and the Behnke raffle. We hope you will all participate. If you can’t help with the cleanup a $20 raffle ticket will help support a graduate student in fish biology. There is no better way to support TU’s mission in cold water resources.

This biggest activities in the chapter in the last 6 months have been in river access and the various Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) associated with the new Glade and upgrades to Haligan/Seamen reservoirs. TU has successfully stood for requiring the proponents of the Glade project (NISP) to amend their EIS to improve the impact analysis and the requirements analysis for water in the future. Both areas were poorly developed in the initial EIS. Your chapter and Colorado TU have spend a lot of time on these issues and no other activity in the history of the Colorado front range will have more impact on your fishing opportunities or cold water resources. Keep up to speed on these dam projects, and their potential impacts on your sport.

The Big T river access issue is another contentious activity we are engaged in. The Big Thompson flood caused the Federal government to buy up properties along the Big T that were too dangerous to build structures on. The land was given to Larimer County to manage. Recently the County has desided to sell off certain parts of these numerous parcels of land so they can make money and not have any liability. Your chapter and the Loveland Fishing Club have been active in trying to keep public access to fishing unaffected by these "Land deals". Unlike other public access wars this is not a "takings" issue because the land is owned and fishing access assured by Larimer County. In this case private owners want to buy the river bank land fragments and deny public fishing access. If you have an opinion on this issue let the Larimer County Commissioners know.