Back in 2016, I supported a commissioner candidate named Rodney B. Proffitt when he ran for a seat on the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners.
Back when I was young and stupid.
Mr. Proffitt and I have since discovered that we don’t much like each other, and that we disagree on a number of important issues.
For example, shortly after I wrote an eight-part editorial about the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) … Mr. Proffitt posted some unkind words on his Facebook page, referring to the editors of Pagosa’s two most popular local news outlets — Terri House, editor of the Pagosa Springs SUN, and myself, editor of the Pagosa Daily Post — and also a few nasty words about local activist Mely Whiting, who had the temerity to make some intelligent comments at the July 25 SJWCD meeting.
Mr. Proffitt’s July 29 Facebook post begins:
I expect Bill Hudson to lie. He can’t spell “journalism”, but I am really pissed that someone who has an education and experience would be so unprofessional – even pathetically petty.
Terri House is against building a reservoir for this community. The fact she lies to try to get the community to agree with her is disgusting. It only shows she does not have the facts on her side to make a journalistic argument. It’s not a mistake: she knows the facts and continues to lie in spite of knowing the facts.
Mr. Proffitt knows a thing or two about lying. In his Facebook post, he writes:
There never was an official “Dry Gulch Project”. Rather, the location for the reservoir is referred to as “Dry Gulch” on topos. The reservoir planned for that location was to be 35,000 AF of water, filled by pumping and based on a planning horizon of 100 years. The cost was projected to be in the range of $400 Million. TU took PAWSD [Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District] and SJWCD to court to stop the project. TU won because the CO Supreme Court said a 100 year planning horizon was speculative. They set the planning horizon at 50 years and said an 11,000 AF reservoir was legally defensible.
You can download the 2009 Colorado Supreme Court decision for yourself, here, and find that, nowhere did the court rule that an 11,000 acre-foot reservoir was ‘legally defensible’. The 16-page Supreme Court ruling does not recommend any size reservoir at all.
But one of Mr. Proffitt’s larger concerns seems to be the “real name” of the Dry Gulch Reservoir. He writes:
SJWCD passed a board resolution to build an 11,000 AF reservoir and a new project was born. Later, the board passed a resolution giving the reservoir project an official name. Bill, Terri and Mely Whiting all know what that official name is, and you should to, but those three people intend to mislead you into thinking it’s the old plan… The real name of the project is “San Juan River Headwaters Project”.
If I were Mr. Proffitt, I would also be concerned about the name, because who would want their reservoir named “Dry Gulch Reservoir”?
Just one slight problem with the so-called “real” name. If you download the 11-page Dry Gulch loan restructuring agreement, signed by Mr. Proffitt when he was SJWCD president, you will notice that the title of the document is:
AGREEMENT TO RESTRUCTURE COLORADO WATER CONSERVATION BOARD DRY GULCH RESERVOIR LOAN CONTRACT
This contract strikes me as somewhat ‘real’, speaking as someone who can’t spell ‘journalism’.
Mr. Proffitt’s post continues:
Liars, especially liars in positions authority and trust, lie only as a last resort because they know if you learn the truth, you will not agree with their position. The truth is, this community needed an 11,000 AF reservoir years ago to get us through our water needs until 2070. The truth is water has more uses than tap water, but even based on that, the latest supply and demand study says we need 10,000 AF by 2050. I don’t know their ultimate purpose in lying, but I know it has nothing to do with what’s best for this community.
Demand the truth — demand the reservoir get built.
You can download “the latest supply and demand study” here, and search in vain for a definite conclusion about how much water the community may or may not need in 2050.
In fact, that report specifically notes:
A reservoir is the historically most common option to meet additional demands; however, there are other potential opportunities to improve streamflow to meet additional demand. Healthy ecosystems provide some natural water storage, and recent research has focused on ways to increase natural water storage…
…Another potential option to meet demands is through temporary voluntary agricultural fallowing. Temporary fallowing could benefit streamflow and meet other demands during drought years…
After resigning from the SJWCD board in 2018, Mr. Proffitt was recently re-appointed to that board by Judge Jeffrey Wilson.
If you are concerned about liars, you may want to attend a future SJWCD meeting and meet Mr. Proffitt in person.