The upper Arkansas River between Leadville and Canyon City Colorado contains world class white water and has been the site of many world championship and Olympic qualification kayak competitive events for decades. It is the most heavily used river in the United States for white water rafting.
In late 1990, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced plans to study the Upper Arkansas for possible protection under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Such protection would prohibit dams from being built. Immediately after this announcement, the city of Colorado Springs (the "City") filed in Colorado District 2 Water Court for rights to build two dams on the Upper Arkansas and established an initial budget of over eight million dollars to push its proposal through the permit process. If built, these dams, referred to as the Elephant Rock Dam and the Mount Princeton Dam, would displace over one hundred property owners, flood over three miles of river, reduce river flows by as much as 30 percent downstream, and scar miles of scenic landscape with pipelines.
Friends of the Arkansas was formed in January of 1991 in a grass-roots campaign to counter this and any future threat of dams on the Upper Arkansas between the river headwaters and the Pueblo Reservoir. The group is non-profit. Its members are all volunteers.
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