1. Require hazard insurance for property landowners from Buena Vista to Cotopaxi
Located below the dam and only three miles away, large sections of Buena Vista, residential as well as commercial, would fall into flood-plain designation, requiring local residents to foot an enormous flood insurance premium each year.
2. Substantial loss of tax base for Chaffee County
The area proposed for the reservoir includes considerable private acreage. Although Colorado Springs would adequately compensate property owners, the loss of this land to the county would result in a loss of tax base in a county where only eighteen percent of the land area can be taxed in the first place.
3. Drastically impact recreation: fishing, hunting, rafting, climbing, hiking, and biking
The largest summer recreation industry in the valley, river rafting and kayaking, would be negatively impacted if any impoundments are constructed anywhere along the main stem of the Upper Arkansas River. Trips that originate as far north as Granite and terminate at Salida or below would no longer be possible.
4. Increase dust with possible heavy metal content
Water flowing into the Upper Arkansas River is continually picking up unusually high levels of toxic heavy metals, including cadmium, manganese, lead and zinc. Although some of these metals are being successfully removed by two water treatment plants in Leadville as mandated by the EPA, a three-year study by the USGS after these plants were in operation showed a significant influx of these metals occurring along the stretch of river between Granite and Buena Vista.
These metals appear in two forms in the water, first as complex metals that end up in sediment, and the more toxic dissolved metal ions. At higher dilution (as would be found in a reservoir), much of the complex metal form converts to the dissolved metal form. Furthermore, this conversion is even more effective in anoxic conditions -- exactly those conditions one might find it in the non-aerated water at the bottom of a reservoir. It is the rapid free-flowing river that keeps the water oxygenated and maintains the lower concentration of the more toxic dissolved metal ions. Thus a dam on the Upper Arkansas for municipal water storage would have the effect of turning the potable water into water unfit for consumption by any living creature.
The second consideration with respect to toxic metals lies in the fact that sediments will be periodically exposed as the reservoir level fluctuates between periods of high demand. Large areas of the reservoir palms build broad and be picked up by. Large areas of reservoir bottoms will dry and be picked up by the frequent strong winds that blow through the valley. This raises the awesome picture of major dust storms blowing off the exposed areas, carrying sediment laced with heavy metals over the town of Buena Vista and its surroundings. The Owens Valley in California even now experiences this very predicament due to its being drained dry by Los Angeles.
5. Provide no recreational lake, but instead, a mud impoundment
With the topography to be included within the reservoir boundaries, along with the major fluctuations in reservoir levels, large areas within the reservoir boundaries would be frequently- exposed mud-flats and/or dry, barren bottoms. This would be a severe degradation to the area's natural scenic beauty. Loss of wildlife habitat and considerable loss of riparian wetlands in this area that has precious few such areas would be a travesty of major proportions.
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