The view from the Four Corners

A Resident Responds to Wolf Creek Developer McCombs

By Ken Wright, 4-11-06

"All my life I have always wondered why there is antagonism toward developers," moaned billionaire B.J. "Red" McCombs last Friday at a forum on his proposed massive resort development atop remote Wolf Creek Pass in southwestern Colorado.

His quandary was, of course, rhetorical, because nobody on the panel would disagree with his disillusionment. The event, held in isolated Creede, Colo., (if I had enough time, I might be able to come up with a less inconvenient location to hold a public forum) was boycotted by the only critics of the project invited to the panel discussion. State Sen. Jim Isgar and state Rep. Mark Larson announced they wouldn't attend after no other critics were invited.

Despite the sanitized event, the antagonism McCombs frets over was present. Inside, a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 300 listened to the speakers; while outside protesters with signs made their point, watched over by a heavy police presence.

In the spirit, then, of soothing some of the antagonism, I’d like to relieve Mr. McCombs of his life-long befuddlement. I, of course, can only speak for myself, and maybe my friends, and most of my acquaintances, and many of their friends and acquaintances, and the rest of those of us who live in the rural West because of the place itself rather than how much we can make off the place – but I by no means can speak for everyone.

So, Mr. Developer, how do we not love thee? Let me count down the ways:

5. You insult us. Let’s begin with the so-called “debate” at which you voiced your tormented circumstances. Particularly absent from the invited list were representatives of Colorado Wild, the environmental group that exposed the intimate collaboration between your employees, Mineral County and the U.S. Forest Service in approving parts of the project. And when our representatives speak up about this collusion, you insult them, too. When Rep. Larson introduced a resolution into the state House of Representatives asking Congress to “take notice” of local objections to the project, your spokesman, Bob Honts, resorted to calling our representative “the coward of the county.” Which, if it wasn’t so funny – I mean funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha – would be the verbal equivalent of giving him, and so all of us he represents, the finger.

4. You not only remind us how much influence money can buy in this country today -- not that we need reminding, since we can just read the paper – you flaunt it. I’m sorry you don’t like Colorado Wild, but, see, we who live here need their help, because we can’t afford the lobbying you can – the kind of lobbying you did to help get Mark Rey appointed Undersecretary of the Interior in charge of the Forest Service -- and to get such personal attention from him after his appointment. Or to get Tom Delay to try to tack an amendment onto a Congressional bill bypassing Forest Service approval for an easement across public land for the project. Or to give Mineral County officials such helpful guidance in drafting their approval of the project.

3. Because your project harms the land we live here for, and the non-human life we share this place with. Yes, I realize this is probably something else you’ve never understood your whole life – but we still care about such things here. Wolf Creek Pass, where you want to build your “village,” which would house 10,000 skiers and offer nearly a quarter-million square feet of commercial space, is a vital wildlife migration corridor between two of the wildest places left in Colorado, the South San Juan Wilderness and the Weminuche Wilderness.

2. Because your bloated project is a blatant obscenity in a world of global warming, war for oil, and loss of wild country. And because we here in the Four Corners bear much of the brunt of that resource gluttony already: Massive water projects like Navajo Dam, McPhee Dam, and the just-being-built $500 million Animas-La Plata Project deplete our rivers; oil and gas development in the San Juan Basin scars our public lands with roads and pipelines, and sticks noisy gas wells in people’s own backyards; and four new coal-fired power plants are in various stages of development in a region that already suffers from the worst coal-plant pollution in the country.

And the Number One reason we don’t love you: You have a billion dollars!! Why do you need to do this to us? Why slap together yet another blight of a mega-resort of second homes and glitzy shopping and industrial recreation that will forever alter the land and culture here? I don’t know. I cannot know – because I live in a place I love, while you have owned car dealerships in Houston, run sports teams in Minneapolis and Denver, and now want to build this abomination in our home.

So, Mr. Developer: Why?

That is what I, myself, have wondered all my life. And still do.

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