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For Immediate Release
May 19, 2009
Contact: Gary Wockner, 970-218-8310
http://SaveThePoudre.org |
Secret Glade Reservoir "Public Affairs Plan" Revealed
Northern Water District outlines "political strategy"
and facade of "new independent identity" for dying Glade project.
Plan requires pollster's attendance "as necessary" at meetings. |
| Fort Collins, CO -- As northern Colorado struggles with a recession, farm bankruptcies, and home foreclosures, the Glade Reservoir proponents took yet another cynical step backwards by outlining their "political strategy" to attempt to dupe taxpayers by, among other things, hiring a pollster to create a "new independent identity" for the dying Glade Reservoir scheme. The Town of Frederick accidentally posted the secret "NISP Public Affairs Plan - 2009" on its website. It is available on Frederick's website by clicking here, or publicly by clicking here. |
| The "Plan" creates a "new independent identity" for NISP which is now called "Communities for Water" which will be a non-profit group that the Northern Colorado Water Conservation District is requiring all NISP participants to join. The "Plan" also describes Northern Water's political strategies of flying to Washington D.C. to lobby Congressmembers, lobbying Congressional in-state staff, and lobbying state and county elected officials. The "Plan" also has an extensive list of newspaper editorial board "interactions" planned including with the Fort Collins Coloradoan, the Northern Colorado Business Report, the Greeley Tribune, the Fort Morgan Times, and others. |
| "The cynicism of this 'Plan' is outrageous," said Gary Wockner of the Save The Poudre Coalition. "You can call Glade Reservoir whatever you want, but it's dying and the facts and science continue to mount against it. This is a last-ditch political and public affairs plan to prop up a dying project." |
| The "Plan" includes the first names of the Northern Water staffers who will carry it out and assigns each staffer specific political lobbying duties. It also includes more funding and work for the pollster who created the widely discredited push poll back in January of 2009 (click here for press release). This discredited push poll was one of the reasons that the Northern Colorado Business Report editorialized against the project (click to read). |
| "This 'Plan' appears to be trying to create a pseudo-grassroots facade of support for the dying billion-dollar Glade Reservoir boondoggle," said Gary Wockner. "'Communities for Water' probably polled better than 'NISP'." |
| The "Plan" is supported by a number of false statements that appear in the accompanying agenda item and resolution that the Town Board of Frederick was asked to support on March 10, 2009. That agenda item is available by clicking here. Among other false statements, this item says that the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is a "typical step in the NEPA process," and that the "claims made by Fort Collins are false." |
| In May of 2009, the Town of Windsor was also asked to sign on to this "Plan" and sign on to the new public affairs facade of "Communities for Water." That Windsor resolution is available here. |
| "If you're a Congressmember, a state or local elected official, or work for a newspaper, the Glade public relations machine is coming to get you," said Gary Wockner. "This isn't science or facts, it's p.r., spin, and pollsters." |
| The "Plan" includes "Friends of NISP support/advocacy groups," a "NISP Public Affairs Committee," and "public events." It also includes efforts to "monitor the media" and "strategize responses," and requires the pollster's "attendance as necessary" at meetings. |
| "The Glade project is now 5 years late and millions of dollars over budget," said Wockner. "A fancy public relations machine to push a billion dollars of debt on to citizens in these small struggling Weld County towns is the last thing they need." |
| The Save The Poudre Coalition has created a "Healthy Rivers Alternative" to the Glade Reservoir scheme that provides water to the NISP towns and is cheaper, better for farms, and will protect the Cache la Poudre River. The Coalition has inserted the "Healthy Rivers Alternative" into the federal Environmental Impact Statement process. |
| "We want to say loud and clear and one more time: We agree that these towns may need more water, and we support their efforts to get water that don't destroy the Poudre River and pave over farms. The "Healthy Rivers Alternative" is the cheapest, least damaging path to water. NISP and its new cynical taxpayer-funded public-relations schemes are not." |
The "Healthy Rivers Alternative" is posted here:
http://savethepoudre.org/docs/stp_healthy_rivers_alternative.pdf |
| -- end -- |
| The Save The Poudre Coalition is made up of 14 national, state, and regional groups including: National Wildlife Federation, Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife, American Rivers, Western Resource Advocates, Colorado Environmental Coalition, Environment Colorado, Sierra Club – Rocky Mountain Chapter, Fort Collins Audubon Society, Citizen Planners, Wolverine Farm Publishing, Poudre Paddlers, Friends of the Poudre, and the Cache la Poudre River Foundation. Membership in these groups totals over 3 million American citizens. |
