The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“Our operation… is up in the air”
At the request of Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, local rafters will sit down this week with representatives of Wilder on the Taylor to try to work out a compromise so local rafting companies can float through the private fishing development this summer.
The trick will be to find a way a two-mile section of the Taylor River can be shared by two disparate groups of rafting and fishing clientele who expect something completely different from their respective river experiences.
Mark Schumacher, owner of Three Rivers Tours, representatives from Scenic River Tours and the Colorado River Outfitters’ Association, along with attorney Lori Potter, will sit down with developer Lewis Shaw and his lawyers Thursday, April 22 to make another attempt finding that common ground, with the help of the Judicial Arbiter Group Inc., a team of retired trial and appellate court judges who mediate such disputes.
Schumacher says the mediation is non-binding and either party can walk away at anytime. If that happens without a resolution, his company’s future on the middle section of the Taylor River will rest largely on the passage of House Bill 1188, the Commercial Rafting Viability Act, which was introduced by Gunnison Rep. Kathleen Curry in the last legislative session, or with a November ballot measure.
“Right now our operation on the middle section of the Taylor [River] this summer is up in the air,” Schumacher says. “We don’t know what we’ll be able to do on that section. The best thing that could happen would be to have [House Bill] 1188 passed into law.”
But that won’t happen any time soon. The state senate delayed any action on the bill by the legislature until the fall.
There are three sections of the Taylor that Schumacher takes paying clients on. The first section runs roughly between Lotus Creek and South Bank and the last section runs from Five Mile to Almont.
But the middle section is where the Taylor River runs through the majority of private property it passes, including Harmel’s Ranch and Wilder on the Taylor.
“We are hoping for the same thing [from Thursday’s mediation] we had hoped for when the rafting companies met previously with my partner: a short term compromise settlement on the use of this stretch of Taylor River which would allow all parties, rafters and land owners, to use the river in a way which causes the least impact on the others’ use,” says Richard Bratton, who is representing Wilder developer Jackson-Shaw.
Shortly after the Texas-based developers purchased the Wilder property and began marketing it as a world-class fly fishing retreat, Schumacher and the other Taylor River permit holders were notified that they wouldn’t be able to run the stretch of river that passes through Wilder property without facing civil trespass charges.
That challenge led the owners of two local rafting companies, Three Rivers Tours and Scenic River Tours, to ask Rep. Curry to sponsor a bill, H.B. 1188, that would protect commercial rafters from trespass charges resulting from float trips through the private property.
Although the bill passed the House, it has been stalled until October in the Senate, which asked for a comprehensive statewide study on the right to float. And in the wake of the legislation, several voter-proposed ballot initiatives have been introduced to handle the conflict with a constitutional amendment.
One that Schumacher supports would allow commercial rafters to operate on historically run sections of natural rivers. And for Schumacher, the question of river access is a statewide issue that needs a statewide solution; if not from H.B. 1188, then from a voter proposed ballot measure.
“What the opponents of the bill have wanted to do is make people think that this is just a Taylor [River] issue, but it’s a statewide issue. It’s an issue in six places in the state,” Schumacher says. “They want to put a Band Aid on it—which is what this mediation is—when we need a statewide fix and that’s what 1188 does.”
As unfounded rumors about a re-introduction of H.B. 1188 fly and the slew of river-related ballot measures await a conclusion in November, Governor Ritter has asked that the parties that brought the issue of river access and privacy to the forefront sit down and try to hammer out an arrangement to suit both sides, despite watching earlier efforts at mediation fall apart.
“The difference in the current mediation is that each side has an attorney representing their separate interests and a professional mediator, who because of his professional experience and objectivity, hopefully, can guide the parties in a manner which they were not able to do on their own,” Bratton says.
But Schumacher isn’t so optimistic. He says, “I don’t know what we’ll do if they file civil trespass charges for floating through that section.”
