City of Colorado Springs v. Climax Molybdenum Co.

587 F.3d 1071, 40 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 20267, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 25854, 2009 WL 4068349
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedNovember 25, 2009
Docket08-1154
StatusPublished
Cited by30 cases

This text of 587 F.3d 1071 (City of Colorado Springs v. Climax Molybdenum Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Colorado Springs v. Climax Molybdenum Co., 587 F.3d 1071, 40 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 20267, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 25854, 2009 WL 4068349 (10th Cir. 2009).

Opinion

EBEL, Circuit Judge.

In this water law litigation, Climax Molybdenum Company (“Climax”) appeals the district court’s denial of its motion to intervene in a set of consolidated cases over which the district court retained jurisdiction after first deciding them more than fifty years ago. The appeal presents an issue of first impression in this circuit: whether a proposed intervenor may establish standing, and thus federal court jurisdiction over its motion to intervene, by “piggybacking” on the standing of an existing party to a lawsuit over which the district court has retained jurisdiction but within which there is no current, active dispute among the parties.

Exercising appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we conclude that within litigation over which a district court has retained jurisdiction after entering a final decree, a proposed intervenor may not establish piggyback standing where the existing parties in the suit are not seeking judicial resolution of an active dispute among them. Because Climax is unable to establish either piggyback or independent standing in the cases at issue, we VACATE the district court’s order and REMAND with instructions to dismiss Climax’s motion for lack of jurisdiction.

I. BACKGROUND

The multifaceted litigation behind this appeal turns on the adjudication and administration of water rights on Colorado’s Blue River, a tributary of the Colorado River on the state’s Western Slope. The Blue River rises in Summit County and flows north through Breckenridge, Dillon, and Silverthorne, joining the Colorado River just south of Kremmling.

*1074 A. CA 1710 in Summit County District Court

Climax owns the Climax Mine (the “Mine”), a molybdenum mine and mill in Colorado’s Summit, Lake, and Eagle Counties. In 1937, as part of a supplemental stream adjudication in Summit County District Court, Water District 36, 1 and pursuant to its “mining, milling, manufacturing and domestic purposes” (Aplt.App. at 86, 89, 92, 94, 96), Climax was decreed five conditional rights to divert water from Tenmile Creek, which is a tributary to the Blue River. This adjudication was denominated Civil Action 1710 (“CA 1710”).

The Summit County court assigned two of Climax’s conditional rights, for Supply Canal No. 1 and Supply Canal No. 2, priority dates of August 15, 1935; it assigned the remaining three rights, for Tenmile Diversion Ditch No. 1, Tenmile Diversion Ditch No. 2, and Chalk Mountain Ditch, a priority date of June 4, 1936. The court further assigned these rights priority numbers 99-C, 100-C, 103-C, 104-C, and 105-C, respectively. Climax later perfected its conditional CA 1710 rights, and the Mine was operated continuously from 1937 through 1984.

B. CA 1805 and CA 1806 in Summit County District Court

The same year that Climax secured its conditional rights to divert from Tenmile Creek, “Congress authorized a reclamation project known as the Colorado-Big Thompson Project (‘CBT’).” City of Grand Junction v. City & County of Denver, 960 P.2d 675, 679 (Colo.1998). The CBT’s purposes, along with Congress’s directives for implementing the project, were laid out in Senate Document No. 80, 75th Congress, 1st Session (1937). Those purposes included diverting water from Colorado’s Western Slope to provide “for the irrigation of approximately 615,000 acres of irrigated land” on the state’s Eastern Slope. (Aplt. App. at 247). The CBT “was also intended, however, to generate hydroelectric power and supply additional water for agricultural and industrial uses on the Western Slope.” In re Application of City & County of Denver, 935 F.2d 1143, 1146 (10th Cir.1991). In accordance with Senate Document No. 80, the United States built the Green Mountain Reservoir and Power Plant on the Blue River, roughly sixteen miles southeast of Kremmling, Colorado. The Green Mountain facility is downstream of Climax’s Tenmile Creek diversion points.

In 1942, after construction on the Green Mountain Reservoir and Power Plant had been completed, a number of appropriators of Blue River water — including the City and County of Denver (“Denver”) and the City of Colorado Springs (“Colorado Springs”) — initiated in Summit County District Court two adjudications for claims to “water from the Blue River and its tributaries in Water District No. 36.” (Aplt. App. at 222.) These two proceedings, civil actions 1805 (“CA 1805”) and 1806 (“CA 1806”), were intended to determine, respectively, relative priorities to Blue River water for purposes of irrigation and for purposes other than irrigation. The cases were consolidated for trial in the Summit County court.

At issue for Denver in CA 1805 and CA 1806 were water rights for its Blue River Diversion Project, which diverted “the waters of the Blue River, the Snake River and Tenmile Creek at or near their conflu *1075 enee, together with the waters naturally tributary thereto,” to the Denver metropolitan area for use in “the water works system owned by Denver.” (Aplt.App. at 233.) The Blue River Diversion Project impounded water in the Dillon Reservoir and transmitted it to the North Fork of the South Platte River via the Montezuma Tunnel, later renamed the Roberts Tunnel. The Dillon Reservoir and Roberts Tunnel are situated downstream of Climax’s Ten-mile Creek diversion points and upstream of the Green Mountain Reservoir and Power Plant.

The United States entered CA 1805 and CA 1806 in 1944, claiming water rights for the Green Mountain Reservoir and Power Plant under the CBT. In 1949, while the Summit County cases were pending, the United States withdrew its claim in those proceedings and brought a declaratory judgment action in federal court, asking the court to declare its “rights and obligations in connection with the operation of the” CBT under Senate Document No. 80, to “determine its rights to the use of water from the Colorado River, the Blue River, and other tributaries of the Colorado River,” and to quiet title to those water rights as against a group of defendants including Denver and Colorado Springs (collectively, “the Cities”). (Id. at 111-12, 128-29.) This federal case was denominated Civil Action 2782 (“CA 2782”).

The Summit County District Court decided CA 1805 and 1806 in March of 1952. The United States having withdrawn from the proceedings, the Colorado River Water Conservation District (“CRWCD”) instead appeared as the claimant for water rights for the Green Mountain Reservoir and Power Plant. 2 In its Judgment and Decree, the county court adjudicated Denver’s Blue River Diversion Project claims by awarding conditional rights with a priority date of June 24, 1946; it further adjudicated conditional rights for Colorado Springs, with a priority date of May 13, 1948.

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587 F.3d 1071, 40 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 20267, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 25854, 2009 WL 4068349, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-colorado-springs-v-climax-molybdenum-co-ca10-2009.