Aaron Million pushes his Green River pipe dream

Aaron Million is planning to pipe billions of gallons of river water from wild Wyoming to the suburban sprawl of Colorado, which makes him the man firing the first shot in the water wars expected from global climate change.

He does not see it that way. Million believes that he is an environmentalist with a vision for quenching the thirst of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, where developers have covered thousands of acres of dry plains from Denver to Colorado Springs with houses, shopping malls and mega-churches.

He thinks that he can do this without damage to the Green River basin in the mountains of Wyoming, a state defined as mostly desert. Inspiration struck as he studied maps while working for a master's degree in environmental economics at the University of Wyoming, and he spotted a bend in the Green River ideal for the start of a pipeline.

‘Whiskey is for drinking: water is for fighting over’

For a modest $3bn, Million wants to build a privately-owned, 10ft diameter pipeline running 560 miles east alongside Interstate 80 and on south to Denver and Colorado Springs. It would carry 80 billion gallons a year, which is more than Denver Water currently supplies to the whole area.

Million would become one of the richest men in America. So far, it is a classic tale of enterprise in the Wild West. But there is a snag. "Whiskey," said Mark Twain as the wagon trains rolled over the Great Plains long ago, "is for drinking: water is for fighting over."

Which is why Million is a very elusive man. "I'll give you no personal details about myself," he said when I finally tracked him down. "Nope. I won't tell you how old I am, where I'm living. I have family and business interests to protect.

"Do I feel endangered? It's at the back of my mind. Water is always about power in the Western United States, and the people who own it have done what they've done. The opposition to my plan is primarily from the people who control the water now.
 
"But it's nothing I can't handle. I was raised on a cattle ranch. I can handle myself."

Rumours of his plan have been blowing over the plains like tumbleweed for years, and became a local news story in 2007 when he got the rights to the Green River water. He is doing nothing illegal.

The whole of the West is irrigated by rivers draining the annual Rocky Mountain snow melt, and water use is governed by a series of treaties between the states. The South West drinks so much that the mighty Colorado River is a dry, concrete gulch by the time it reaches the sea south of Los Angeles.

Million has now secured the initial permits he needs from Wyoming and Colorado, equivalent to outline planning permission. The US Army Corps of Engineers, builders of America's New Deal-era interstate highways, dams and reservoirs, are in charge of feasibility and environmental impact studies. Million came into public view as the Corps held a series of local town hall meetings.

They were contentious. "Right now, we are being sold a false bill of goods in the Cowboy State," said Mac Blewer of the Wyoming branch of the Audobon Society for wildlife conservation. Back East, the New York Times wrote an editorial adding the plan to its list of "truly terrible ideas".

The fight is on, and so Million is taking no chances. He is said to live in Fort Collins, but there is no telephone listing in the local directories, and none for the company he has set up. An environmental activist with a website thought that maybe he owned a hotel somewhere.
 
An old newspaper report identified Steve Freudenthal as a lawyer representing him in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Interestingly, he is the brother of Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, who says he is "not a big fan" of the project.

But not even the lawyer had a telephone number for his client. "I've done some work for Million," Freudenthal said, "but I don't work for him. I have a contact number for his chief assistant." It was a mobile phone number, answered with voicemail. After two calls, Million himself responded.

"When I saw that 41 mile oxbow on the Green River," he explained, "I realised that this was a major opportunity that had simply been overlooked."

Million says that there is "surplus water in the system". But that claim is contested as a decade long drought dries the West. The snowfall has been down, and the water supply dwindling. Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam in 1936 to turn the Nevada desert green and supply water to Las Vegas, is running so dry that marinas have been rebuilt lower down the banks.

But Million's biggest hurdle may be a legal technicality: he has to tell the state water authorities who his customers are for all that water, and he will not. He also says that if the environmental studies prove negative, he will pull out.

Million is fond of the Oscar-winning movie, Chinatown, in which Jack Nicholson plays a private eye unravelling a mystery set against the water wars of the 1930s when Los Angeles took the water from the Owens Valley to build its urban sprawl. There is a famous scene in which director Roman Polanski, in the role of a thug working for the corrupt water entrepreneur, slices Nicholson's nose with a flick knife.

"I guess," said Million with a chuckle, "that I do check my nose from time to time."

WHAT DOES AARON MILLION LOOK LIKE?
We would like to have run a picture of him but for reasons they would not disclose the organisation which has the only picture we can find have refused us permission to use it. However, you can see Aaron Million here. ·