La Plata County, Colorado

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Because Durango is a tourist town, the pay scale is low; the cost of living, high.

Scenic beauty and environmental purity, both threatened by development; a poor job market and high cost of living; an increasingly divisive growth-versus-preservation argument—these are among the subjects you're likely to hear locals debating over coffee at Carver's Bakery, the Durango Diner and other favored breakfast stops around the county. And these are the primary themes that nine fellow locals, observing and commenting from as many different perspectives, will speak to now.

KENNETH G. BRENGLE, JR., 34,is chief executive officer of the Durango Area Chamber Resort Association, known local ly as DACRA. Brengle is a Colorado native, has a political science degree from Fort Lewis College and has lived in La Plata County, off and on, for about nine years.

"DACRA," Brengle explains, "is a consolidation of the Durango Chamber of Commerce and the Durango Tourism Board. As a representative of the business community—and that's who DACRA represents—we want to see positive, steady growth in the area. Our Retirement Real Estate Council is trying to bring in second-home buyers and retirees, people with higher incomes. On other fronts, we're attempting to strengthen the existing business structure and take the lead in areas such as land-use planning.

"Durango has a tourism-driven economy, and that's a very clean industry. People come here and they leave, and basically what they leave is money. But one thing about a tourism-based economy is that it does not provide high-paying jobs. All of us in the business community realize that we need to start planning and working toward quality growth. I believe that you have to have growth or you're going to die."

Out in the ranching country around Bayfield, growth may in fact mean the death of the traditionally bucolic lifestyle, with the gas-drilling binge there causing distress for rural residents and county commissioners alike. Part of the rub arises from the separation of property ownership and mineral rights. Since the law of the land allows the owner of subsurface minerals to come in and extract that wealth even over the protest of the surface property owner—and since few rural residents these days, anywhere, own the minerals below their land—more and more rural La Plata countians are waking up to find new roads slashed across their pastures, new drilling rigs or wastewater injection wells chugging away virtually in their yards. Commenting on the latter, the Durango Herald recently noted: "Over the next 20 years, 1 billion barrels of salty gaswell wastewater . . . could be pumped beneath the ground in La Plata County .... Of utmost concern is the potential for contamination of drinking-water wells and aquifers." In some areas, methane seepage has already tainted the subsurface water supply.

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