{"id":13802,"date":"2026-01-26T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pine-river-irrigation-district-takes-action-against-delinquent-shareholders\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:41:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:41:22","slug":"pine-river-irrigation-district-takes-action-against-delinquent-shareholders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pine-river-irrigation-district-takes-action-against-delinquent-shareholders\/","title":{"rendered":"Pine River Irrigation District takes action against delinquent shareholders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"As
As of June 1, Vallecito reservoir was approaching full, with water backed up onto the normally dry willow flats where Vallecito Creek comes into the lake at the north end. Pine River Irrigation District office manager Christy Duran said reservoir inflow peaked on May 31 at 1,899 cubic feet per second. On June 1 the lake held 122,596 acre feet. The reservoir capacity is around 125,000 acre feet, elevation 7,665. As of yesterday morning, the lake really was full with 125,301 acre feet at elevation 7,664.<\/span>Photo by Carole McWilliams<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

For upward of a decade, Pine River Irrigation District has let late or delinquent shareholder payments slide.<\/p>\n

It makes the notice of exclusion \u2013 informing six landholders that they are set to be excised from the irrigation district for nonpayment \u2013 a rare occurrence.<\/p>\n

PRID has historically been extraordinarily lenient in that respect. Any formal action has been limited to letters notifying members that they are behind on their payments, said Ken Beck, PRID superintendent.<\/p>\n

But now, with some shareholders owing up to 15 years in annual payments, it is time to take more formal action and inform them they will be kicked out of the district if they don\u2019t pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re darn compassionate about it, but we just can\u2019t keep doing it when it\u2019s a no-win deal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pine River shareholders are those who have rights to the water that flows downstream from Vallecito Reservoir. Each shareholder pays an annual, flat fee of $100 on top of their individual water costs.<\/p>\n

There are costs of managing a reservoir and keeping the district operating that shareholders must chip in on, Beck said.<\/p>\n

The district operates under the 1921 Irrigation Act, which requires notification and legal action if payments are not met.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will still work with people in any way, shape or form to help them, if they\u2019re willing to make some payments,\u201d Beck said. \u201cBut your payments got to be big enough to where you\u2019re sincere about bringing the debt into full payment.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the delinquent shareholders do not pay within the set grace period of roughly two months, their share of water will be reallocated to people who are on the waitlist for water.<\/p>\n

jbowman@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

penalty for nonpayment doled out since at least 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1231,994,1394,295,294],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-pine-river-times","tag-trueanthem","tag-vallecito-reservoir","tag-water","tag-water-supply"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13802"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77089,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13802\/revisions\/77089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13802"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}