{"id":35397,"date":"2023-03-06T17:40:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T00:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-conflicted-about-cutting-its-water-use\/"},"modified":"2023-03-07T00:40:59","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T00:40:59","slug":"colorado-conflicted-about-cutting-its-water-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-conflicted-about-cutting-its-water-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado conflicted about cutting its water use"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dave
Dave Marston<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Colorado, farmers had to enroll in a four-state program by March 1, if they want to get paid for fallowing their fields, perhaps the best option to plump up the Colorado River\u2019s giant reservoirs, Mead and Powell.<\/p>\n

Not everyone is a fan, including Andy Mueller, director of the Colorado River District. He doesn\u2019t like programs that pay farmers to stop farming. Mueller also didn\u2019t ask for the Inflation Reduction Act\u2019s $125 million to pay the farmers he represents. Mueller\u2019s organization exists to keep Western Colorado\u2019s rural water away from growing cities across the Rockies.<\/p>\n

State Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Avon, who chairs the Committee for Agriculture and Natural Resources, has a more nuanced view. He says he understands that rural communities fear a \u201cbuy and dry\u201d scenario. Where annual leases become routine, and once-verdant fields and farms wither. He insists that any water leasing must be temporary, voluntary and well-compensated.<\/p>\n

A water-leasing program called demand management was created for Colorado irrigators under former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper \u2013 it was tested, but never used. It would have allowed farmers to lease and store their water in a Lake Powell account under state control. Under Gov. Jared Polis\u2019 administration, however, demand management was quietly shelved.<\/p>\n

Now, this new, multistate program for leasing agricultural water, called a \u201csystem conservation pilot program,\u201d isn\u2019t getting much traction. The program was announced two and a half months ago by Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.<\/p>\n

Its major drawback, says Tom Kay, an organic farmer in western Colorado, is that the Upper Colorado River Commission is offering a \u201cstupid price of $150 an acre-foot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFarmers like to farm; you have to pay them more than they make farming to interest them,\u201d Kay adds. He gets around $650 per acre-foot of water growing mostly organic corn and dry beans on his 350-acre farm near the town of Hotchkiss.<\/p>\n

Kay says he recently toured California\u2019s Imperial Valley, where farmers are getting $679 an acre-foot. They sell their 200,000 acre-feet of Colorado River to the San Diego County Water Authority and consider the price reasonable.<\/p>\n

Water prices are also rising. In California last summer, when the Bureau of Reclamation was looking hard for water, large irrigation districts in the Lower Basin were asking $1,500 per acre-foot to lease their water to cities, reported Janet Wilson of California\u2019s Desert Sun.<\/p>\n

If farmers got more money for their water under the new pilot program, says state Sen. Roberts, Colorado \u201ccould get more participation (and) show the federal government we are doing our part.\u201d He also says that many state legislators think California and Arizona should bear the brunt of water cuts.<\/p>\n

Getting farmers to fallow their land could build resilience in the Colorado River Basin, says Aaron Derwingson of The Nature Conservancy. A few years ago, he worked with grower Kay and Cary Denison, formerly of Trout Unlimited, to develop an \u201corganic transition\u201d program whose concept was simple: Lease two-thirds of your water for three years so pesticides and fertilizers leach off the land, then apply for organic certification. The demand management trial was largely funded by the Bureau of Reclamation.<\/p>\n

So the question remains: Why is the Upper Colorado River Commission offering farmers so little for their irrigation water? The commission\u2019s executive director, Chuck Cullom, explains: \u201c$150 per acre-foot was chosen to discourage drought profiteering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kay guesses that the low price was set to discourage participation. While $150 is the floor, and farmers can negotiate for more, commission representatives haven\u2019t gone to agricultural communities to beat the drum for its program.<\/p>\n

Kay says, \u201cThat $125 million is a lot of money, and it belongs to Upper Basin farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in mid-November, 30 western cities agreed to cut \u201cnon-functional\u201d turf grass by up to 36%, including big water guzzlers such as Utah\u2019s Washington County, which wants to siphon more water out of Lake Powell.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s unclear is how much water from not watering grass stays in the river. Mueller points out that Aurora, a fast-growing Denver suburb, \u201cis cutting water to sell more water taps. They\u2019re building more houses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kay admires Mueller\u2019s rural leadership but thinks the way forward is clear: \u201cDenver has a junior water right. Why isn\u2019t it paying us in western Colorado to fallow ground, just like what Los Angeles and San Diego are doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He owns a small, irrigated parcel in Western Colorado.<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marstoncca In Colorado, farmers had to enroll in a four-state program by March 1, if they want to get paid for fallowing their fields, perhaps the best option to plump up the Colorado River\u2019s giant reservoirs, Mead and Powell. Not everyone is a fan, including Andy Mueller, director of the Colorado River District. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-35397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35397","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=35397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35397"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=35397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}