{"id":53577,"date":"2020-06-04T15:19:55","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T21:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-approves-water-lease\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:05:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:05:03","slug":"cortez-council-approves-water-lease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-approves-water-lease\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez council approves water lease"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Cortez City Council approved a one-year water lease with the Dolores Water Conservancy District, leasing out 1,000 acre-feet of unused municipal and irrigation water in exchange for about $33,000. The McPhee Dam and Reservoir is the primary water storage site for the DWCD.<\/span>The Journal file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The city of Cortez is leasing out part of its unused water supply to the Dolores Water Conservancy District, to go to local irrigation needs.<\/p>\n

Right now, the city has at least 1,000 acre-feet of unused municipal and irrigation water, said Phil Johnson, public works director, at a City Council meeting and work session May 26. By leasing it out, the water can go to local farmers or ranchers in need of more irrigation, in exchange for a payment of about $33,170 to the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cSounds like a win-win situation here,\u201d said Cortez Mayor Mike Lavey during a virtual work session prior to the regular meeting.<\/p>\n

The City Council unanimously approved a one-year water lease. The city\u2019s contract is directly with the water conservancy district, which will take care of collections and water allotments for end users.<\/p>\n

The Dolores Water Conservancy District is the operator of the Dolores Project<\/a>, which develops water from the Dolores River for irrigation, municipal and industrial users. Water is stored primarily at McPhee Dam and Reservoir.<\/p>\n

Cortez maintains about 2,300 acre-feet of water per year as part of the Dolores Project.<\/p>\n

The district first discussed the possibility of water leasing with the city in 2015, Johnson said. The council at the time agreed it was a good idea as long as the water was unneeded and stayed with local ranchers or farmers.<\/p>\n

According to a staff report<\/a>, Johnson said the DWCD has \u201ca list of agricultural users that typically need more water for irrigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first year of leasing water, Cortez was unable to fulfill its lease after a \u201cmiracle May,\u201d Johnson said, but they did participate in another lease in 2018. Ken Curtis, general manager of the DWCD, had approached the city about a potential lease once again, Johnson said.<\/p>\n

The city pays $108 per acre-foot for the water stored in McPhee Reservoir \u2013 regardless of whether or not it is used \u2013 meaning that Cortez pays about $108,000 to store 1,000 acre-feet of water. In exchange for leasing the water, the city will receive $33.17 per acre-foot, coming out to $33,170 for 1,000 acre-feet of water.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us to recoup that $33,000, I think is a win for us and a win for the locals,\u201d Johnson said at the work session.<\/p>\n

Based on data from the past few decades, Johnson and Rich Landreth, water treatment plant superintendent, believed Cortez would sustain its lower water usage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the ability and the capacity to lease out this 1,000 acre-feet for this year without impacting our supply for the city,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

He added that there is no water carryover from one year to the next, and so there is no way to save water for a possibly dry winter in 2021.<\/p>\n

ealvero@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1,000 acre-feet of unused water will go toward local agriculture<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,318,28,29,295],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-water"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53577","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=53577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88318,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53577\/revisions\/88318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53577"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}