Bridging rural, urban interests

The equation is as simple as two H’s plus an O: Growing urban areas such as Colorado Springs and northern El Paso County need more water, and farmers, who use 85 percent of the state’s water, are about the only people who can supply it.

But after big Front Range water districts dried up about 60,000 acres of southeastern Colorado farmland in the 1970s and 1980s by buying agricultural water rights, even cash-strapped farmers have been loath to give up claims to the lifeblood of their land. Government leaders have taken a defensive posture against any more “buy-and-dries,” and some have even worked to keep Colorado Springs and Aurora from using water to which they have rights.

It is somewhat peculiar, then, to see the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District, which includes much of the once-fertile dust bowls, work feverishly on a program that would send water north to places such as the Springs and Monument.

But this time, farmers would get to keep cash and the water rights.

Under the plan known as Super Ditch, farmers could keep part of their fields dry each year, rotate unplanted areas annually and lease out the portion of their water allotment that they would have poured upon the fallowed land. Property owners from throughout the southeastern part of the state would pool their water into eight ditches and would contract yearly allotments to cities or water authorities needing more.

Lower Arkansas officials, who are leading the effort, hope to have enough infrastructure and contracts together to apply for change-of-use permits in water court by early next year. If so, it could lead to the first such ditch company in Colorado and could establish a symbiotic relationship between formerly antagonistic urban and rural interests.

“Basically, we’re creating a new crop: water,” said Peter Nichols, water attorney for the Lower Arkansas. “The shareholders would realize the appreciating value of water.”

Farmers now own the water rights or lease the water from canal companies. But as many have retired, fled the agriculture business or found water to be more profitable than sugar beets or alfalfa, they’ve been faced with the hard choice of selling rights and essentially ending the life of their farms, or struggling along.

Selling rights not only caps the value that the farmers can receive for water at current prices but breaks up communities, said Matt Heimerich, a Crowley County commissioner and farmer. When farms go out of business, farm-supply stores go out of business, schools lose property tax revenues and government services of all types get neglected, he said.

Nichols proposed the idea that the farmers who agree to become a part of Super Ditch allow 25 percent of their land to lie fallow annually. In return, proponents say, they will get guaranteed income in lieu of the uncertainties that come with growing and harvesting crops on that land.

Without the pressure of having to make every inch of land produce, some farmers could start growing more experimental cash crops, which would require an investment in the farm businesses in the community, Colorado Farm Bureau President Alan Foutz said. They also would be likely to spend more money on restaurants or entertainment, also an economic boost.

The demand for water would be highest in dry years when cities must replenish their reservoirs. Those same dry years are when farmers would benefit most by allowing some land to lie fallow, Lower Arkansas general manager Jay Winner said.

Some water companies, like Colorado Springs Utilities, are unlikely to need water from the ditch every year but could purchase when it sees shortages, Utilities water manager Gary Bostrom said. Utilities has a water supply expected to cover city growth at least through 2040.

But regions such as northern El Paso County, which subsist mainly on nonrenewable ground water, could look to Super Ditch to not just supplement their current water supply, but to replace it. Gary Barber, manager of the Pikes Peak Regional Water Authority, which serves most of the northern area, said his group may be able to end its long search for a permanent water source if Super Ditch could construct a pipeline to get the water to the area.

“We have a demand; they have a supply,” Barber said. “It could be very, very important.”

Although Super Ditch would be the first major project of its kind in the state, small-scale fallowing and water leasing has occurred. The High Line Canal Company contracted with Aurora, which has long been seen as an enemy of the southeastern area, and both sides have reported benefits.

A more relevant comparison might be to Palo Verde Irrigation District in Southern California, which began a program in 2004 in which farmers can sign up to fallow as much as 25 percent of their land a year while metro areas declare a year in advance how much water they will buy.

Ed Smith, general manager of the irrigation district, said land value has increased and farmers’ incomes have become more stable.

Most Super Ditch planners say the biggest downside is likely to be a hit on migrant farmers and other laborers who won’t be as needed without as much farmland in production. But Smith noted that laws aimed at illegal immigrants have made such help scarcer in his region, and southeastern Colorado leaders have indicated similar concerns about the labor pool.

One practical problem could be the question of permanency of the water supply for cities and counties that need it every year. Alan Hamel, executive director of the Pueblo Board of Water Works, said he has asked Lower Arkansas officials to clear up that concern, possibly by agreeing to long-term contracts.

Most importantly, proponents say, the loss of irrigated farmland that has marked the area for seven decades could slow to a trickle if economic pressure is taken out of the picture.

The number of Colorado farms recorded by the National Agricultural Statistics Service has fallen nearly in half, from 60,500 in 1936 to 30,700 in 2006. Meanwhile, a Statewide Water Supply Initiative completed in 2004 predicted that nearly 500,000 acres of farmland could be dried up by 2030 if the current rate of water transfer from agricultural to municipal use continues.

Some opponents of the idea will likely surface as Lower Arkansas leaders get closer to requesting the change-of-use decrees that will allow the project to go forward.

For now, though, the longtime rivalry over water between Front Range cities and rural farmers might be close to becoming a friendship.

“In the world of today, in all honesty, it’s probably as close as you’re going to get to a winwin,” Heimerich said. “If I can keep the ground from blowing away and not damaging my neighbors, and someone will pay me several thousand dollars an acre to do that . . . why wouldn’t I do that?”