A Colorado River Veteran Takes on the Top Water & Science Post at Interior Department

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March 15, 2022

Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary of the Interior, speaks speaks during a stop while on a tour of Colorado this summer with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (second from left). (Source: U.S. Department of the Interior)

By Douglas E. Beeman

For more than 20 years, Tanya Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and other crops.

Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of California, exposing her to the different perspectives and challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s Lower Basin.

Now, she’ll have a chance to draw upon those different perspectives as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science, where she oversees the U.S. Geological Survey and – more important for the Colorado River and federal water projects in California – the Bureau of Reclamation.

Lake Powell, a key reservoir on the Colorado River, has seen water levels drop precipitously as a result of two decades of drought. (Source: The Water Desk and Lighthawk Conservation Flying)

Trujillo has ample challenges ahead of her. For two decades, drought – fueled in no small part by climate change – has gripped the Colorado River Basin, starving the huge reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead of runoff. Drought plans in place since 2019 failed to stop the decline of these critical reservoirs. New operating guidelines for the river are now being discussed and the Basin’s 30 tribes, which have substantial rights to the river’s waters, want to make sure they get a seat at the negotiating table.

The Department of Interior faces still other water challenges: For example, in southeastern desert of California, the ecologically troubled Salton Sea has nearly upended past Colorado River negotiations involving drought contingency planning.

Trujillo talked with Western Water news about how her experience on the Colorado River will play into her new job, the impacts from the drought and how the river’s history of innovation should help.

WESTERN WATER: You’ve worked on Colorado River issues for years, both in the Upper Basin (as a member of New Mexico’s Interstate Stream Commission) and Lower Basin (as executive director of the Colorado River Board of California). How is that informing your work now on Colorado River Basin issues?

TRUJILLO: I’m very appreciative of having had several different positions that have allowed me to work on Colorado River issues from different perspectives. As the general counsel of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, we were finalizing the 2007 Interim Guideline process [for the Colorado River] and I very much had an Upper Basin hat on at that time. That was also right in the middle of our work in New Mexico on negotiating the Indian water rights settlements with the Navajo Nation. Both the Guidelines and the Navajo settlement work really expanded the notion of flexibility in the Basin with respect to the existing statutes and the existing regulations.

“I’m very appreciative of having had several different positions that have allowed me to work on Colorado River issues from different perspectives.”
~Tanya Trujillo, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water & Science

I had a Lower Basin perspective when I was working for the state of California on Colorado River issues with the Colorado River Board of California although I was working with a lot of the same people and there were a lot of familiar legal and operational questions. But for the other half of the job, I was brand new to California and was having to learn the whole Lower Basin perspective from scratch.… It was great just to learn the perspective of the Lower Basin and because there are quite a few challenges just within the Lower Basin that are independent of what’s going on in the Upper Basin.

WW:It’s pretty clear the Colorado River Basin is in trouble – too little snowpack and runoff, too little water left in Lakes Powell and Mead. Are we headed toward a Compact call? Or are there still enough opportunities to protect Powell and Mead and meet obligations to the Lower Basin and Mexico without draining upstream reservoirs?

TRUJILLO: I think in some respects it’s the wrong way to think about this question…. A better approach is to focus on the strategies the Upper Basin develop to continue to protect the water resources and communities and economies that rely on that water. There’s a lot to build off of. Going back to the ‘07 guidelines, we were thinking about building off of the existing regulations that described the operating criteria. We were thinking about how to protect those resources in the Upper Basin, even when there is a drought, even when there is less water that’s naturally occurring in the system on a continual basis.

More than two decades of drought in the Colorado River Basin have left Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, at just 34 percent of capacity. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation)

But that translates into concerns about how to protect the system in the context of the lower reservoir levels, including the impact on hydropower generation. Each of the Upper Basin states is carefully watching that not only from a power supply perspective, but because if there’s less [hydropower] production, there’s less funding coming in and the funding supports programs that are very important and beneficial to the Upper Basin, like the salinity control program and the [endangered] species recovery programs in the San Juan Basin and the Colorado Basin.

So I know those are concerns that the states have, to protect the elevations at Lake Powell. And another important concern that we specifically agree on is the need to be very careful with respect to the infrastructure and the structural integrity of the [Glen Canyon] dam itself. We may have to operate the facilities at levels that we haven’t experienced before. So we have no operational experience with how the turbines are going to function – and not only the turbines but also how the structures are going to function if we have to use the jet tubes if the turbines are not available.

WW: So there’s concern about how the structures function in terms of getting water from one side of the dam to the other? Or in terms of the physical structure itself?

TRUJILLO: I’m a lawyer and not going to be opining on the actual engineering situation. But we have lots of people who are working in the Upper Basin and Denver Technical Center who are dam safety engineers and they have not had experience in working at this facility under those low water levels. And so that’s where there’s uncertainty. We don’t know how the structures will function under those conditions and that means that people are concerned about that uncertainty because that’s such a critical piece of the infrastructure. [That is] additional motivation among the Upper Basin states for trying to think proactively about how to make sure that the supply and the flows that extend down to Glen Canyon Dam can be maintained.

WW: Given how drought and climate change have left far less water in the Colorado River than the 1922 Compact assumes, is it time to rethink that Compact? Or do you think the Compact and the rest of the Law of the River has the flexibility to accommodate the current realities? And how?

TRUJILLO: I might take the liberty of quarreling a bit with the context of the question because I think the focus should be a forward-looking focus as opposed to rethinking the situation that existed 100 years ago. Even just looking at the past 20 years, we’ve been able to be very innovative and very focused on continued efforts to improve the [weather] prediction capabilities and continued efforts to make sure we have additional flexibility, additional tools, and additional conservation options that can help us work at a multi-faceted level. There are multiple layers of innovations and flexibilities that we have been able to successfully pull together, and my expectation and hope is that will be the same kind of approach that we will continue to work through.

WW: In July, you toured portions of western Colorado to discuss drought and water challenges across the Upper Colorado River Basin. What did you hear? What did you tell them?

TRUJILLO: That was a great trip. The basis of that trip was a listening session that was co-hosted with the governor of Colorado and our Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland. It was an opportunity to hear updates and perspectives from a wide variety of water users in Colorado…. I personally was able to visit quite a few communities in the West Slope, starting in Grand Junction, and see some of the innovative agreements that are coming together in that area with respect to some upgraded hydropower facilities. So it’s great to have the aging infrastructure issues being addressed in that area.

There is obviously a lot of strong, productive agricultural communities that are clearly watching with respect to any drought developments. I was also able to visit the Colorado River District board meeting and heard a discussion about the different perspectives relating to support for additional infrastructure and funding different infrastructure projects. There was a USGS proposal that was being approved by the River District, and they were able to really showcase the tremendous contribution that USGS is able to provide to some of their cooperative investigations. I also met with representatives from Northern Water and the Arkansas Valley Conduit Project, so it was a great opportunity to get an overview of the many important projects that are underway in Colorado.

WW: Did they tell you anything that surprised you?

TRUJILLO: No, I don’t think so. I have a pretty good base of background with some of the challenges that exist in that area. Maybe one way to sum up that that week of visits is that the broad variety of examples there in Colorado can be replicated in other states as well. It was great to just see a diversity of projects that are that are in place there. I would go back there in a second. It was the first trip for me in my tenure as assistant secretary and it was very informative.

WW: As you know, the Salton Sea has been a festering environmental problem for years, and it threatened to upend California’s participation in the 2019 Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan when Imperial Irrigation District insisted that the sea’s ills needed to be addressed as part of the DCP. What can — or should — Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation do to help find a sustainable solution for the Salton Sea?

TRUJILLO: The Salton Sea has had a long history over the past century and is a dynamic and changing terminal lake. For decades there has been a recognition that the changing conditions at the Salton Sea needed to be addressed. The Bureau of Reclamation, other entities within the Department of the Interior and other federal agencies have been involved in the Salton Sea for many decades.

The receding Salton Sea exposes large swaths of playa that generate harmful dust emissions. (Source: Department of Water Resources)

There are various types of federal lands surrounding the Salton Sea, the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge provides a sanctuary and breeding ground for migrating birds, and Reclamation plays an important role as a partner with respect to ongoing habitat and air quality projects in support of the state of California’s Salton Sea Management Program and the Dust Suppression Action Plan. Reclamation also works in partnership with Imperial Irrigation District to implement the Salton Sea Air Quality dust control plan. Since 2016, for example, Reclamation has provided approximately $14 million for Salton Sea projects, technical assistance and program management. Reclamation and its federal partners participate in a number of state-led committees and processes, providing technical expertise on activities related to the long-term restoration of the sea.

Tanya Trujillo

Education: Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law.
Current job: Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the U.S Department of Interior, confirmed by the Senate on June 17, 2021.
Previous jobs: Member, New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission; Project director with the Colorado River Sustainability Campaign; executive director of the Colorado River Board of California; senior counsel to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; counsel to the Interior Department’s Assistant Secretary for Water and Science; general counsel, New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission.
Fun Fact: Trujillo notes that she is a proud native of Las Vegas – the other Las Vegas, in northeastern New Mexico.

Reach Douglas E. Beeman: dbeeman@watereducation.org, Twitter: @dbeeman
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The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Popular ditch inventories remain private despite being publicly funded

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Aspen Journalism

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March 10, 2022

Morrisania Mesa Ditch photo — The Morrisania Mesa Ditch runs through agricultural land south of Battlement Mesa. The ditch was part of a ditch inventory in western Colorado paid for, in part, with state grant money. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

By Heather Sackett

Inventories of irrigation ditches across the Western Slope have become common in recent years and water managers say they have merit.

But there is no requirement that the individual studies — which look at things such as efficiency and opportunities for repairs and upgrades — be made public, even though they are often paid for with public money. This doesn’t sit well with some who say the public has a right to know exactly how taxpayer dollars are being spent and how one of the West’s most precious and dwindling resources is being used.

“(Agriculture) is where 80% to 90% of the water gets used, and if we were more efficient, we could leave more water in the river — that’s the bottom line,” said Ken Ransford, recreation representative to the Colorado Basin Roundtable and who also acts as Aspen Journalism’s legal adviser. “If you can’t see how 80% to 90% of the water is being used, then you will never be able to say whether you’re using water efficiently or not.”

Ditch-inventory projects have the support of many water-user groups and, in recent years, have been done in several Western Slope river basins and sub-basins: the Yampa, the Eagle and the Colorado. Agricultural groups say they are necessary to assess the needs of irrigators and connect them with resources should they want to improve and upgrade their infrastructure. Environmental organizations say they have value because the more improvements there are to irrigation efficiency, the more water that can be left in the stream to the benefit of the ecosystem.

In some ways, the issue boils down to whether one sees water as a private property right or a public resource. In Colorado, it’s both. The right to use water is treated as a private property right. People can buy and sell water rights as part of a real estate transaction and change what the water is allowed to be used for, as long as a water court approves. And to maintain a water right’s value, the water must be put to use.

But the right to use water isn’t the same as owning the resource itself, which belongs to the people of Colorado. Ransford said there’s an obligation for water users to use it responsibly and efficiently.

“To say nobody has a right to see how it’s being used when it’s a public resource, there’s a conflict there,” he said. “We all own the water. It’s a public good.”

Bookcliff, South Side and Mount Sopris conservation districts photo — The Bookcliff, South Side and Mount Sopris conservation districts, took part in a project to inventory some of the ditches in their boundaries. Because they are not available to the public, it’s unclear exactly which ditches were included. CREDIT: LAURINE LASSALLE/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Middle Colorado ditch inventories

In 2018, the Colorado Basin Roundtable recommended approval of a $100,000 funding request from the Book Cliff, Southside and Mount Sopris conservation districts for an agricultural water plan for Garfield County. It was part of a larger stream-management plan, undertaken by the Middle Colorado Watershed Council. The 2015 Colorado Water Plan calls for developing stream-management plans on 80% of rivers in the state.

The funding for the agricultural portion — part of an overall $330,000 budget for the plan — was approved by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the state entity charged with protecting and developing Colorado’s water.

As part of the agricultural water plan, the conservation districts hired Rifle-based Colorado River Engineering to conduct ditch inventories, which provide water rights owners with an overall assessment of their diversion infrastructure, measuring devices and conveyance channel. The study focused on ditches that have old and large water rights — prior to the 1922 Colorado River Compact — and carry more than 10 cubic feet of water per second. The goal is for owners to use the inventory as a tool to prioritize projects on the ditches and aid in securing funding for future ditch improvement projects.

In October, the conservation districts submitted to the CWCB a final report, which includes a broad overview of the project. The 59 individual inventories completed were not included in the information submitted to the state, although each water rights owner got a copy of their own inventory. It is not clear which ditches across the three conservation districts were inventoried as part of the project.

Aspen Journalism began making inquiries about seeing the completed inventories in March, and the conservation districts made one inventory available: the study of the Schatz Ditch on Dry Hollow Creek near Silt, which irrigates 69 acres of grass pasture. The ditch has two water rights, which date to 1965, and are decreed for 2.5 cfs each.

The 44-page inventory includes information about the water rights associated with the ditch, publicly available diversion records from the state Division of Water Resources database, and many pages of historic decrees and documents associated with the ditch. It does not include names of ditch owners, water rights owners or water users.

It lists main concerns as a lack of current diversion records after 2001, overgrowth of vegetation and unstable soils near the end of the ditch. Potential treatment includes removing overgrowth, routine maintenance, lining or piping the ditch, and self-reporting diversions to the Division 5 Water Resources office.

The inventories are a good way to maintain institutional knowledge and keep track of historic ditch information when there is a change in ownership, said Emily Schwaller, manager of the conservation districts. She said the districts made the Schatz inventory available because the owner or owners gave permission for the information to be public, but she declined to disclose who the owners are.

“Our hope is that these binders are living documents that get updated and maintained by the ditch companies and owners,” Schwaller said in an email. “These inventories give the (ditch owners) a baseline of the condition of the ditch and are a start of the background of the ditch that will be used by future generations and ditch owners.”

Schatz Ditch photo — The Schatz Ditch irrigates nearly 70 acres of land south of Silt, according to a ditch inventory by Colorado River Engineering. The ditch is one of 59 inventoried in the Middle Colorado region of western Colorado. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

CORA request denied

But neither the CWCB nor the Colorado Basin Roundtable has a policy that allows the public to have access to the inventories, even when public money is used to fund their creation.

In May, Aspen Journalism submitted a Colorado Open Records Act request to see the rest of the 59 inventories. The conservation districts denied the request, saying a federal law supersedes the state’s sunshine laws. Because the conservation districts partnered with the National Resources Conservation Service on the inventories and a federal law protects personal and geospatial information of property owners who work with NRCS, the districts said they would have to review what information could be released and redact any private information.

CORA lets the public inspect records of state and local government entities — unless inspection is prohibited by a state law or a federal statute or regulation. The 2008 Farm Bill may prohibit the release of information regarding agriculture practices.

“It’s not clear what information in the ditch inventories can and cannot be provided to the public under the 2008 Farm Bill,” said Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, a nonprofit group that works to ensure the transparency of state and local governments by promoting freedom of the press and open access to government records. “The conservation districts should explain this in more detail, and the best way to do that is with an example ditch inventory and a log that describes why each redaction is required by federal law.”

After working with the boards to get a cost estimate for redacting, Schwaller on Dec. 13 provided a cost estimate of nearly $2,200 for redacting the engineering reports and almost $16,400 for the engineering reports and records. Aspen Journalism has asked Schwaller for a cost estimate for redacting the Schatz Ditch inventory to see an example of what information would be left after redacting and whether it would be worth it to pay for the rest of the documents with redactions. Schwaller had not replied to multiple requests as of press time.

Sara Leonard, director of CWCB marketing and communications, said that it would be inappropriate for the state to ask for a ditch owner’s personal information and that the state and roundtables support property rights and landowner privacy.

“The state’s role here is to provide funding and help identify the best projects, as supported by the basin roundtables,” Leonard said in an email. “We look for collective results and analysis of individual data to show the success of a project, but we don’t require individual data points as they are not needed by the state (in this case, individual ditch inventories).”

Dylan Roberts, who represents Eagle and Routt counties in the Colorado legislature and sits on the Water Resources Review Committee, said it sounds like the inventories have incredible merit and could be useful. If the state has decided to put money behind them, then the public should have access to them, he said.

“As a matter of principle, if public money is being used, there absolutely should be some level of transparency and public access to any data or information that is generated from these surveys,” he said.

An irrigation expert with NRCS talks with water users about the irrigation infrastructure on the Morrisania Mesa Ditch photo — An irrigation expert with NRCS talks with water users about the irrigation infrastructure on the Morrisania Mesa Ditch. Conservancy districts hope ditch inventories, which have become increasingly common in recent years, will result in improvement projects for irrigation infrastructure. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Summary outlines ditch problems

According to the final report from the three Colorado conservation districts submitted to the CWCB in October, 59 ditches were inventoried on the section of the Colorado River and tributaries from Glenwood Canyon to De Beque. The individual inventories include a summary of the water rights, diversion records, irrigated acreage, a list of concerns, potential treatments and funding opportunities to address those concerns. This information is withheld from public view.

The report listed main areas of concern, including erosion prevention; seepage; aging infrastructure; routine maintenance; diversion/lateral structural improvements; phreatophytes, which are sometimes-invasive, water-sucking vegetation with deep roots; and bank stabilization.

According to a report produced last year as part of the Middle Colorado Integrated Water Plan on agricultural water use, engineers recommended phreatophyte removal for 71% of the inventoried structures; piping or lining ditches for 55% of them; and bank stabilization for 51%. Improvements to measuring devices were recommended for 35% of the ditches inventoried.

Though broad generalizations, these findings in the summary report and the Middle Colorado plan hint at widespread issues with the region’s irrigation ditches, headgates and canals.

“We have a huge issue with aging infrastructure here on the Western Slope,” said Jason Turner, chair of the Colorado Basin Roundtable and senior counsel with the Colorado River Water Conservation District. “There are billions of dollars’ worth of projects in the Colorado basin alone, and I bet that doesn’t even scratch the surface.”

Privacy maintained

These types of inventories have a history of being shielded from public view, even though they are paid for with state grant money.

In 2016, the Eagle County Conservation District conducted what it called an irrigation-asset inventory of 25 ditches within the district’s boundaries. It was funded with a $54,000 grant from the CWCB. Although a summary report of the findings was made public, the 25 individual binders with information specific to each ditch went to the ditch owners and were not, despite a request from Aspen Journalism under CORA. The summary said irrigators in the district were dealing with problems such as rusted, leaking and clogged culverts, unstable headgates, sinkholes and erosion.

Proponents say the promise of privacy is often key to getting irrigators to participate in these studies. Maintaining privacy is important for irrigators because they may not want to invite what they feel is unfair scrutiny — and, perhaps, criticism — of their operations.

“I think the only way these guys are going to participate in these kinds of things is if they feel like their information is not going to be shared everywhere,” Turner said. “They recognize that they own and use the lion’s share of water in Colorado, and it just seems like they feel heavily scrutinized for what they feel is their best ranching practices for their piece of property.”

The report from the inventories in the Book Cliff, Southside and Mount Sopris conservation districts said this culture of privacy is a challenge. Earning the trust of water rights owners so that they would give their permission to do the ditch inventories took additional time and was a larger factor than originally anticipated.

“Another noteworthy obstacle was obtaining permission from water and landowners to walk the ditch and develop the inventories,” the report reads. “This ranged from not having up-to-date records of owners, neighbor conflict and a general distrust in allowing outside eyes on the properties.”

Parshall flume measuring device is being installed on a ditch on Morrisania Mesa photo — This Parshall flume measuring device is being installed on a ditch on Morrisania Mesa. Ditch inventories, funded in part with state grant money, are becoming popular in western Colorado. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Yampa River assessments

On the Yampa River, environmental organizations have acknowledged the potentially problematic lack of transparency that comes from paying for private inventories with taxpayer money and have taken steps to skirt the issue by directly funding the studies themselves. Trout Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy paid nearly $68,000 to do an assessment of diversion infrastructure on the Yampa with the goal of identifying places for multibenefit projects.

“We were aware of the Eagle River situation, but there are a bunch of reasons (that environmental groups) took the lead on the assessment,” said Brian Hodge, northwest Colorado director for Trout Unlimited and the environmental representative to the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable.

Of 45 irrigation structure owners who participated in the study, 36 opted to make those reports public. The other nine chose to keep their reports confidential, citing disagreement with the structure assessment or discomfort with the process. A few structure owners did not respond to outreach after their report was delivered.

In a final report, produced by Wilson Water Group and JUB Engineering, the structures were scored based on the opportunities for improvements for four categories: current use, fish passage, recreational boating and river health. Each category had a maximum score of 5 for a total possible structure score of 20. The higher the score, the greater the opportunity for a multibenefit improvement project. The Lower Yampa reach of the river had the most room for improvement overall, with a total score of nearly 8.

Dry Hollow Creek photo — Dry Hollow Creek winds its way through fields near Silt. The Schatz Ditch pulls water from Dry Hollow Creek. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Improvement projects not publicly tracked

It is also not always clear whether these studies actually result in improvements to irrigation infrastructure, which is listed as an end goal. In some cases, neither the conservation districts nor the funding organizations keep track of how many subsequent projects come about as a direct result of the inventories.

And unless the ditch owner comes back to a granting organization, such as the roundtable, with a request for funding, there is no way to know whether ditch owners actually use the inventories to improve their operations, especially if they pay for upgrades out of their own pocket.

Turner said the roundtable would have no way of knowing unless an irrigator referenced the inventory in a subsequent grant application.

Leonard, the CWCB spokesperson, said she is not aware of anyone tracking projects that come out of the inventories.

“Again, potential projects that will likely come out of the inventory assessment will hopefully lead to multipurpose/multibenefit projects that can be supported by CWCB funding, but we don’t mandate projects as a result of investigations we fund,” she said in an email.

The report from the Book Cliff, Southside and Mount Sopris conservation districts said ditches with completed inventories have applied for funding from several different sources: the Colorado River Water Conservation District, the state of Colorado, National Resources Conservation Service, and the conservation districts’ cost-share program. Water rights owners have also hired engineering firms to complete the recommendations in the inventories and used the inventories while requesting letters of support from county commissioners, according to the districts. But conservation district representatives did not have a count of exactly how many projects have come about as a direct result of the inventories.

Eagle County Conservation District also does not have a count of projects that resulted from their 2016 inventories, but there is at least one. The Highland Meadow Estates at Castle Peak Ranch Homeowners Association in Eagle County received $25,000 in state money to improve the Olesen Ditch by installing a pipeline.

Mount Sopris Conservation District board member Cassie Cerise owns a ranch outside of Carbondale. She did not participate in the ditch inventory project, but she thinks the inventories were useful for ditch owners and she expects resulting projects to trickle out over the next few years.

“First, the issues can be identified, and second, they can find out about all the different programs that are offered as far as cost share and all the things that could help implement a fix,” she said.

Privacy was a roundtable topic

The issue of privacy for landowners when it comes to these ditch inventories was a topic of discussion at the Colorado Basin Roundtable meeting in October. Some said the public may be critical of how ditches are operated.

“There may be reasons why a landowner may not want the public looking at a ditch on their property,” said Carlyle Currier, a rancher in Molina who is president of the Colorado Farm Bureau and has a seat on the roundtable. “It certainly opens the door to some mischief.”

Ransford, the recreation representative to the Colorado Basin Roundtable, said that since water is a public good, there should be a public means of funding irrigation-improvement projects.

“I’ve long thought what we should do is pass a special-district kind of a tax to pay to modernize irrigation structures,” he said. “I don’t think the irrigators should have to do it. It’s expensive. But if we had a public source of funds dedicated to this, to me, that is the bigger picture.”

Some say the end justifies the means. Richard Van Gytenbeek is the environmental representative to the Colorado Basin Roundtable. In his work as Colorado River basin outreach coordinator for Trout Unlimited, one of his goals is to work on collaborative efforts with the agricultural community to keep more water in rivers. He said if the inventories can help do that by facilitating irrigation-efficiency projects, then he doesn’t have a problem with the information remaining private. Trout Unlimited often works with irrigators on projects that benefit the landowner as well as fish and stream health.

“I’ve seen some ditches that are just horrendous, and if we were able to get in there and fix them, people wouldn’t have to take out nearly as much water,” he said. “We are trying to think of ways to have (water) never leave the channel in the first place. Getting people to collaborate and cooperate, it’s the linchpin.”

Aspen Journalism collaborates with The Aspen Times on coverage of water and rivers. This story ran in the Feb. 6 edition of The Aspen Times and the Feb. 7 edition of the Vail Daily.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Special Report: Climate change is sapping Colorado’s water supplies. Can its hallmark water law stave off crippling shortages?

By

Fresh Water News

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March 10, 2022

Greeley No. 2 Canal photo — The Greeley No. 2 Canal is cleaned and reshaped during work earlier this month. (Courtesy photo/Dale Trowbridge)

By Jerd Smith

This report is based on the work of the nine media outlets, Fresh Water News, and the Colorado News Collaborative, undertaken as part of a water news training program for journalists. The journalists are: Trevor Reid, The Greeley Tribune; Michael Elizabeth Sakas, Colorado Public Radio; Zack Newman, 9News; Kate Perdoni, Rocky Mountain PBS; Jim Mimiaga, The Cortez Journal; Philip Poston, the Aurora Sentinel; Olivia Emmer, The Sopris Sun; Priscilla Waggoner, the Valley Courier; and Tara Flanagan, the Ark Valley Voice. This program was made possible by a grant from the Colorado Media Project and the Denver-based Gates Family Foundation.

In Evans, Colo., four miles south of Greeley, houses are shooting up.

Once a quiet farm town, Evans is scrambling to come up with enough water to slake the thirst of hundreds of new homeowners, drawn here by comparatively affordable housing.

Evans City Manager Jim Becklenberg says the town can supply the faucets of its 22,000 residents.

“We have enough water in our water portfolio to meet the needs of our existing population,” he said.

But future water needs will have to be met by developers, who are required to buy water and bring it to the city for use. It’s an expensive process that can often mean nearby irrigated farmland with old, high value water rights is bought and then dried up so the water can be transferred to cities.

While large northern Colorado cities like Loveland, Greeley and Fort Collins have older water rights, and have been able to buy extra water over the years, small cities like Evans haven’t had enough money to do so, Becklenberg said.

Water from the Acequias, a shared collection of gravity fed irrigation ditches have been a historic part of irrigation in the San Luis Valley from the Acequias photo — Water from the Acequias, a shared collection of gravity fed irrigation ditches have been a historic part of irrigation in the San Luis Valley from the Acequias (PBS Photo)

Gold, silver, land

In Colorado, acquiring water is a complicated undertaking due in part to Colorado’s hallmark “first-in-time, first-in-right” water law, known as the prior appropriation doctrine.

The doctrine dates back 150 years to when Colorado was a territory rich in gold, silver and land, but not water. It evolved to ensure no one could hoard water and deprive others of its use. Any farmer, miner or homesteader could claim water on a stream, divert that water, and put it to use, establishing a place in the priority system of water rights. It was a common person’s dream and had a certain fairness to it, ensuring that whoever got in line at the drinking fountain first, as University of Denver law professor Tom Romero puts it, gets to drink first. Everyone else takes their turn later.

But the doctrine is coming under increasing scrutiny as the state’s rivers and reservoirs dry out and tens of thousands of people continue moving here every year. Is prior appropriation up to the task of divvying up the state’s water in an era of increasingly frequent and severe drought conditions? It depends on whom you ask.

David Robbins, a water attorney who represents water districts in some of the state’s most water-strapped regions, such as the Rio Grande and Lower Arkansas basins, says the prior appropriation system is a sturdy, legally tested allocation system.

“To people who want water and don’t have water, the system doesn’t feel fair because they can’t have what they want. But that would be true under any system,” Robbins said. “Somebody has to make decisions and water has to be allocated. It doesn’t and can’t satisfy everybody’s desires because water is inherently finite.”

In Colorado, a water right is a private property right that can be bought and sold, with certain conditions. Older, more senior water rights, because they are entitled to water first during dry times, are more valuable because they are more reliable.

Water rights are officially entered in the system only after they’ve gone through the state’s special water courts, where the law requires that diversion histories are certified, that diversion amounts are quantified, that times of use are established, and that other water systems on the same stream are not injured by a new water claim. The law also requires that water only be applied toward a list of legally defined “beneficial uses,” including farming, mining, drinking water, and environmental flows, among others.

Benchmarks fall

Pressure on the system is rising as water supplies hit record lows. The Colorado River, for instance, may see a crucial water benchmark fall as the river’s flows continue to decline. The river system supplies Colorado communities and growers all across the state. In as little five years, according to climate researcher Brad Udall, the Upper Colorado River Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, may not be able to deliver the 7.5 million acre-feet of water they are required to annually to Arizona, California and Nevada under the terms of the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

If that happens, many Colorado communities with water rights junior to 1922 could see their water supplies slashed so that the state can meet its legal obligations.

And a movement known as the Rights of Nature for Rivers is suggesting that Colorado’s rapidly drying streams need better protection under the prior appropriation system, such as giving first dibs on streamflows to rivers to protect their ecological value instead of to whomever has the oldest right to pull that water out.

“The movement would claim that keeping the water in the river is beneficial itself and to the non-human species and the ecosystem,” said Gary Wockner, one of the movement’s founders. “It is an expansion of prior appropriation’s law that recognizes the original user of the river was the river itself, and the river has the right to be in the discussion and in court.”

Thousands of water rights

Colorado has more than 164,000 water rights on file, according to data analyzed by 9News.

Agriculture uses roughly 86% of Colorado’s water and the state’s oldest, most historical water rights are found in a small, communal farm community that includes San Francisco and San Luis in the Rio Grande Basin’s San Luis Valley.

Here, water use dates back to the 1600s, but those water rights weren’t brought into the state’s prior appropriation system until the mid-1800s when water officials still rode on horseback to check diversion structures and irrigation ditches.

To the families of the San Luis Valley, the acequias, as their ditches are known, are a liquid thread feeding a farming culture that existed long before Colorado became a state.

And many of the ranchers here, including Charlie Quintana, believe the prior appropriation doctrine, known informally as the priority system, has stood the test of time.

In his pocket is a list of the water rights and their dates for the area’s acequias. “The acequias are the priority system,” he says.

List of priority acequia water users dating back to 1905 photo — List of priority acequia water users dating back to 1905. (PBS Photo)

Rights on paper

Native American Tribes too hold some of the oldest water rights. And prior appropriation has profoundly affected the way those tribes’ have developed.

In Southwestern Colorado, just miles from the New Mexico state line, the Ute Mountain Utes, like dozens of Native American tribes, have valuable, very old water rights that were granted as part of the Winters Doctrine, a landmark 1908 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave tribes enough water to fulfill the needs of their reservations. That decision backdated tribal water right priority dates to the date the reservation was established. Theirs dated back to 1868. But for more than a half-century, the tribe never had the money or the expertise to claim the water formally in Colorado’s water courts and to develop the measuring devices, dams and ditches required to put it to beneficial use, as the prior appropriation system requires.

As a result, in a 1988 water rights settlement, the tribe traded its 1868 paper water rights on the Mancos River in exchange for more junior wet water rights in the Dolores Project, a federal storage system on the Dolores River that stores water in McPhee Reservoir, said Mike Preston, a water consultant for the tribe.

Now one of the tribe’s largest employers, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Farm and Ranch Enterprise, has a water right that is much younger and therefore less valuable.

This year, it received just 10% of its water, as did other farmers in the Dolores Project. If it had been able to put its 1868 water rights to beneficial use 150 years ago, it would have still been affected by the drought, but it would have had more water.

Now, as the drought continues, the tribe is redoubling its efforts to study and claim all of its water rights, including on the San Juan River, said Ute Mountain Ute Chairman Manuel Heart.

David Pettigrew, with the Ute Mountain Ute Bow & Arrow Brand cornmeal mill, fills a bag with ground corn at the mill near Towaoc, Colo., on Oct. 20, 2021. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald)

Cities double down too

Like other junior water rights holders, the fast-growing City of Aurora, Colo., has worked hard to secure a seat at the water table, spending millions of dollars buying older water rights when it can find them, and developing new junior water supplies when it can.

“Aurora got into the water game late,” said Greg Baker, Aurora Water’s manager of public relations.

Aurora was wholly served by the city and county of Denver until 1954 when Denver Water put into place a “blue line” no longer granting permits for new taps in the ever-growing metropolitan area, leaving parts of Aurora out of Denver’s service region.

The completion of phase one of the Homestake Reservoir, which the city shares with Colorado Springs, was in 1967 and, with that, Aurora was able to become completely self-reliant when it came to supplying water to its residents.

Though Aurora has been aggressive in buying water rights and building storage, 10% of its supplies come from reusable water developed through its $637 million Prairie Waters Project. Completed in 2010 the large-scale reuse system captures Aurora’s wastewater after it is released into the South Platte River, then filters it through a system of wells and sand and gravel pits, treating it and mixing it with fresh water before it is delivered to residents.

Without its large tax base, Aurora would have had a much harder time developing a reliable water system in modern times when most of the state’s oldest water rights are already taken.

Pretty smug

Even communities with older rights, though, are seeing supplies dry up as climate change and drought sap stream systems where water once was plentiful.

Bill Fales has been raising cattle on Cold Mountain Ranch in Carbondale, Colo., since he moved here in 1973. In his 48 years working the approximately 600-acre mosaic of pastures, of which around 250 are irrigated, Fales has experienced some tough years, when the Crystal River ran low, but largely felt confident about having the water he needed.

That confidence has been eroding.

“2018 was really bad, 2020 was really bad, 2021 was pretty terrible. I used to be pretty smug and think, ‘Well, hell, my right’s 1883. I’ll still be standing out here with my shovel, irrigating my alfalfa, and the guys in Denver will turn on the faucet to brush their teeth and nothing will come out,” Fales said.

But these days he’s worried that little will help farm and urban users with water shortages that are beginning to appear.

Other subdivisions in the Crystal River Valley have long relied on wells next to the river. But in the drought of 2018, the subdivisions’ taps ran dry. They scrambled to drill a new well under their 1971 water right. But that would not be enough. Soon they learned that their water use, for the first time ever, was harming a senior 1902 water right holder farther down the river system.

Now the homeowners are buying water to offset their own water use under a state-required plan to prevent any more harm to the senior water right holders on the stream.

Planting rye after potatoes on Nissen Farms in the San Luis Valley’s Mosca, CO photo — Planting rye after potatoes on Nissen Farms in the San Luis Valley’s Mosca, Colo., with the Great Sand Dunes in background on Oct. 21, 2021. (Erin Nissen)

Taxing itself to survive

Far to the southeast, in the San Luis Valley, water too is in short supply. Here, in what is the second-largest potato growing economy in the nation, farmers are under orders to reduce groundwater pumping to protect the Rio Grande River and ensure Colorado can meet its legal obligation to deliver millions of gallons of water to New Mexico and Texas.

More than a decade ago, farmers voted to tax themselves to solve the looming legal water crisis, using the revenue to buy irrigated farmland and dry it up, so that unused water could remain in the aquifer that supplies the river. But the relentless series of droughts the state has endured since 2002 have wiped out much of the farmers’ work to restore the aquifer. If the situation doesn’t improve soon, the state could shut off thousands of irrigation wells.

To prevent that from happening, farmers will vote next year on whether to dramatically raise penalties for over-pumping from $150 per acre-foot to $500, an increase long-time farmer Don Shawcroft believes will provide the necessary jolt to convince valley farmers to change their irrigation strategies.

“This valley relies on agriculture, and agriculture relies on water. If that water is shut off or worse – used up – none of these towns will survive,” he said. (Editor’s note: Shawcroft sits on the board of trustees for Water Education Colorado, which sponsors Fresh Water News.)

The challenge will come

Whether prior appropriation will weather the coming dry years remains to be seen.

“What prior appropriation does really well is provide certainty. It’s a sophisticated system, but in principal and theory it’s simple,” says DU’s Romero. “We know that when there is not enough water those at the front of the line get their water. That creates predictability and certainty. Historically, it has also provided opportunity,” he said.

But the challenge will come, he said, “when you envision uses that aren’t prescribed, or if you need access to the water and need to reallocate it. Running it through our water court system is pricey. It requires expertise and investment…who is in the best position to cover those costs?

“It’s either big private water developers and the state, or water utilities like Denver Water and Aurora Water. They are in the best position to cover those costs, which raises a big question: Is this market scheme going to serve the public interest?”

Ask someone on the ground

Tara Flanagan is secretary of the Bowen Ditch Company in the Upper Arkansas River Basin. Keeping this 140-year old ditch functioning requires backbreaking labor, pre-dawn emails between neighbors, and faith that each spring the snow will fall, melt, and flow down to the handful of families still relying on it for water.

Flanagan, who is also a reporter for the Ark Valley Voice, describes the prior appropriation system as her “frenemy.”

“In a perfect world, nobody would need to care one iota about the words prior appropriation, which at first glance is an eye-glazing term that has spent entirely too much time living in the heads of politicians and water lawyers – as well as the tattered log book for the Bowen Ditch Company that sits under my desk.

“But people have died over prior appropriation, so there’s that.

“Prior appropriation means this,” she continues. “The date when your water rights were officially filed with the State of Colorado has everything to do with you getting water on your fields and how long you are able to have it. Unlike birth certificates and things stored in your refrigerator, the earlier your date, the better.”

Bowen Ditch Company secretary Tara Flanagan at the corner of her land, where the channel crosses to the south. (Tara Flanagan)

Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

The journalists are: Trevor Reid, The Greeley Tribune, treid@greeleytribune.com; Michael Elizabeth Sakas, Colorado Public Radio, msakas@cpr.org; Zack Newman, 9News, zack.newman@9news.com; Kate Perdoni, Rocky Mountain PBS, kateperdoni@rmpbs.org; Jim Mimiaga, The Cortez Journal, jmimiaga@the-journal.com; Philip Poston, the Aurora Sentinel, pposton@sentinelcolorado.com; Olivia Emmer, the Mt. Sopris Sun, olivia@soprissun.com; Priscilla Waggoner, the Valley Courier, pwaggoner@alamosanews.com; and Tara Flanagan, the Ark Valley Voice, tara@arkvalleyvoice.com.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Special Report: As Lake Powell hits record lows, is filling a new drought pool the answer?

By

Fresh Water News

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March 3, 2022

The Colorado River flows towards Horsethief Canyon photo — The Colorado River flows towards Horsethief Canyon west of Grand Junction, Colo. Credit: William Woody

By Jerd Smith

The 96-degree heat has barely broken early on a September evening near Fruita, Colo. As the sun prepares to set, the ailing Colorado River moves thick and quiet next to Interstate 70, crawling across the Utah state line as it prepares to deliver billions of gallons of water to Lake Powell, 320 miles south.

This summer the river has been badly depleted—again—by a drought year whose spring runoff was so meager it left water managers here in Western Colorado stunned. As a result Lake Powell is just one-third full and its hydropower plants could cease operating as soon as July of 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

“We’re looking at a very serious situation from Denver all the way to California and the Sea of Cortez,” said Ken Neubecker, an environmental consultant who has been working on the river’s issues for some 30 years. “I’ve never seen it in a worse state.”

The Colorado River Basin is made up of seven states. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico comprise the upper basin and are responsible for keeping Lake Powell full.

Arizona, California and Nevada comprise the lower basin and rely on Powell’s larger, downstream sister reservoir, Lake Mead, just outside Las Vegas, to store water for delivery to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and more than 1 million acres of farmland.

These are two of the largest reservoirs in the United States. Few believed Mead, built in the 1930s, and Powell, built in the 1960s when the American West had just begun a 50-year growth spurt, would face a future where they were in seeming freefall. The two reservoirs were last full in 2000. Two years ago they dropped to 50% of capacity. Now they are operating at just over one-third their original 51 million-acre-foot combined capacity.

First-ever drought accord

Two years ago, this unprecedented megadrought prompted all seven states to agree, for the first time, to a dual drought contingency plan—one for the upper basin and one for the lower. In the lower basin, a specific set of water cutbacks, all tied to reservoir levels in Mead, were put in place. As levels falls, water cutbacks rise.

Those cutbacks began this year in Arizona.

But in the upper basin, though the states agreed to their own drought contingency plan, they still haven’t agreed on the biggest, most controversial of the plan’s elements: setting aside up to 500,000 acre-feet of water in a special, protected drought pool in Lake Powell. Under the terms of the agreement, the water would not have to be released to lower basin states under existing rules for balancing the contents of Powell and Mead, but would remain in Powell, helping to keep hydropower operations going and protecting the upper basin from losing access to river water if they fail to meet their obligations to Arizona, Nevada and California.

Rancher Bryan Bernal irrigates a field that depends on Colorado River water near Loma, Colo. Credit: William Woody

The pool was considered a political breakthrough when it was approved, something to which the lower basin states had never previously agreed.

“It was a complete reversal by the lower basin,” said Melinda Kassen, a retired water attorney who formerly monitored Colorado River issues for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

But the idea was controversial among some powerful upper basin agricultural interests. Ranchers, who use some 80% of the river’s water, feared they would lose too much control of their own water supplies.

Seeking volunteers

As proposed, the drought pool would be filled voluntarily, largely by farmers and ranchers, who would be paid to temporarily dry up their hay meadows and corn fields, allowing the saved water to flow down to Powell.

Two years ago, when the drought contingency plan was approved, the four upper basin states thought they would have several years to create the new pool if they chose to.

But Powell’s plunging water levels have dramatically shortened timelines. With a price tag likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars, confusion over whether saved farm water can be safely conveyed to Powell without being picked up by other users, and concerns over whether there is enough time to get it done, major water players are questioning whether the pool is a good idea.

“It was probably a good idea at the time and it’s still worth studying,” said Jim Lochhead, CEO of Denver Water, the largest water utility in Colorado. “But it can’t be implemented in the short term. We don’t have the tools, we don’t have the money to pay for it, and we don’t have the water.”

Neubecker has similar concerns. “I fear it’s going to be Band-Aid on an endlessly bleeding problem…we need to do more.”

Since 2019 the State of Colorado has spent $800,000 holding public meetings and analyzing the legal, economic and water supply issues that would come with such a major change in Colorado River management.

Still no decisions have been made.

A call to act

Becky Mitchell is director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which is overseeing the analysis.

Aware of frustration with the state’s progress on studying the drought pool’s feasibility, formally known as its demand management investigation, Mitchell said the work done to date will help the state better manage the river in a drier future with or without the drought pool.

“We’re still ahead of the game in terms of what we’ve done with the study. The other states are looking at feasibility investigations but ours has been incredibly robust,” Mitchell said. “If we’re going to do it we have to do it right and factor all these things in. Otherwise we’re going to be moving backward.”

One example of a step forward is that new tools to measure water saved from fallowing agricultural land are now being developed.

A large-scale experiment in a swath of high-altitude hayfields near Kremmling has demonstrated that ranchers can successfully dry their fields and deliver Colorado River water to the stream in a measurable way, and the data is considered strong enough that it could be used to quantify water contributions to the drought pool.

Ranchers Joe Bernal, left, and his son Bryan inspect a feed corn field that depends on Colorado River water near Loma, CO photo — Ranchers Joe Bernal, left, and his son Bryan inspect a feed corn field that depends on Colorado River water near Loma, Colo. Credit: William Woody

But other regulatory and physical barriers remain.

Under Colorado’s water regulations, rivers are only regulated where they cross state boundaries when water is scarce and the state would otherwise be unable to meet the terms of agreements with downstream states. But this is not yet the case on the Colorado River and its tributaries, so rules for determining who would get what in the event of cutbacks haven’t been developed.

In addition, because there has never been a so-called “call” on the Colorado River, the state has yet to require that all those who have diversion structures pulling from the Colorado River system measure their water use.

The situation is changing fast, though, with the 20-year drought and the storage crisis at Powell and Mead increasing pressure on state regulators to take action.

Now the state is taking steps to better monitor the river and its tributaries, moving to require that all diversion structures have measuring devices so it has the data it needs to enforce its legal obligations to the lower basin. If, for instance, some water users had to be cut off to meet the terms of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the state could manage those cutbacks based on the water right decrees users hold that specify amount and priority date of use.

Such data would also be needed to administer a mass-fallowing program to help fill the Lake Powell drought pool.

Kevin Rein, Colorado’s State Engineer and top water regulator, said what’s known as the mainstem of the Colorado River is fairly well monitored but major tributaries, such as the Yampa and Gunnison, are not.

“A lot of tributaries don’t have the devices,” Rein said, adding that the state doesn’t know the extent of the problem. “But in important areas a lot of commissioners know there is a significant lack of measurement devices and that makes water administration difficult.”

Joe Bernal is a West Slope rancher whose family has been farming near Fruita since 1920. He has water rights that date back to 1898 and, like others in this rich agricultural region, he and his family have abundant water.

Bernal was an early supporter of the drought pool. He and his family participated in an experimental fallowing program in 2016, where they were paid to dry up their fields. He’s confident the problems can be solved.

But he’s also worried that the 500,000 acre-foot pool may not hold enough water to stabilize the river system and that it may not be done fast enough.

“We want to be sure the solution does some good, but the clock is ticking,” he said. “We don’t want to change the culture of this valley or our ability to produce food. But I think things need to move faster. We are taking too long implementing these solutions.”

Checking the averages

As Powell and Mead continue to drop—they were roughly half full just two years ago— Mitchell and Rein are quick to point out that Colorado remains in compliance with the 1922 Compact, which requires the upper basin to ensure 7.5 million acre-feet of water reaches the lower basin at Lee Ferry, Ariz., based on a 10-year rolling average. Right now the average is at roughly 9.2 million acre-feet, although it too is declining as the upper basin’s supplies continue to erode due to drought and climate change.

The Colorado River flows past fruit orchards near Palisade, Colorado photo — The Colorado River flows past fruit orchards near Palisade, Colo. Credit: William Woody

Climate scientist and researcher Brad Udall has estimated that the upper basin may not be able to deliver the base 7.5 million acre-feet in a year as soon as 2025. But the upper basin would remain in compliance with the 1922 Compact even then because the rolling average remains healthy.

Still, if the reservoirs continue to plummet as quickly as they have in the past two years, when they dropped from 50% to 30% full, the upper basin could face a compact crisis faster than anyone ever anticipated.

Major water users in the state, such as Denver Water, Northern Water and Pueblo Water, have water rights that post-date, or are junior to, the 1922 water compact, meaning their water supplies are at risk of being slashed to help meet lower basin demands.

The big dry out

Many river advocates hope the drought pool is approved because they believe it is an opportunity to test how the river and its reservoirs will work as the region continues to dry out.

“What we knew in 2018 [when the drought pool was conceived] is that we have more to do,” said Kassen. The drought pool, she said, “was a big win and offers a way of testing what the upper basin can do. It’s squandered if they don’t use it.”

Neubecker and others say it’s becoming increasingly clear that the river’s management needs to be re-aligned with the reality of this new era of climate change and multi-year drought cycles.

And that means that water users in the lower basin and upper basin will need to learn to live with how much water the river can produce, rather than how much a century-old water decree says they’re legally entitled too.

“We’re facing a 21st Century situation that was totally unforeseen by anyone,” Neubecker said, “and we no longer have the luxury of time.”

Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.

Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Groups try again to secure water for recreation

By

Aspen Journalism

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March 1, 2022

A kayaker runs the 6-foot drop of Slaughterhouse Falls on the Roaring Fork River photo — A kayaker runs the 6-foot drop of Slaughterhouse Falls on the Roaring Fork River in June 2021. River recreation and conservation groups are pushing a bill that aims to establish a recreational in-channel values reach designation, which would create a legal mechanism to lease water for river recreation. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

By Heather Sackett

By giving up the push for a legal mechanism to secure a water right, some in Colorado’s recreation community are hoping proposed legislation will result in more water in streams for the benefit of boaters.

A new bill would allow certain public entities to create a “recreation in-channel values reach” (RIVR), a stretch of river up to 400 yards long, which is important to boaters, anglers and waders. Holders of this RIVR segment could then lease water, which would be sent downstream to boost flows in the segment.

“We are seeing it as a tool to move water to a place where it’s going to benefit the community and it provides the tool to be able to legally do that,” said Hattie Johnson, the southern Rockies stewardship director at American Whitewater.

The proposal is an attempt to carve out a spot for — and recognize the importance of — Colorado’s outdoor-recreation economy in the hierarchy of water uses, which prioritizes the oldest water rights, usually belonging to agriculture and cities.

The new bill would allow a municipality — for example, Steamboat Springs, where officials have in recent years closed a stretch of the Yampa River through town when summer temperatures are too high and flows too low — to buy and release upstream water to boost the troubled reach. It could allow communities to avoid fishing closures during late summer or to make sure flows are adequate for a boating festival.

“We see it as a way that rural communities that are looking at river-based recreation as an economic development strategy to have a tool and security to back up that investment,” said Alex Funk, director of water resources and senior counsel at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “We see it as a flexible way for communities to utilize their river corridors in a creative way and support a burgeoning outdoor-recreation economy in Colorado.”

Heavy machinery in the Roaring Fork River in Basalt in February, 2018, working on the second effort to sculpt surf waves in a whitewater park, just above the Fork’s confluence with the Fryingpan River. A new bill aims to secure water for designated recreational stretches of river without having to get a water right. CREDIT: BRENT GARDNER-SMITH/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Evolution from RICD water right

The RIVR proposal evolved from one that river-recreation groups were working on last year, which would have allowed natural river features such as a wave or a rapid to get a water right. The plan was opposed by some, including Front Range water providers, who did not want to lock up water in the river and prevent its future development.

The Pitkin County Healthy Rivers board wrote the lone letter in support of last year’s proposal and said it will probably support the RIVR bill as well. The board listened to a presentation from Johnson at Thursday’s monthly board meeting.

“It makes sense, the concept that you don’t have to build a structure,” said Healthy Rivers chair Chris Lemons.

The new proposed legislation without a secured water right is something of a concession to opponents.

“Having a legal right to the water, that’s huge,” Johnson said. “That’s how our whole system works, and it gives you standing on par with all the traditional water users, and we did give that up.”

But proponents say the new, innovative strategy has the potential to be even more effective than last year’s proposal at ensuring that there is enough water for recreation. Under Colorado water law, older water rights have first use of the river.

“Under the traditional water-right process, these would have been extremely junior in terms of their priority date, so rarely, if ever, could have called out water to meet this need,” Funk said. “With the older model, you have the security of a water right, but it was always going to be low on the tier.”

Environmental and recreation interests typically have taken a backseat to traditional water users such as agriculture and cities, even as Colorado’s economy is increasingly fueled by outdoor recreation and tourism. The recognition of recreation as a “beneficial use” of water happened only two decades ago with the creation of a recreational in-channel diversion (RICD) water right.

Several communities around the state have RICDs, which give a water right to a specific river feature. But these must be human-made, such as the kayak waves that Pitkin County built on the Roaring Fork River in Basalt. Last year’s effort, which was scrapped in favor of the new RIVR legislation, attempted to give RICD water rights to a naturally occurring feature.

Josh Kuhn, water advocate with Conservation Colorado, said the problem is that the RICD statute has not kept up with the different kinds of river recreation, such as fly-fishing and stand-up paddle boarding, the latter of which has exploded in popularity in recent years. A RICD is tailored primarily to kayakers who like playboating.

“The problem remains that Colorado water law is just not keeping up with the increased demands on rivers and streams,” Kuhn said. “(The RIVR proposal) provides greater flexibility with the way we manage our water resources and the communities that are dependent upon it.”

So far, Front Range water providers, who were opposed to last year’s proposal, have not weighed in on the new RIVR legislation. The bill has not yet been introduced in the general assembly but is expected to be sponsored by state Rep. Dylan Roberts, who represents District 26 in Eagle and Routt counties.

Aspen Journalism covers water and rivers in collaboration with The Aspen Times. This story ran in the Feb. 19 edition of The Aspen Times, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, Sky-Hi News and the Feb. 21 edition of the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent and Vail Daily.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Water and climate change in New Mexico – Water Buffs Podcast ep. 9 – Laura Paskus

By

The Water Buffs Podcast

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March 1, 2022

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We talk to Laura Paskus, a journalist with New Mexico PBS and the author of At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate, which examines the many ways that state is being impacted by this global threat.

Laura has been covering environmental issues in New Mexico and beyond for two decades, writing for publications such as High Country News, the Santa Fe Reporter, New Mexico Political Report, New Mexico in Depth, and Indian Country Today. She’s also a board member of the Society for Environmental Journalists.

Episode highlights

	Introduction (0:28)
	Laura Paskus, environmental journalist The author of “At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate,” Laura has been covering environmental issues in New Mexico and beyond for two decades. Starts at 1:06
	Book on climate change and New Mexico Paskus’ book, released in 2020, explores the compounding stresses on New Mexico ecosystems wrought by climate change, and what can be done to adapt to them. Related: At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate University of New Mexico Press Starts at 2:03
	Outlook for New Mexico water resources? (5:18)
	Future of the Rio Grande River “I try to feel optimistic,“ says Paskus, but the Rio Grande has been getting steadily drier since she started reporting on it in 2002. Then, she says, agencies were reluctant to acknowledge the problem, but that has changed. Starts at 8:05
	Comparing the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers (11:20)
	Water Words: ‘Aquatic Nuisance Species’ (13:42)
	PFAS contamination in New Mexico water Paskus’ reporting on the long-lasting chemical used in cleaners, flame-retardants and other products has found that PFAS are widely distributed in New Mexico’s water supplies. Related: Toxic Threat (New Mexico PBS) Starts at 16:11
	Other New Mexico water stories? (27:43)
	The burden of bearing “bad news” (30:55)
	Advice for aspiring environmental journalists? (37:16)
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Douglas County Commissioners to head to San Luis Valley for water export meetings

By

Fresh Water News

-

March 1, 2022

inspectors testa new landscape watering system in Castle Rock — Castle Rock Water Conservation Specialist Rick Schultz, third from the right, inspects and tests a new landscape watering system in Castle Rock, one of many Douglas County communities reliant on the shrinking Denver Aquifer. In a Fresh Water News analysis of water conservation data, Castle Rock leads the state, having reduced its use 12% since 2013. Oct. 21, 2020. Credit: Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News

By Jerd Smith

Douglas County Commissioners will travel to Colorado’s San Luis Valley next month to hear first-hand what residents there think of a controversial proposal to export farm water to the fast-growing Front Range.

Late last year, Renewable Water Resources (RWR), a Denver development group that includes former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, asked Douglas County to use $20 million of the federal covid-relief funds the county has received as a down payment on the proposal, which has an estimated initial price tag of more than $600 million. Since then the company has reduced its request to $10 million.

Douglas County Commission spokesperson Wendy Holmes said the commissioners plan to gather as much information from the public as possible before making a decision on whether to help finance the deal.

“This is a very transparent process,” she said. The San Luis Valley meetings are scheduled for March 26 in Monte Vista, with details on times and locations still being finalized.

Colorado’s growing population is putting pressure on fast-growing communities to find additional water.

The Front Range needs more than 500,000 acre-feet of new annual water supply by 2050 to stave off shortages, according to the Colorado Water Plan. That’s enough water for about 1 million new homes.

In Douglas County, the number is smaller but the problem is more urgent. Douglas County communities, along with parts of El Paso and Elbert counties, relies on an aquifer that, unlike the one in the San Luis Valley, is not a renewable resource. And levels in that aquifer, known as the Denver Aquifer, are dropping.

Cities such as Castle Rock currently rely on the Denver Aquifer for roughly 70% of their water, and although Castle Rock has acquired some surface water rights and operates a water recycling plant, they still need more fresh water to ensure they don’t drain their underground supplies.

Several projects are in the works to help address looming shortages. RWR has not yet identified who the ultimate customers for the San Luis Valley project would be.

RWR is only the latest in a handful of companies that have tried to export water out of the iconic San Luis Valley, which is home to the second largest potato-growing economy in the nation, but which also has one of the highest poverty rates in the state. All have been defeated.

Like other parts of Colorado and the American West, the ag-based community along the Rio Grande River has been hit hard by drought. It is under a state order to reduce water use from the aquifers underlying the valley in order to protect senior water users and ensure Colorado can continue to deliver water to Texas and New Mexico, as it is legally required to do under the Rio Grande Compact.

RWR has already purchased thousands of acres of farm land in the valley with water rights associated with it. Under RWR’s proposal, 22,000 acre-feet of water would be transported via pipeline to the Front Range. RWR has said repeatedly that its proposal would be an economic boost to the valley because it would take some of that acquired farm land out production, leaving 8,000 acre-feet of unused water in the valley that could go toward helping restore the aquifers and relieve strain on the Rio Grande. It has also pledged to provide a $50 million community fund, to help create new economic development programs in the valley.

San Luis Valley photo — *The proposal to bring water from the San Luis Valley to the metro area would require a pipeline of more than 200 miles. Credit: Chas Chamberlin*

Critics of the proposal, including the Rio Grande Water Conservation District in Alamosa, argue that no water should be taken from the valley because it will need every drop to support the local agricultural economy.

Environmental groups have also come out in opposition, as have numerous elected leaders including Democrats Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, as well as Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who represents the valley.

RWR spokeswoman Monica McCafferty said the company wasn’t surprised by the emergence of such powerful political opposition.

“It’s easy to oppose things,” McCafferty said. “It’s harder to be for something. We want the leaders in our state to keep an open mind and to base their opinions on facts.”

Mike Carson, an Alamosa City Council member and head of Protect Our Water, a local group that opposes the export plan, said he doesn’t believe the RWR proposal will benefit the San Luis Valley.

“I don’t see that that would happen,” he said.

In January, RWR reduced its initial $20 million request to $10 million, according to a letter sent to Douglas County officials, citing uncertainty over interpretations of the new federal spending rules and suggesting that an “unrestricted” set of the federal American Rescue Plan Act funds be used instead.

How much money RWR has raised itself for the project isn’t clear. McCafferty said she did not know.

The most recent documents at the U.S. Securities Commission, filed in December of 2019, indicate that the company at that time had raised $5.7 million of a stated goal of $28.5 million.

Douglas County spokeswoman Holmes said the county has received dozens of water project proposals worth a total of $280 million and that the county only has $68.2 million in federal ARPA funds.

Holmes said the county has much more analysis to do before it will make a decision on whether to help finance the export proposal.

“We plan to do lots and lots of due diligence,” she said.

Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.

Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Feds, 4 Colorado River states unveil draft drought operations plan as 2022 forecast shift

By

Fresh Water News

-

February 25, 2022

Lake Powell with drought rings photo — Lake Powell with drought rings. Credit: Wikipedia Creative Commons

By Allen Best

As the crisis on the Colorado River continues, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the four Upper Basin states—Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—have drawn up a proposed framework called the Upper Basin Drought Response Operations Plan. The framework would be used by water managers to create plans each year, as necessary, to maintain Lake Powell water levels.

The effort to keep Lake Powell healthy is critical to ensuring hydropower production from its turbines is maintained and to protect the Upper Basin states from violating their legal obligation to send Colorado River water to Arizona, California and Nevada, the Lower Basin states.

Whether the new plan will be activated this year is uncertain. During a webinar about the working draft on Jan. 28, Rod Smith, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Interior, described this year’s early winter weather as a yo-yo. “December was excellent,” he said, “but January was kind of blah.”

Public comments on the proposed plan are being accepted through Thursday, Feb. 17.

Lake Powell’s water levels were successfully stabilized last year after a series of major emergency water releases from reservoirs in Utah and Colorado. Lower Basin states also cut water use.

Modeling last year had found a nearly 90% probability that Powell levels in 2022 would fall below the elevation of 3,525, triggering more emergency releases. But as of Feb. 3, water levels in Powell were almost 6 feet above that elevation.

Much can change between now and April, when Reclamation and the states hope to complete the framework.

Last year’s disastrous runoff — the snowpack was roughly 85% of average but the runoff was 32% of average — surprised everyone, and ultimately forced the emergency releases from Blue Mesa and Flaming Gorge, two of three federal dams operated by the agency upstream of Powell. Reclamation also operates Navajo, the reservoir located primarily in New Mexico, whose waters can also be used to boost levels in Powell, subject to other limitations.

The proposed framework identifies how much water from the three reservoirs is available for release to prop up levels in Powell, but only after operations at Powell itself have been managed to best maintain levels of 3,525 feet or above. To slow the decline, Reclamation is holding back 350,000 acre-feet of water in Powell that it would normally release during January-April.

The agency plans this year to release 7.48 million acre-feet from Powell to flow down the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead.

Smith emphasized that the releases from Blue Mesa and other Upper Basin reservoirs will be subordinate to the many preexisting governance mechanisms on the Colorado River, including treaties, compacts, statutes, reserve rights, contracts, records of decision and so forth. “All that stays,” said Smith.

This can get complicated. For example, some water from Taylor Park Reservoir, near Crested Butte, can be stored in Blue Mesa but is really meant for farmers and other users in the Montrose-Olathe area. That water is off-limits in this planning.

Navajo Reservoir releases can get even more complicated. Water was initially identified last summer for release from the reservoir to help replenish Powell, but then delayed. Reasons were identified, including temperatures of the San Juan River downstream in Utah. But feathers were ruffled, as was revealed during the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting, held in Las Vegas in December. Tribes were consulted only belatedly.

Now, the draft framework language specifies the need for consultation with tribes. Water in Navajo Reservoir is owned by both the Jicarilla Apache and Navajo. To be considered are diversions to farmers but also to Gallup. “Getting this right, particularly in the operational phase, will be critical,” said Smith.

How might this affect ditch systems in Colorado? “There will be timing issues of when the extra water comes down, but in terms of whether there are any direct impacts to a ditch authority operating under its own decree, there should not be,” said Michelle Garrison, senior water resource specialist with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, during the webinar. “We don’t expect any disruption to other water users because of this.”

Reclamation has received at least one comment that it should give up hopes of bolstering levels in Powell. Save the Colorado’s Gary Wockner called for Powell to be drained and Glen Canyon Dam destroyed.

Others were inclined toward more charitable appraisals of the drought framework.

“You can help make the best of a bad situation by having any drought operation releases benefit other things on the river, including benefits to threatened and endangered fish species while potentially producing more hydropower revenue [used in part to support endangered fish recovery programs],” said Bart Miller, water program manager for Western Resource Advocates.

But Miller and others also note that Reclamation’s draft framework represents a short-term solution to a festering long-term problem.

The word drought is found everywhere in the planning documents. Colorado State University climate scientist Brad Udall insists that another word, aridification, better describes the hydrology that has left the Colorado River with nearly 20% less water in the 21st century as compared to the 20th century. Trying to reconcile 21st century hydrology with 20th century infrastructure and governance is like walking on a rail that gets ever more narrow.

“I think it’s totally appropriate to use this tool but not as a substitute for dealing with the overall imbalance between supply and demand,” says Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at the University of Colorado Law School.

Long-time Colorado journalist Allen Best publishes Big Pivots, an e-magazine that covers energy and other transitions in Colorado. He can be reached at allen@bigpivots.com and allen.best@comcast.net.

Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Bill providing millions in relief to Republican, Rio Grande river basins clears first hurdle

By

Fresh Water News

-

February 24, 2022

A center pivot irrigates a field in the San Luis Valley, where state regulators are warning that a deadline to shut off wells to help restore flows in the Rio Grande River might be coming sooner than expected. Credit: Jerd Smith

By Larry Morandi

Colorado lawmakers have given initial approval to a bill that would provide millions of dollars to help two major water-short farm regions reduce water use and comply with legal obligations to deliver water to Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and New Mexico.

On Feb. 10 the Colorado Senate Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee unanimously approved SB22-028 that creates a Groundwater Compact Compliance and Sustainability Fund to help pay to buy and retire farm wells and irrigated acreage in the Republican and Rio Grande basins in northeast and south-central Colorado. Colorado and federal tax revenue would bankroll the fund, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board would distribute the money based on recommendations from the Republican River Water Conservation District and the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, with approval by the state engineer.

The need

The fund is needed, according to proponents, to help reduce groundwater use that is depleting surface water flows in the Republican River and threatening Colorado’s ability to comply with a compact among Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. It is also intended to help drought-stressed aquifers in the San Luis Valley recover and to meet aquifer sustainability standards required by the state in the Rio Grande Basin.

To achieve those goals, 25,000 acres of irrigated land must be taken out of production in the Republican basin, and 40,000 acres in the Rio Grande, by 2029. David Robbins, general counsel for both districts, noted that, “Both districts have received letters from the state engineer indicating that if they fail in the task they will receive orders shutting down the wells in each basin, which will have dramatic and very difficult consequences for everyone in both basins.”

The bill’s proponents hope to take advantage of a one-time funding opportunity—federal Covid-19 stimulus dollars under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). The General Assembly created the Economic Relief and Recovery Cash Fund last year to receive ARPA dollars and transferred nearly $850 million into it; investment in water infrastructure is among the eligible uses. It also established an Economic Recovery Task Force to recommend how to spend those funds. Sen. Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa, who is also General Manager of the Rio Grande district and a co-sponsor of the bill, has requested $80 million from the task force to support the bill. The governor’s budget includes $15 million as a starting point.

Neither district is looking for a handout. The Republican has already assessed its water users $148.5 million to retire irrigated land, purchase or lease surface and groundwater, and pipe groundwater to the river near the Nebraska border to meet Colorado’s water delivery obligations. Aaron Sprague, a member of its board of directors, said the district had retired 42,000 acres of irrigated land since 2006 and thought they were in compliance, but then a court stipulation signed in 2016 by the three states, requiring 25,000 acres additional acres be retired, “effectively moved the goal posts on us.” The district has retired 3,000 acres of that additional land so far. Sprague figures the economic impact of well shutdowns to be $2.2 billion annually on local, regional and state economies.

Although the Rio Grande is also part of an interstate compact among Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, the issue there is reducing groundwater pumping to sustainable levels pursuant to state law. What constitutes sustainability is different in the shallow and deep aquifers that underlie the Rio Grande’s San Luis Valley, but it basically boils down to balancing inflows and outflows—precipitation, which averages less than 7” per year in that region, and return flows equaling groundwater withdrawals. As in the Republican basin, the Rio Grande district has taxed its farmers $69 million since 2006 to take irrigated land out of production and cut groundwater pumping, with 13,000 acres retired and well pumping reduced by a third in that period.

But 3,000 wells and 170,000 irrigated acres are at risk if the Rio Grande doesn’t meet the 2029 deadline. How would that affect the valley? Simpson emphasized that, “Irrigated agriculture in the San Luis Valley has about a $1 billion annual impact on our community…the culture, the economy were all built around it.”

The cost

So how much would it cost and where would the money come from? David Robbins suggests that each district would need at least $50 million “over and above” what they already have spent to achieve compliance. Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, another co-sponsor whose district includes the Republican River Basin, said he wasn’t sure $150 million total would be enough. “When commodity prices are where they are,” he noted, “it’s much more difficult to retire acres.” Corn now is selling at over $6/bushel, its highest level in years, making irrigated acreage more valuable.

The bill will go next to the Senate floor for debate. It has strong bipartisan support and is identical to a bill recommended by the interim Water Resources Review Committee last fall. But as Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, committee chair, pointed out, there is no appropriation attached. “This bill just creates an entity,” she cautioned, “and then we’ve got the real hard work to do of making sure we find money to put into it.”

Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story, in the first paragraph, failed to note that Nebraska is one of the state’s to which Colorado has a legal obligation to deliver water.

Larry Morandi was formerly director of State Policy Research with the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, and is a frequent contributor to Fresh Water News. He can be reached at larrymorandi@comcast.net.

Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Kremmling rancher picked to replace Schwartz on state water board

By

Aspen Journalism

-

February 24, 2022

Kremmling rancher and fly-fishing guide Paul Bruchez photo — Gov. Jared Polis has chosen Kremmling rancher and fly-fishing guide Paul Bruchez to represent the Colorado River basin on the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Bruchez will replace Basalt resident and former state Sen. Gail Schwartz, who is stepping down after one term. CREDIT: PHOTO PROVIDED

By Heather Sackett

Gov. Jared Polis has appointed a Kremmling rancher to replace former state Sen. Gail Schwartz on the state’s top water board.

Paul Bruchez will now represent the main stem of the Colorado River on the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Bruchez, 40, currently serves as the agriculture representative and vice chair of the Colorado Basin Roundtable.

Along with his family, Bruchez runs Reeder Creek Ranch, a 6,000-acre cattle and hay operation, about five miles east of Kremmling, which is irrigated with water from the headwaters of the Colorado River. Bruchez is also a fly-fishing guide and has been active since about 2012 in state-level water management discussions. He is a governor appointee to the Inter-Basin Compact Committee and is on the board of the Colorado Water Trust.

“For the last 23 years, everything Colorado River and water has touched and impacted my life substantially, as well as my entire family,” he said. “We all live and breathe Colorado River issues.”

Bruchez is also spearheading a project with other neighboring irrigators to see what happens when water is temporarily removed from high-elevation hay meadows. The results of the state grant-funded study could have implications for demand management, a program state officials are exploring, designed to save water by paying irrigators to temporarily fallow fields.

The nine voting members of the CWCB are representatives from each of the state’s river basins, plus Denver. The Colorado main stem section extends from the headwaters in Grand County, through Glenwood Springs and the Grand Valley to where the river exits the state. The CWCB is tasked with developing and protecting Colorado’s water.

Bruchez said he thinks the biggest issue facing his basin is water scarcity.

“While we have challenges in the Colorado River, we also have some great people, and I hope I can make everyone proud,” he said.

Bruchez must still be confirmed by the state Senate and sworn in at the next CWCB meeting in March.

Basalt resident and former state Sen. Gail Schwartz photo — Basalt resident and former state Sen. Gail Schwartz is stepping down from the Colorado Water Conservation Board after one term. Her replacement is slated to be Kremmling rancher and Colorado Roundtable vice-chair Paul Bruchez. CREDIT: COURTESY GAIL SCHWARTZ

‘Too challenging’

Schwartz, a Democrat who represented a purple district in the Senate from 2007-2015, decided to step down after serving just one three-year term on the board, which began in March 2019. Schwartz said that although it was an honor to hold the seat, she felt she couldn’t be as effective as she wanted in the position.

“I am super concerned about aridification, and I feel that it was just too challenging to move the needle on these incredible challenges to the Colorado River basin because our work is so broad,” she said on Friday. “It was just too difficult to make the kind of impact I would like to make.”

At the July 2021 board meeting, Schwartz had strong words regarding the gravity of the shortages on the Colorado River and urged the CWCB to act at what she called this extraordinary moment in time.

“This is a desert, and we are going to empty every bucket, we are going to empty every river, and this is the inevitable unless we can develop the courage and the ability to step forward,” Schwartz said in July.

Some have urged the state to move more quickly on a demand management program in the face of worsening climate change, drought and water shortages. At the heart of a demand management program is paying irrigators to use less water and store that water in Lake Powell to prop up the reservoir and help the upper basin states meet Colorado River Compact obligations. If a program were implemented, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico would also have to agree to it. CWCB board members adopted a demand management “decision-making roadmap” in September.

“(Demand management) is on the back burner, in my opinion,” Schwartz said. “There was some fabulous input, and it was a really well-run process, but there wasn’t a very clear outcome.”

Schwartz, who lives in Basalt, is also the president of Roaring Fork Habitat for Humanity and said she wants to focus her time and energy on helping to solve the valley’s housing issues.

Aspen Journalism covers water and rivers in collaboration with The Aspen Times. This story ran in the Feb. 15 edition of The Aspen Times, Vail Daily Glenwood Springs Post-Independent and Sky-Hi News.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

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