The view looking upstream on the Crystal River below Avalanche Creek. A Pitkin County group wants to designate this section of the Crystal as Wild & Scenic. CREDIT: CURTIS WACKERLE/ASPEN JOURNALISM
According to Crystal River Valley resident Chuck Ogilby, there are three ways to protect rivers in Colorado. The first two involve using the state’s water court and water rights system. But the third is the one he places the most faith in.
“Who’s going to look after and be the parents, so to speak, of a free-flowing river? It’s the people,” Ogilby said. “The people of Colorado are the thing that will save our rivers. We have the right to fight for it the way we want, and we can advocate for free-flowing streams.”
Ogilby is one of a handful of river advocates in Pitkin County who are reviving a grassroots effort to secure a federal Wild & Scenic designation on the Crystal. But in a state where the value of water is tied to its use, and landowners’ fear of federal government involvement stokes opposition, a campaign to leave more water in the river for the river’s sake may face an uphill battle.
Proponents want protection of 39 miles of river from the headwaters of both the north and south forks, in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, to the Sweet Jessup headgate, the first major agricultural diversion on the lower end of the river. Advocates have three goals: no dams on the main stem, no diversions out of the basin and protection of the free-flowing nature of the river. As the Crystal is one of the last undammed rivers in Colorado, they want to keep it that way.
“I can’t tell you what the experience of walking up to a river and being on the river, whether I catch fish or not, does to me,” Ogilby said. “I can’t put it into words. It’s, I want to say, a religious experience. It’s very emotional.”
Crystal River Valley resident Chuck Ogilby on the banks of the river near the confluence with Avalanche Creek. Ogilby believes a Wild & Scenic designation on the Crystal is the best way to protect it from dams and out-of-basin diversions. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
A history of development plans and pushback
The Wild & Scenic River Act of 1968 brings protection from development. For example, new dams cannot be constructed on a designated stretch, and federal water-development projects that might negatively affect the river are not allowed. The National Wild & Scenic Rivers System seeks to preserve rivers with outstandingly remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic and cultural values in a free-flowing condition.
There are three categories under a designation: wild, which are sections that are inaccessible by trail, with shorelines that are primitive; scenic, with shorelines that are largely undeveloped, but are accessible by roads in some places; and recreational, which are readily accessible by road or railroad and have development along the shoreline.
The U.S. Forest Service determined that the Crystal, which flows through both Gunnison and Pitkin counties, was eligible for designation in the 1980s and reaffirmed that finding in 2002. There are four segments being proposed: about seven miles of the north fork inside the wilderness boundary would be classified as wild; from the wilderness boundary on the north fork to the junction of the south fork, about two miles, would be classified as scenic; from the headwaters of the south fork through its confluence with the north fork and on to Beaver Lake, about 10 miles, would also be scenic, and from Beaver Lake to the Sweet Jessup headgate, about 20 miles, would be recreational. The outstandingly remarkable values are scenic, historic and recreational.
In 2012, conservation group American Rivers deemed the Crystal one of the top 10 most endangered rivers. This was spurred by plans from the Colorado River Water Conservation District and the West Divide Conservation District to renew their conditional water rights for nearly 200,000 acre-feet worth of storage in the form of Placita and Osgood reservoirs. Osgood would have inundated Redstone.
The dam and reservoir projects were eventually abandoned after they were challenged in water court by Pitkin County, but the memory of the threat lingered for river activists, who decided to actively pursue a Wild & Scenic designation in 2012, with the goal of eliminating the possibility of this type of development in the future.
The group shelved the discussion with the presidential election of Donald Trump in 2016. Some trace the moment they realized they were temporarily defeated to a community meeting in Marble and subsequent opinion piece by former director of the Bureau of Land Management William Perry Pendley. A 2016 column for the conservative Washington Times, which also ran in Western Ag Reporter, titled “When ‘wild and scenic’ spells trouble,” stoked fear among landowners in the town of Marble and Gunnison County that a designation means the federal government has power over private property.
“There were some mistruths spread in Marble that really moved them in the wrong direction from my perspective,” said Matt Rice, director of American Rivers’ Colorado Basin Program.
But the meeting was enough for the opposition to gain ground. If the town of Marble wouldn’t support the designation, neither would Gunnison County. The proposal was dead in the water.
Larry Darien was one of those opponents in 2016. He remains opposed to the Wild & Scenic proposal this time around because he said federal involvement in river management could bring unintended consequences. Darien owns a ranch on Gunnison County Road 3 that borders the Crystal.
“Whatever they come up with probably looks real good until you end up with something you didn’t bargain for,” he said. “I don’t want the federal government having anything to do with my property.”
Darien said he doesn’t want to see dams or reservoirs on the Crystal either, but a federal designation is not the right way to go about preventing that. He would support a designation of the headwaters that flow through the wilderness, but would prefer if private property owners downstream along the river were left out of it.
The Crystal River near the town of Marble forms a wetland area. A Pitkin County group wants to designate this section of the Crystal as Wild & Scenic. CREDIT: CURTIS WACKERLE/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Wild & Scenic Act
While the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act does give the federal government the ability to acquire private land, there are many restrictions on those abilities. Condemnation is a tool that is rarely used. The legislation written for each river is unique and can be customized to address stakeholders’ values and concerns.
White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams has worked on Wild & Scenic designations in Oregon, where there are more than 65 sections of designated rivers. He said that in the next step of the process, which would be a suitability determination and an Environmental Impact Statement by the Forest Service, the protection of private property rights would be paramount.
“I’ve often said that if they changed the name to ‘leave the river as it is act,’ which is really what it does, people would be less concerned,” Fitzwilliams said.
Although Wild & Scenic supporters initially squabbled about the best way to address opposition — some said engaging staunch opponents was like inviting a wolf into the hen house — most now agree the best way forward is to bring them into the conversation early.
Pitkin County Commissioner Kelly McNicholas Kury is heading up a steering committee, which will decide how to proceed with the campaign. Pitkin County supports Wild & Scenic and commissioners have allocated an additional $100,000 to the Healthy Rivers board to work on getting a designation.
Committee members are tight-lipped about their strategy moving forward, and have not yet laid out a plan for spending the money, but many are eager to not repeat what they view as the mistakes from the first time around. McNicholas Kury stresses that this time the group will engage any and all stakeholders who want to participate in the process, even and especially those who have been vocally opposed to a federal designation. She said the group will probably hire a neutral facilitator to direct the process and bring all the perspectives to the table.
“The challenge will be ensuring we will reach all the interested parties and they will have a meaningful opportunity to contribute to what the final designations and river protections will be,” McNicholas Kury said. “It may require personally knocking on someone’s door and saying, ‘we need to hear from you.’”
Darien said he would be interested in participating in a stakeholder process, but that so far no one from the advocacy group or Pitkin County has reached out to him.
Avalanche Creek flows into the Crystal River north of Redstone near Avalanche Ranch. A group of Pitkin County river advocates are gearing up for another attempt at getting a Wild & Scenic designation on the Crystal. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Colorado protective of water use
Despite its renowned river rafting, fishing and scenic beauty, which contribute to the recreation-based economy of many Western Slope communities, Colorado has just 76 miles of one river — the Cache La Poudre — designated as Wild & Scenic. That’s less than one-tenth of 1% of the state’s 107,403 river miles, according to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System website.
By comparison, Oregon — a state with a contentious history of clashes between ranchers and the federal government over land management — has 110,994 miles of river, of which 1,916.7 miles are designated as wild & scenic—almost 2% of the state’s river miles.
Instead of backing the federal designation on its rivers, the state of Colorado instead funds a program for an alternative designation that carries some of the same protections as Wild & Scenic. In June of 2020, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service approved an alternative management plan on the Upper Colorado River which takes the place of a Wild & Scenic designation. The process took 12 years and involved cooperation between many stakeholders.
Experts say the main reason there is opposition from water managers to Wild & Scenic in Colorado is not fear of a federal land grab, but the shortage of water in an arid state that is only getting drier with climate change. Fitzwilliams called water “the most valuable commodity in Colorado, without question.” A designation would lock up water in the river, making it unavailable for future development.
“In these very, very arid states where we just don’t have the water, we are very protective of making sure that water is available for all public uses,” said Jennifer Gimbel, interim director of Colorado State University’s Water Center and former director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. “As we try to figure out how to manage the drought, we want to maybe figure out better how to move water from here to there and that Wild & Scenic designation would play a big part in that for better or for worse.”
The two main ways to ensure water stays in the river in Colorado are instream flow rights and recreational in-channel diversion water rights. Instream flow water rights are a minimum streamflow set by the Colorado Water Conservation Board with the goal of preserving the natural environment to a reasonable degree. A recreational in-channel diversion creates a water right for a recreational experience, like the waves in the Basalt whitewater park.
But Ogilby says these state protections don’t go far enough for the Crystal.
“We have to be able to convince people that getting it out of the Colorado adjudication system is the way we are going to ultimately protect it,” he said. “We are not going to save it with Colorado water law. We’ve got to get a (federal) overlay.”
Fears of development have recently returned in response to a study of a back-up water supply plan for the Crystal, undertaken by the same conservation districts who were behind the dam projects. The results aren’t in yet, but the study could find the need for storage to meet the demands of downstream water users in dry years.
A view of the former coal mining village of Placita, with the upper Crystal River winding along the valley floor as seen from from Colorado 133 as it climbs up McClure Pass. CREDIT: BRENT GARDNER-SMITH/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Early indications of support
The next few months will be crucial for the steering committee as they chart a path forward and decide how best to spend the money from Pitkin County. Broad-based local support is critical and there is some evidence the idea of Wild & Scenic is gaining ground.
As part of her capstone project in sustainable studies at Colorado Mountain College, Carbondale resident Monique Vidal is conducting an online survey about recreation on the Crystal River. So far, she has received about 65 responses, about 95% of which support moving forward with Wild & Scenic legislation.
“Our community overwhelmingly so far is supportive,” Vidal said.
Ogilby owns Avalanche Ranch, a small hot springs resort near the Crystal River just north of Redstone. He has spent much of his life advocating for rivers in the Vail Valley and Crystal River valley, and has helped defeat plans for Front Range water providers to take more from the headwaters of the Colorado River. He served for years on the Colorado Basin Roundtable as a representative of Eagle County and is now a member of Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers board.
“I felt a little frustrated being on the roundtable because our position didn’t always gain ground,” he said. “We were up against the big boys. When I came over here, I feel this is my home. And maybe I can’t change everything about all the rivers in Colorado, but maybe I can make a real difference on the Crystal.”
For Wild & Scenic proponents, the clock is now ticking if they hope to get a designation while there is a Democratic administration under President Joe Biden. Ogilby said he feels a sense of urgency.
“Everybody feels that,” he said. “It feels like, oh my god, we have been blessed so let’s get after it. We are going to be pushing.”
Aspen Journalism covers water and rivers in collaboration with The Aspen Times and Swift Communitications publications. This story ran in the May 17 edition of The Aspen Times.
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.
In 1973, Colorado broke new legal ground by establishing water rights solely for the protection of streams, fish and wildlife. Prior to that, water could be diverted only for things like farming, manufacturing and residential water use.
When the state moved to establish these environmental water rights, it was one of the first states in the American West to do so.
This year it will dramatically expand that ground-breaking effort as three new laws, passed in 2020, take effect. One involves the use of temporary water loans, a second adds protection for ranchers who divert water for cattle in stream segments where special environmental flows have been designated, removing an important obstacle to establishing new environmental flows, and a third creates a new tool for environmental flows once only available to cities and farmers.
Zane Kessler, director of public affairs for the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District, said the changes represent an important evolution in protecting environmental flows while balancing the needs of Colorado’s ranchers and cities with those of the environment.
“Good policy helps us evolve to meet changing needs and priorities over time,” Kessler said.
How the new laws work
The expanded temporary loan program authorizes emergency loans and allows loans of water for five years in three separate 10-year periods. Previously those same loans could be used only for three years in a single 10-year period.
This provides relief for several regions, including the Yampa River Basin, where an instream flow loan had been used to its fullest extent under the old law, even though drought has continued to harm the Yampa River. The new longer-running loan program will provide critical flows to the river.
The stock water law, though it doesn’t directly add water to streams, writes specific rancher protections into law, paving the way for more stream segments to be considered for the program.
And the third law, which advocates believe may have the most significant impact of the three, allows something known as an augmentation plan to incorporate environmental flows to help protect streams.
Advocates, such as the Colorado Water Trust, a nonprofit that spearheaded the new approach, say the tools can be used as templates across other river basins, where older water rights are already spoken for.
“In the long run, this could be more impactful,” said Kate Ryan, an attorney for the Colorado Water Trust.
Across Colorado nearly 40,000 miles of streams flow year-round and, as a result, have the potential to receive protection under the state’s Instream Flow Program. To date, the state has been able to establish environmental flows on nearly one-quarter of these, according to the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which manages the program. The CWCB is the only entity legally allowed to hold these environmental water rights in Colorado.
Who gets to choose
Anyone can go to the CWCB and ask that it protect a certain stream segment, but whether it’s a member of the public, the U.S. Forest Service, or The Nature Conservancy, the entity must be able to show that there is enough water in the stream to support a new water right. They must also show that, by decreeing an instream flow on that segment, the stream’s existing conditions will be preserved or, where possible, improved.
To accomplish this, extensive engineering and measurements must be conducted. Once an instream flow case has been researched and documented, the state must go to a special water court to have the right legally established. The court must also hear any challenges that other water rights holders on the stream segment may raise if they fear their own water rights could be harmed. The process often takes several years to complete.
Linda Bassi oversees the Instream Flow Program for the CWCB.
“It’s difficult because there are a lot of competing interests for water,” Bassi said. “On some streams, if the state wants to obtain a water right to protect flows there are a lot of other entities with water rights that may feel threatened. Or there are other entities that might have plans to develop a water right on that same segment who are made uneasy by the fact that we are coming in to establish one [an instream flow water right].”
In Colorado, water rights follow what’s known as the Prior Appropriation Doctrine, or “first in time, first in right.”
That means that a water right claimed in, say, 1894 will get its water before one claimed in 1905 during periods of drought, when there isn’t enough water for everyone who has a right to water in a given stream.
A late start
Because the state environmental program was established 100 years after water users had claimed much of the water in the states’ rivers, the water rights the state has managed to claim are very young, or junior to other more senior rights. That means that in drought years, when they are needed the most, these rights frequently go unfulfilled.
As a result, the state has changed its laws to allow older, senior water rights to be loaned or donated to the state. When it has enough money, the state can actually purchase older water rights that are more likely to receive water during dry years.
When proponents of the 2020 expansion went to lawmakers in 2019 to seek support for the new laws, they faced significant opposition from agricultural interests and cities. It took months of negotiations to craft the bills that finally won near unanimous bipartisan support at the Colorado State Capitol in 2020.
An aerial view of the Colorado State Capitol. April 4, 2021. Credit: Zach Johnson
Getting to “yes”
The Colorado River District represents 15 Western Slope counties, many of which are heavily dependent on ranching. Historically any efforts to add new water rights for protecting streams have been viewed with deep skepticism.
This time was no different, Kessler said, but rural lawmakers were able to add enough protections into the new laws that the district’s board ultimately came out in support of the expansions.
One important measure gives the state engineer, Colorado’s top water regulator, the authority to oversee ranchers’ rights to their so-called stock water.
“During the winter months, ranchers with an irrigation water right [tied to] the summer season will often pull small amounts of water from the stream to keep their animals alive,” Kessler said. “With that [protection] in hand, we became a lot more malleable about how we approached the Instream Flow Program.”
A third part of the expansion, allowing the use of augmentation plans to restore environmental flows, could be among the most important part of the expansion effort, according to Ryan.
Farmers and cities have long used augmentation plans to repay the river when they divert out of turn. Now under the new law, this same tool can be used to help streams.
On the Front Range, for instance, the first environmental augmentation plan is getting ready to launch, with the cities of Fort Collins, Thornton and Greeley offering up water they own and already store under an existing augmentation plan. These “seed” flows will be added above various stretches on the Poudre River that dry up every year. As the new water flows downstream, it will restore habitat for fish and wildlife, and eventually travel down to a segment of the river that these cities are presently legally required to restore.
And though most environmental water deals require individual trips to water court, an expensive, time-consuming process, the new law allows existing augmentation plans to be used, which means proper quantities, times of diversion, and water right dates are already in place.
“There are those who believe that prior appropriation as it is practiced in Colorado is too rigid,” said Sean Chambers, Greeley’s water resources manager. “But I think this is an example of how we can use existing statues, tools and programs to meet the needs of municipalities, irrigators, agricultural interests, and the ecological and recreational needs of the river. And it’s a template that can be used in other [river] basins.”
Looking ahead
How many more miles of streams could still be protected under the Instream Flow Program isn’t clear, according to Bassi, because the state’s priorities and its ability to buy water rights change.
But every year there are victories.
For decades, fish experts believed that a certain line of endangered cutthroat trout known as the San Juan lineage cutthroat had been extinct. But then they discovered them in a remote part of the San Juan River Basin and, last year, the CWCB was able to establish an instream flow on a critical stream segment there, helping ensure the endangered fish will survive.
“Priorities change, whether it’s [water for] a gold medal fishery, which helps the recreation industry, or to protect a declining species. We don’t have a set quota. We’re just trying to help these organizations achieve their goals through our program,” Bassi 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.
Beavers, known for their work ethic, tenacity and sometimes destructive instincts, are making a comeback in the worlds of science and water as researchers look for natural ways to restore rivers and wetlands and improve the health of drought-stressed aquifers.
“The concept of beavers and their ability to restore streams is not new,” said Sarah Marshall, an ecohydrologist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Natural Heritage Program who has been studying these semi-aquatic rodents for years. “Now we have a body of groundwater and sediment capture studies that have really resonated with folks who are managing water, especially with these nagging problems of drought and earlier snowmelt.”
This fall, Colorado Headwaters, a nonprofit that advocates for protecting and restoring headwater regions in the state, is sponsoring a beaver summit, a conference designed to unveil some of the latest ecological research on creatures once valued only for their glossy fur.
“The idea is to drive the knowledge to the general public and legislators so they have a better handle on how to address this,” said Jerry Mallett, Colorado Headwaters founder and president.
Beaver advocates would like to see more funding for research, new programs, such as a beaver census, and better integration of wetland restoration efforts in headwaters areas.
Before beavers were nearly trapped out of existence in the mid-1800s, they inhabited high mountain wetlands and river basins across Colorado and the West. They played an important ecological role, according to Marshall. Their dams trapped water, allowing it to flood wetlands and soak into underground aquifers. Those same dams also trapped sediment, enhancing habitat for fish and other wildlife.
But beavers also did their fair share of damage as the West was settled, garnering a reputation for damming irrigation ditches and flooding culverts and roads, angering ranchers and city dwellers alike.
Even in urban areas, beavers are considered a nuisance because their never-ending dam building often floods city parks and harms trees.
But Marshall is hopeful that events such as the upcoming summit as well as ongoing education of policy makers and the public on the benefits of the water-related work beavers do will help improve their reputation.
“One of the most important things about how beavers help streams is that they are very dynamic. They don’t just create a dam. They move around in watersheds creating systems that are constantly changing.
“By creating a series of dams they do everything from refilling alluvial aquifers to physically trapping sediment and creating physical habitat for rare species such as boreal toads and trout,” she said.
Carlyle Currier, president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, said beavers remain a sore topic in the agricultural world because their dams often harm expensive irrigation systems and cause flooding.
“Certainly they can be a nuisance if they’re in the wrong place,” Currier said.
There is also concern that if beavers significantly alter how water moves through a stream, it could injure water rights.
Currier said he and his ranching colleagues are willing to listen to what the beaver scientists are recommending.
“The devil is always in the details,” he said. “But in headwaters areas, you could argue that they do more good than harm.”
The Colorado conference, slated for Oct. 20 and 22 in Avon, comes on the heels of similar confabs that have been held recently in California and New Mexico, Mallet said.
As drought and climate change cause widespread reductions in river flows and aquifer levels, researchers and others are re-evaluating how wetlands and rivers evolved. They are hopeful that the furry architects and general contractors who originally helped shape them can be restored and put to work again in a way that aids everyone, Marshall said.
“We built all of this infrastructure and managed land in a context that did not include beavers. As we’re changing how we view them culturally, there is an opportunity for co-existence,” Marshall said.
“People are starting to realize that when you have beavers in a stream reach you have nice green grass growing along the banks for your cattle. It’s a fascinating path that we are on. People are starting to see them in a new light,” Marshall 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.
The western boundary of Senator Beck Basin is pictured May 12, 2009, after a dust event. That year was an exceptionally dusty one, with 12 dust events. The basin has experienced five dust events so far this year. CREDIT: COURTESY PHOTO BY THE CENTER FOR SNOW AND AVALANCHE STUDIES
The first automated dust-on-snow monitoring technology in the mountains of Northwest Colorado is expected to be installed this fall to study the impact of dust from arid landscapes on downwind mountain ecosystems in the state and in Utah.
McKenzie Skiles, who is a hydrologist and a University of Utah assistant professor, will use close to $10,000 from a National Science Foundation grant to purchase four pyranometers, which measure solar radiation landing on, and reflected by, snow.
These instruments will be placed on a data tower at Storm Peak Lab, a research station above Steamboat Springs that studies the properties of clouds, as well as natural and pollution-sourced particles in the atmosphere. The lab sits at 10,500 feet near the peak of Mount Werner at the top of Steamboat Resort in the Yampa River basin. Starting next winter, live information will be transmitted to MesoWest, a data platform at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
This station will be the latest added to a growing network of dust-on-snow monitoring towers across the state and Utah. Such stations offer key insights to researchers studying how dust impacts the timing and intensity of snowpack melt, Skiles said.
“My goal is to have a network of dust-on-snow observation sites that spans a latitudinal gradient in the Rockies and headwaters of the Colorado River,” Skiles said.
The Atwater study plot in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, pictured in January, began transmitting data in 2019 and is operated by the Snow Hydro Lab at the University of Utah. CREDIT: COURTESY PHOTO BY MCKENZIE SKILES
Five towers spread around Colorado and Utah currently take in data on the solar energy absorbed and reflected by the snow. Dust particles darken the snow’s surface then absorb more energy than clean snow does. Such a process changes light frequencies recorded by the pyranometers. Researchers take this frequency data and run it through models to quantify how much surface dust heats snow and speeds snowmelt.
Of the currently operating stations, one is near Crested Butte; one sits on Grand Mesa above Grand Junction; two are near Silverton; and one is in the Wasatch Mountains near Alta, Utah. The sites are run, respectively, by Irwin Mountain Guides; by the U.S. Geological Survey and a collaborative user group; by the nonprofit Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies; and by University of Utah researchers.
Stations were first established in the Senator Beck Basin, near Silverton in the San Juan Mountains, which is the Colorado range most immediately downwind from the deserts of the Colorado Plateau and receives the first dust — and the most dust. In analyzing data from the two radiation towers there, Skiles and colleagues revealed that dust on snow shortened the cover by 21 to 51 days and caused a faster, more-intense peak-snowmelt outflow. In a 2017 study that also analyzed data from Senator Beck Basin, Skiles showed that it was dust, not temperature, that influenced how fast snowpack melted and flowed into rivers downstream.
The Steamboat station will fill a gap in the locations of radiation towers, Skiles said.
“We know that a lot of dust comes from the southern Colorado Plateau and impacts the southern Colorado Rockies, but we don’t understand dust impacts as well in the northern Colorado Rockies,” she said.
Since there isn’t a data station in the northwest portion of the state, “The only way to know if there’s dust there is to go and dig a snow pit,” said Jeff Derry, executive director of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies.
CSAS runs the Colorado Dust on Snow program, or CODOS, which includes the two radiation towers in Senator Beck Basin.
University of Colorado hydrology students dig a snow pit in front of Storm Peak Lab in March 2013. The lab hosts research groups and students from around the world to study atmospheric and snow science. CREDIT: COURTESY PHOTO BY GANNET HALLAR
Three times a year, usually in mid-March, April and May, CSAS staffers tour Colorado, digging snow pits at mountain locations to assess dust conditions statewide. Since dust events continue into May, this year’s conditions are currently hard to quantify, Derry said.
So far, this spring has been dustier than 2020; five dust events have hit the Senator Beck Basin as of April 14, compared with the three total dust events last year. As in years past, Senator Beck Basin has experienced more dust events than have the sites to the northeast, according to Derry in the latest CODOS update. Yet, a recent April storm distributed dust on all sites in the state.
Unlike the past few years, Rabbit Ears Pass — the CODOS sampling site closest to Steamboat Springs and located northwest of Bear Mountain along U.S. Highway 40 — has received at least as much dust as the Senator Beck Basin has, according to the CODOS update. As of the April 12 to 14 CODOS tour, two dust layers of moderate severity are present on the pass. That amount probably came from storms in the Uintah basin, in the Four Corners region and in Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert, Derry said.
These dust layers will warm the snow and have an impact on snowmelt timing this runoff season, Derry said. In order to quantify that effect, radiation data from dust-on-snow study plots, like the one planned for Storm Peak, is needed.
Dust in arid landscapes — often disturbed by human activity — travels in wind currents during storms and is deposited on downwind mountains, Skiles said. The number of dust events and mass of dust carried in storms vary from year to year depending on wind speed, the intensity of drought and the frequency of human activities that disturb surface soils, said Janice Brahney, an assistant professor at Utah State University who studies nationwide dust composition and deposition patterns.
For instance, Senator Beck Basin experienced a peak in dust events from 2009 through 2014 and a decline in recent years. This decline is probably due to storms and winds that are not strong enough to carry and deposit dust into Colorado mountains, Brahney said.
“My sense is that a lot of the storms that are occurring in the southern United States are still occurring — they’re just not always reaching Colorado,” she said.
Dust covering snow near the Grand Mesa study plot on April 26, 2014. The Grand Mesa study plot was the third to be added to the network of dust on snow monitoring stations, and began transmitting solar radiation data in 2010. CREDIT: COURTESY PHOTO BY THE CENTER FOR SNOW AND AVALANCHE STUDIES
Dust data will provide future insights for Steamboat water policy and management.
Skiles’ lab isn’t the only entity interested in the Storm Peak Lab dust-on-snow data. Kelly Romero-Heaney, water resources manager for the city of Steamboat Springs, anticipates using the data in the city’s next water-supply master plan.
“We update our water supply master plan at least every 10 years,” Romero-Heaney said. “So, even if it’s another eight years of data that’s needed before we can see measurable trends, by the time we update our models, we’ll be able to integrate that data.”
The most current plan, released in 2019, includes forecasts for Steamboat Springs’ water supply 50 years into the future. The plan — factoring in historic streamflow data and stressors to water supply such as climate change, wildfire and population growth — concluded that the city will meet its demands through 2070.
“One thing we’re fortunate in is that we have a relatively small community for a relatively large snowy water basin,” Romero-Heaney said.
Mount Werner Water and Sanitation District supplies the city with its water, derived primarily from Fish Creek and Long Lake reservoirs, said District General Manager Frank Alfone. In the summer months, the district also treats water from the Yampa River to meet irrigation demands, he said.
In order to predict Fish Creek and Long Lake reservoir levels, Alfone relies on data from the Buffalo Pass snowpack station, which is run by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and on monthly water-supply forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
Alfone says dust on snow and the city’s water supply have “an impact now and more so in the future,” Alfone said.
Indeed, dust levels are expected to rise throughout the West. A 2013 study revealed that since 1994, dust deposition has increased in the region, with the majority of dust lifting from deserts in the Southwest and West, along with regions in the Great Plains and Columbia River Basin. This increase, according to the study, is probably due to heightened human disturbance of dry soils, which includes off-road-vehicle use, gas drilling, grazing and agriculture.
Increasing dust accelerates snowpack entrance into rivers, Skiles said. This earlier runoff lengthens the period when water can evaporate from rivers and lower streamflow, impacting water supply in the warmer months, according to her study,
“What we’re finding is that runoff is happening earlier and earlier each year, and that has real implications for us come August and September, particularly if we get very little rain throughout the summer season,” Romero-Heaney said.
Data from the widening dust-on-snow-monitoring network will aid water-resource managers and researchers in predicting how dust will shape future snowpack across Colorado.
“Dust does play a really significant role in hydrology. And that’s really important in the Western states, where we rely on the mountain snowpack not just for our own drinking water, but for our own functioning ecosystem,” said Brahney, lead author of the 2013 dust study.
“We anticipate some challenges for the whole basin, although we will still be able to reliably supply our customers with drinking water,” Romero-Heaney said.
As the coronavirus pandemic stretches past a year, the world has become accustomed to facing problems we rarely, if ever, anticipated before. These new challenges extend beyond logistical work-from-home issues to graver concerns: For example, how do we keep our water systems safe from hackers?
In Florida, a water treatment plant ran into that very issue in February when a hacker breached its remote system. The hacker, who is still unknown, reportedly adjusted the sodium hydroxide — added to alkalize water and limit lead leaching from pipes — in the city’s water to poisonous levels. While the threat was quickly addressed, the incident highlighted the weaknesses of remote access operations.
The Florida water plant is far from the only utility that’s fallen victim to a cyberattack. Similar threats have happened in Colorado, too. For example, in 2019, hackers demanded a ransom from the Fort Collins Loveland Water District and South Fort Collins Sanitation District. (The districts were able to resolve the issue on their own).
And just last month, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Water Quality Control Division warned of recent phishing attempts at various water utilities.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, works to help organizations bolster their technology and counter cyberattacks. “Water utilities face the same types of cyberattacks as any other organization: phishing schemes, ransomware attacks and other malware designed to steal credentials,” said Dave Sonheim, Colorado CISA cybersecurity advisor. “While technology creates many advantages, it also brings with it the risk of cybercrime, fraud and abuse.”
COVID-19 has intensified the problem, he said, because it necessitated remote work, making operations for many utilities more vulnerable.
“What we know is that breaches in cybersecurity can knock on a bazillion doors electronically until one opens,” explained John Thomas, professor of engineering practice at the University of Colorado. To prevent cyber threats from escalating, Thomas says it’s important to consider as many challenging scenarios as possible and work backward to build a more adaptable system.
Cyber issues predate the pandemic but because water utilities typically use electronic control systems that were developed in the 1960s, their technology tends to be older, too. Older tech combined with pandemic conditions exacerbated an already existing weakness.
“Systems are still outdated and not really designed to be operated on the internet, and with all the issues surrounding COVID-19 suddenly requiring remote administration and access — it’s kind of a perfect storm,” Thomas said.
As hacks have increased, regulators have responded with more explicit guidance. The Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center offers 15 cybersecurity fundamentals targeted for the water sector. Additionally, the Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 requires larger water utilities to conduct risk and resilience assessments of their cybersystems. These kinds of threats have long been on the radar of utilities like Denver Water, which follows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s best practices to stop cyberattacks before they begin.
“Denver Water has a designated cybersecurity team, along with an emergency preparedness program, that investigates the best ways to detect, defend, respond to and recover from cybersecurity attacks, including those similar to the one that occurred in Florida,” said Denver Water spokesperson Todd Hartman. Hartman said Denver Water follows guidelines set by CISA.
But these policies may not be enough. A recent paper on how COVID-19 might transform infrastructure resilience noted that “older best practices that focus on efficiency and stability are becoming increasingly insufficient.” That presents a new opportunity to rethink how infrastructure operates and how it can be designed to respond to unexpected situations.
Emily Bondank, a science and technology fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the paper’s authors, said current guidelines are limited to what utilities can imagine as a future threat. But what about things they can’t imagine, like a global pandemic?
“COVID impacted us in an interesting way because it wasn’t recognized as being a threat to infrastructure at all,” Bondank said. “Even though people know cybersecurity is an issue for the water sector, it just hasn’t been invested in enough for them to really understand the vulnerabilities and threats around it.”
Alejandra Wilcox is a journalist currently based in northern Colorado. Her work has been broadcast on KGNU and has appeared in the Huffington Post, among other outlets.
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.
Conscience Bay Company President Eli Feldman stands at a headgate on the Alfalfa Ditch near Cedaredge. Feldman, whose company owns Harts Basin Ranch and irrigates with water from the ditch, has been accused of water speculation: buying the ranch just for the future value of the water. CREDIT: LUKE RUNYON/KUNC
ECKERT — Melting snow and flowing irrigation ditches mean spring has finally arrived at the base of Grand Mesa in western Colorado.
Harts Basin Ranch, a 3,400-acre expanse of hayfields and pasture just south of Cedaredge, in Delta County, is coming back to life with the return of water.
Twelve hundred of the ranch’s acres are irrigated with water from Alfalfa Ditch, diverted from Surface Creek, which flows down the south slopes of the Grand Mesa. The ranch has the No. 1 priority water right — meaning the oldest, which comes with the ability to use the creek’s water first — dating to 1881.
What makes the ranch unique among its Grand Mesa-area neighbors is its owner. Conscience Bay Company, a Boulder-based private real estate investment firm, bought the property in 2017.
That fact alone has brought its owners scrutiny from neighbors and Western Slope water managers. Conscience Bay and its president, Eli Feldman, have been accused of water speculation — which means buying up the ranch just for its senior water rights and hoarding them for a future profit.
That is an accusation Feldman denies.
“Any time you come into a place that you’re not from, people are curious at best and skeptical and concerned at worst,” he said.
The ranch raises organic beef using regenerative techniques that operators say are better for soil health. Conscience Bay holds grazing permits on tracts of public land in western Colorado and Utah where the cattle feast on grass before being sent to California to be finished, slaughtered and sold under the brand name SunFed Ranch.
To the charges that he’s doing something untoward by investing in the ranch’s land and abundant water rights, Feldman said he’s just like any other major water user in the state putting it to beneficial use. The ranch is using the water to irrigate, he said.
“We’re growing grass and feeding it to cows and trying to improve the ground, improve the soil health and make a business out of it,” Feldman said.
Harts Basin Ranch is a 3,400-acre expanse of hayfields and pasture just south of Cedaredge in Delta County. The ranch is owned by Boulder-based Conscience Bay Company and has the oldest water right on the Alfalfa Ditch. Harts Basin Ranch is a 3,400-acre expanse of hayfields and pasture just south of Cedaredge in Delta County. The ranch is owned by Boulder-based Conscience Bay Company and has the oldest water right on the Alfalfa Ditch. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Speculation work group
The conversation around water speculation has been heating up in Colorado in recent months. At the direction of state lawmakers, a work group has been meeting regularly to explore ways to strengthen the state’s anti-speculation law. The topic frequently comes up at meetings of Western Slope water managers: the Colorado River Water Conservation District, basin roundtables and boards of county commissioners.
Investments such as Feldman’s have been of interest to the work group, which consists of water managers and users from around the state and is chaired by Kevin Rein, state engineer and head of the Division of Water Resources.
“I think it’s a valid concern because they do see unusual parties, large parties that, again, aren’t the typical parties, purchasing those water rights, and so that’s the concern,” Rein said. “Are they speculating or are they purchasing just so they can flip it, as people say, in a few years for more money?”
Under Colorado law, a water-rights holder must put their water to “beneficial use,” meaning continuing to use the water for what it was decreed in order to hang onto it. But Colorado also treats the right to use water as a private-property right. People can buy and sell water rights, change what the water is allowed to be used for and, if given a court’s blessing, move the water from agricultural use to growing cities.
This system, used widely in the western United States, creates an opening for investors who see water as an increasingly valuable commodity in a water-short future, driven by climate change. A private-equity fund, Water Asset Management, is now the largest landowner in the Grand Valley Water Users Association, which provides water for farmers in the intensely irrigated valley, a short drive from Harts Basin Ranch. The purchases of the New York City-based company have raised suspicions among water managers and prompted the formation of the speculation work group.
Similar concerns have cropped up in agricultural communities throughout the West. A water transfer in Arizona from agricultural lands on the Colorado River to a rapidly expanding Phoenix exurb recently stirred up controversy. In Nevada, Water Asset Management is trying to market water held in an underground aquifer.
Colorado’s current anti-speculation doctrine is based on case law that says those seeking a water right must have a vested interest in the lands to be served by the water and must have a specific plan to put the water to beneficial use.
The work group has identified the following risks from speculators: investors’ obtaining a monopoly over a local water market; large-scale, permanent dry-up of agricultural lands; less water availability for other water users; and violation of Colorado’s values to see a vital public resource traded as a commodity.
Part of Harts Basin Ranch’s hayfields are irrigated with sprinklers. The ranch is owned by Boulder-based Conscience Bay Company and has the oldest water right on the Alfalfa Ditch.CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Potential risks and solutions
The potential solutions to these risks are many, according to a draft document. The work group is exploring several of these, including creating a process to determine the intent of the purchaser; taxing profits from the sale of water rights at varying rates to encourage beneficial use and to discourage profiteering; imposing time limits on turnover of ownership to discourage short-term “flipping”; encouraging local governments to police investments through their 1041 powers; and creating a public-review process for water transfers that exceed some threshold.
The group has not coalesced around any of these potential solutions, but state officials said they are zeroing in on using the water court process to evaluate transfers as a way of spotting speculation.
The work group is supposed to submit a report, along with any recommendations from members, to state officials by August. But so far, the group has had a difficult time making sense of the thorny questions raised by these issues. Even trying to define what speculation is (and isn’t) and who is considered a speculator has been a struggle.
“It’s one thing to point at something and say, ‘Oh, that’s probably speculative.’ Another to actually put the legal definition on it,” said Alex Funk, agricultural water-resources specialist with the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Funk is also a member of the work group.
Discussions so far about reining in speculation have focused on the intent of the buyer. Can the state determine whether someone who is purchasing water rights intends to grow hay or build a residential subdivision? Or are they solely focused on the water rights’ future value? And how do you tell the difference?
“Do we want to protect against certain types of intent?” Rein said. “And then how do we determine that?”
Predetermining a water-right purchaser’s intent could prove to be a difficult task, akin to stopping a crime before it’s actually committed. Funk invoked the 2002 film “Minority Report,” in which a police detective (played by Tom Cruise), with the help of three psychics, tracks down would-be murderers and arrests them before any gun goes off.
“There aren’t speculation police running the state and breaking up these investments, right?” Funk said.
A parshall flume measures the water in the Alfalfa Ditch, which diverts water from Surface Creek, near Cedaredge. The water is used to irrigate hayfields at nearby Harts Basin Ranch. CREDIT: LUKE RUNYON/KUNC
Financial water speculation
A draft report by the work group attempts to define two different types of speculation.
The first is traditional water speculation, which involves obtaining a water right without any plan or intent to put that water to beneficial use. The intent is to obtain a desirable priority date and then sell the water right to others who have a beneficial use.
This type of speculation has been addressed before in Colorado water law in what is known as the High Plains case. In 2005, the Colorado Supreme Court determined that a water-investment company was speculating because its plan for using the water was too expansive and nebulous, and the plan did not identify either the structures through which the water would be diverted or the specific locations where the water would be used.
The second type of speculation — and, because of WAM’s dealings in the Grand Valley, the one on which the work group is more focused — is financial water speculation. The work group defines this as the purchase and use of water rights with the primary purpose of profiting from increased value of the water in a short period of time. Financial water speculation may run counter to Colorado’s prior-appropriation doctrine because the primary intent is profit rather than beneficial use.
The concerns over speculation tap into a deep-seated anxiety that is prevalent in Western farm towns: the transfer of water from agriculture to cities. There are real examples of agricultural water being sold to cities, sometimes derisively described as “buy and dry,” and some rural communities have suffered economically as a result.
In some ways, the work group’s discussion of how to prevent speculation is really a broader discussion of how to prevent water transfers away from agriculture. The group has identified the large-scale, permanent dry-up of agricultural lands as the No. 1 risk from speculators. Part of Funk’s job is to head up a program of “alternative transfer methods,” which allow cities to temporarily buy or lease water from agriculture, but without the severe economic impacts.
“I think the issue with speculation is that what on paper might seem a very sort of small, isolated issue, as soon as you start sort of unpacking it a little bit, it’s essentially all the problems that Western water and rural communities are facing in, like, one issue,” Funk said. “So, as soon as you start unraveling it, you start running into other forces at play that are really beyond the state’s control or any one individual producer’s control.”
Cowgirls lasso calves so they can be branded and vaccinated at Harts Basin Ranch in April. The Delta County ranch, whose owners have been accused of water speculation, raises organic cattle. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Impacts to ag
The work group is walking a fine line to come up with ways to deter speculation while not harming traditional agriculture producers in the process. In a big-picture sense, irrigators may worry about the impact to their community and way of life if all their neighbors sell to hedge funds. But when it’s their turn to receive a check for their water rights, they don’t want regulators doing anything that would make the process harder or devalue the ranch they have put their lives into, including restricting whom they can sell to.
It’s an oft-repeated adage that a rancher’s land and water rights are their 401(k) or their child’s college fund, and some say any new rules aimed at speculators should not make it more difficult for traditional ag producers to cash out if and when they want.
So far, the investment firms active in western Colorado have continued to lease their land back to farmers, or farm it themselves.
Carlyle Currier, a rancher in Molina and president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, has a seat on the Colorado River Basin Roundtable and his family has ranched in the Grand Mesa area for more than a century. Currier said until the investors attempt to sell it off, they’re not doing anything illegal.
“If the government can tell (someone) they can’t buy a farm and farm it, well, then they could tell me that, too. And I don’t want them telling me that,” Currier said.
The speculation discussion is also set against the backdrop of a potential demand-management program, the feasibility of which the state is currently studying. A demand-management program would pay irrigators on a temporary, voluntary basis to fallow fields and leave more water in the river. This water would be sent to Lake Powell to fill a 500,000-acre-foot pool that could be used to help the upper-basin states avoid a protracted legal battle with states downstream on the Colorado River.
Some say the exploration of demand management — including pay-to-fallow pilot projects in the Grand Valley — could have opened the door for investors who want to take advantage of the program to make easy money. Where there are opportunities, there are opportunists.
“Here in Mesa County, we’ve been watching a Wall Street investment firm buying up agricultural properties all with pre-compact water rights,” Steve Aquafresca, Mesa County’s Colorado River District representative, said at a board meeting last month. “I think it could be safely said that these actions probably would not have occurred if the state were not discussing the possibility of a demand-management program and if one particular major irrigation-water provider was not showing some willingness to entertain a demand-management program.”
The Alfalfa Ditch, seen here in April, takes its water from Surface Creek. The owners of Harts Basin Ranch, which has a water right on Alfalfa Creek dating to 1881, have been accused of buying the ranch just for its old and valuable water rights. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Suspicion of outsiders
For all the concern about water speculation, there’s scant proof that it’s happening on a large scale on the Western Slope. Even WAM is not speculating, according to the current definition, as long as they keep the land in agricultural production.
“It does seem like there’s a lot of speculation about speculation,” Feldman of investment firm Conscience Bay said.
Instead, he said, old-fashioned suspicion of outsiders is at the heart of the issue.
“There’s people that view us as outsiders and we are not from here,” he said. “We know that. We know that damn well. And that’s not news to us.”
And there’s some evidence that he’s right. The Colorado River District, which protects Western Slope water interests, is developing a policy statement about water speculation. A draft of the policy says the district “recognizes the importance of locally owned agricultural lands and waters” and will work “to protect our state’s water resources from out-of-state special interests.”
And although these ideas didn’t get much traction, the work group has also floated two more potential solutions targeting outsiders: restricting the ability of out-of-state entities to participate in Colorado water court proceedings and prohibiting out-of-state entities from holding water rights.
“Is speculation just another word for investment (but it has) a negative connotation to it because it’s somebody that’s not from here?” Feldman said. “OK, well, do you not want to have investment in rural Colorado? Is that what we’re after? That’s where it would go if you put up enough barriers and hoops.”
Feldman says he is not the enemy. His operation isn’t the mom-and-pop homestead ranch of the Old West. It’s the investor-owned, employee-operated, risk-taking ranch of the New West. Harts Basin Ranch is looking for innovative ways to adapt to water scarcity and is participating in a program with environmental group Trout Unlimited to study consumptive use and how agriculture can stay productive while using less water. The group receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also funds KUNC’s Colorado River reporting.
Feldman sees the heated discussion about speculation as a symptom of how Western communities are choosing to grapple with increasing water scarcity under climate change. There are those who explore new ways of running an old business and there are those who want to protect the status quo.
“At its core you see a real friction or conflict between a group of people that’s trying to make water policy more flexible to adapt to a changing climate,” Feldman said, “and those that are trying to impose more rigidity and prevent any change from occurring.”
This story was part of a collaboration between KUNC in Colorado and Aspen Journalism. Aspen Journalism is a local, nonprofit and investigative news organization that covers water and river issues. KUNC’s Colorado River reporting project is supported by a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial content.
This story ran in the May 6 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.
Colorado’s water storage reservoirs, struggling after two years of severe drought, are holding just 86 percent of their average supplies for this time of year, down dramatically from last year’s 107-percent-of-average mark.
The South Platte Basin, home to the metro Denver area, has been blessed with heavy spring snows and its reservoirs are the fullest in the state, measuring 99 percent of average at the end of March, the latest data available from the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.
But the rest of the state’s storage pools are dangerously low.
And it is the state’s farmers who are suffering the most due to last summer’s ultra-dry weather and a weak winter mountain snowpack. Hardest hit is the southwestern corner of the state, where the San Juan/Dolores River Basin’s reservoirs stand at just 59 percent of average, a dramatic drop from last year, when those storage pools were at 104 percent of average, according to the NRCS.
Credit: U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service
“It’s terrible,” said Don Schwindt, a grower near Dolores who sits on the Southwestern Water Conservation District Board as well as the board of the Family Farm Alliance.
“We emptied virtually all of our [local] reservoirs last year,” he said, which means that there is little water to start the irrigation season if the spring runoff fails to deliver.
Schwindt said growers in his region were already worried last fall after the summer monsoon rains failed to arrive. Those rains are key to adding moisture to the soil ahead of winter, and when they don’t come, the dry soil under the snow absorbs much of the spring runoff.
In the Upper Rio Grande Basin, conditions are similarly dire, with growers preparing to reduce the number of acres they plant as the water forecast deteriorates.
“On our family farm we will have to cut back half of our plantings if we don’t start getting runoff,” said Kit Caldon, an ag producer in the Upper Rio Grande Basin. “There is no way we will plant everything we have even if we have a great runoff because our reservoirs are so low.”
Colorado, like other Western states, remains mired in a drought cycle that has seen four major droughts in the past two decades. The dry weather has sapped soils, raised wildfire danger, and drained underground aquifers on which farmers also rely.
Kathleen Curry is a former lawmaker, a lobbyist and a rancher in the Upper Gunnison River Basin, where reservoirs are also running low on supplies.
“Because we are high up in the basin, we are likely to be okay. But folks farther down are not going to be as lucky,” Curry said, referring to lower-altitude streams where spring flows are projected to be ultra low.
In response to the increasingly alarming conditions, a year ago, the state activated its emergency drought action plan for the agricultural sector, a move that frees up of some federal funds to provide farm relief.
But that federal help, while welcome, isn’t enough to offset the costs of what is shaping up to be another major drought year for Colorado’s farmers.
“Whatever has been provided, no matter how good it is, it is inadequate for this kind of water supply year,” said Schwindt. “Poke down through the snow and you will find dust instead of mud. This is going to be a tough one to recover from.”
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.
Samuel (last name not given), an unhoused resident of the LA River, fishes for a meal under a freeway bridge near “Frogtown,” a river-adjacent neighborhood that has seen a steep rise in property values in recent years.. Photo by Roberto (Bear) Guerra.
On a March afternoon on the Los Angeles River, two anglers waded in the concrete channel of the Glendale Narrows, casting their lines for carp and largemouth bass. Above them, a belted kingfisher perched on a mattress that had been caught in the crook of a budding cottonwood during a recent storm surge. Some recreationists enjoy catch-and-release on the river, but others — low-income and unhoused people who need sustenance — were hoping to leave with coolers, buckets or even shopping carts full of freshly caught fish.
For over 10,000 years, the Los Angeles River — known to the local Gabrieliño-Tongva Tribe as Paayme Paxaayt — has provided food, water and a way of life to residents of the Los Angeles Basin. Steelhead trout once spawned in its headwaters and helped feed the numerous villages along its course. But since 1938, the 51-mile river has been bound in concrete. Now, many worry that its fish aren’t safe to consume, a stigma that has long loomed over angling here.
“Most tend to think the quality of the water in the Los Angeles River is poor, but it’s fairly clean water,” says Sabrina Drill, natural resources advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension. While toxicity varies by species and location on the river, a 2019 LA River report found that a person can safely consume 8 ounces of common carp, bluegill, and green sunfish, up to three times per week. Still, Drill did not recommend this, since most of the studies contained small samples.
Yet many unhoused and other low-income Angelenos — over a thousand people a year, according to some experts — supplement their diets with the urban river’s fish and crustaceans. Nearly 9,000 of the estimated 66,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles County live along the river, where they’ve set up camps and shelters — even small gardens with fruit trees, bushes and terraced agriculture, hidden off its concrete banks.
Their future, however, has become even more tenuous with the recent draft of the LA River Master Plan, a massive proposal to revitalize portions of the river with pavilions, cultural centers and multimillion-dollar parks. The plan — developed by a committee of nonprofit organizations, municipalities and governmental entities, assisted by public comment — will be released later this year. But already advocates have raised concerns, and groups like the Eastyard Center for Environmental Justice are worried about the prospect of “green gentrification,” which occurs when housing prices rise after parks are built in historically marginalized communities.
The draft plan’s environmental impact report suggests that many homeless encampments are likely to be removed during construction, and that law enforcement patrols will increase to prevent new ones from forming. The plan offers no housing solutions for the thousands of people currently living on the river.
Homeless advocates worry that those who will be most heavily impacted by the plan had no chance to comment, since many who live on the river lack reliable access to the internet or are unable to attend public meetings. “What’s happening on the Los Angeles River is a humanitarian crisis,” says Jason Post, who has been studying the river for six years. “The reality and experiences of LA River anglers and of people who, on the day-to-day, live in and along the river are not reflected in the master plan. You have economic revitalization and park construction prioritized over people’s ability to live and survive.”
“You have economic revitalization and park construction prioritized over people’s ability to live and survive.”
What we know about the river’s modern community is limited, but its members are part of a long history of invisible Angelenos who have lived and fished along the riverbanks for more than a century, both before and after channelization. In “Unnatural Nature,” a study published in the December 2020 Geographical Review, Post and co-author Perry Carter examined how anglers have reimagined and repurposed this far-from-pristine space as parkland and urban wilderness.
Their study, which noted the inequities in the park-poor city of Los Angeles, showed how the river provides refuge, food and shelter for some anglers and unhoused people. None of the 23 sustenance anglers I spoke with in the three months I reported on this story wished to speak on the record. Many couldn’t afford fishing licenses and so were operating outside of the law; others said they had been harassed by law enforcement. In the past, anglers and unhoused Angelenos have been given loitering tickets while on the river. Others feared encampment sweeps.
Carolina Hernandez, the Los Angeles County Public Works principal engineer and spokesperson for the LA River Master Plan, says that while the plan doesn’t specifically address fishing or sustenance fishing on the river, it does prioritize healthy ecosystems that allow angling. Social justice and environmental groups were on the plan’s subcommittee, but no homeless advocacy groups were involved, and very few unhoused residents attended meetings. “There was not a direct survey of our unhoused community in the LA River Master Plan,” Hernandez told me. The plan is a road map, she added, one that shouldn’t supersede specific project engagement.
Recently, in Glendale Narrows, I saw how intimately those experiencing homelessness interacted with the river. One woman washed her clothes in the current as her cat watched a stand of black-necked stilts feeding in the shallows. In the distance, three men played darts on a sandbar island, their tents lined up below a large cottonwood. Another man sat patiently nearby with his tenkara rod cast in the flow. Beside him, a small red cooler held a medium-sized carp.
One unhoused resident I met near an encampment farther upriver told me he’s lived along the waterway for over a decade, constantly moving his camp up and down the river to stay hidden. The man, who is in his mid-40s, told me he bathes in the river, eats carp from it, and currently sleeps at the mouth of a storm drainage. “I don’t know where I would go if (the master plan) swept me away from my home,” he said. “The river keeps me alive.”
Miles W. Griffis is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor.
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.
Western Water special report: Agencies in Fresno, Tulare counties pursue different approaches to address overdraft and meet requirements of California’s groundwater law
Flooding permanent crops seasonally, such as this vineyard at Terranova Ranch in Fresno County, is one innovative strategy to recharge aquifers. (Photo: Paolo Vescia)
By Gary Pitzer and Douglas E. Beeman, Western Water
Across a sprawling corner of southern Tulare County snug against the Sierra Nevada, a bounty of navel oranges, grapes, pistachios, hay and other crops sprout from the loam and clay of the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater helps keep these orchards, vineyards and fields vibrant and supports a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy across the valley. But that bounty has come at a price. Overpumping of groundwater has depleted aquifers, dried up household wells and degraded ecosystems. The land is literally sinking, throttling the Friant-Kern Canal, a major artery that bisects the area on its way to bringing much-needed water south to farms and communities in Kern County.
Water Desk Grantee Publication
This story was supported by the Water Desk’s grants program.
Against this backdrop, the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) has the urgent challenge of bringing its groundwater basin into balance within the next 20 years. It’s an epic task: reduce pumping by the growers whose products fill the nation’s grocery aisles and are exported globally, and protect the more than 800 domestic wells within Eastern Tule’s boundaries.
“We are trying to keep enough flexibility so that you make the decision economically whether you continue farming or not.”
~Eric Borba, Tulare County dairyman and chair of Eastern Tule GSA.
“We know there is going to be a lot of property going out [of production] because there is not enough water for every acre to be farmed,” said Eric Borba, a dairy operator in Tulare County who chairs the Eastern Tule GSA. “We are trying to keep enough flexibility so that you make the decision economically whether you continue farming or not.”
About 80 miles up Highway 99 to the northwest, in an area straddling the verdant center of Fresno County, the McMullin Area Groundwater Sustainability Agency is facing its own set of challenges in trying to balance groundwater use with its available supply – and seeing opportunities.
The land in McMullin is conducive to growing just about anything the market wants, but much of what grows there are acres upon acres of grapes and almonds. Unlike the Eastern Tulare GSA, McMullin is almost entirely dependent on groundwater – it has no surface water rights – and those groundwater levels have been dropping for decades.
“We are a desert within the tropical oasis, as far as surface water supply,” said Matt Hurley, general manager of the McMullin Area GSA.
McMullin and Eastern Tule offer an up-close look at how two of the San Joaquin Valley’s more than 40 groundwater sustainability agencies are trying to meet the requirements of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). After decades of pumping, the valley’s basins are significantly depleted, and local agencies, whose boards in many cases are comprised of the growers themselves, are on the hook for making things right.
Like their neighbors, McMullin and Eastern Tule anticipate a future with less groundwater pumping. At the same time, they’re counting on capturing any extra surface water (including flood flows) for their respective basins to remain economically vibrant. While they are pursuing different approaches to achieve sustainability and must wrestle with different challenges, both know that decades of pumping too much water from the ground must end.
‘A Monumental Step’
In 2014, California became the last state in the West to take on groundwater oversight through SGMA. The law requires critically overdrafted basins — mostly in the San Joaquin Valley, home to a $36 billion farm economy — to achieve groundwater sustainability by 2040. To attack the problem, the law required regions across the state to form groundwater sustainability agencies like Eastern Tule and McMullin. A year ago, those agencies overseeing the most critically overdrafted basins submitted groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) to the state that describe how their basins will achieve balance.
Groundwater pumps like the one pictured here have been an important tool for San Joaquin Valley farmers. But a reliance on groundwater for irrigation has left many San Joaquin Valley aquifers in a state of overdraft – some critically. (Photo: Water Education Foundation)
Forty-three plans representing 18 of the valley’s most critically overdrafted groundwater basins – including those from the Eastern Tule and McMullin GSAs – are in the hands of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) for review. Getting them there “was a monumental step” because it showed what local jurisdictions are looking at over the course of the next 20 years, said Ryan Jacobsen, chief executive officer of the Fresno County Farm Bureau.
Ellen Hanak, director of the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center, said the next five years will show how well the plans are going to set up areas for success. “They don’t need to solve everything overnight,” she said, “but they will need to show progress.”
SGMA is historic and unprecedented – more than 250 new local agencies were set up across California covering different portions of 140 groundwater basins. It’s been an extensive process of mapping basins, estimating supplies and drafting allocation strategies. And it has not been easy.
“This is the equivalent of building a Boeing 747 jet and you are flying it at the same time as you are trying to build it,” said Tricia Stever Blattler, executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau.
Among the concerns across the San Joaquin Valley is how much farmland will have to be taken out of production because there isn’t the water to support it. The PPIC, for example, projected that farming could end on at least 500,000 acres valleywide. A pair of economists from the University of California, Berkeley, David Sunding and David Roland-Holst, estimated the impact could be double that – as much as 1 million acres, or 20 percent of all cultivated acreage in the valley. SGMA’s economic impact, they said, could be concentrated in the valley’s southernmost and most agriculturally productive counties: Fresno (home to the McMullin Area GSA), Tulare (where Eastern Tule is located), Kern and Kings counties.
“This is the equivalent of building a Boeing 747 jet and you are flying it at the same time as you are trying to build it.” ~Tricia Stever Blattler, executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau
“We know we can fix part of the issue so hopefully we don’t see a million-plus acres go out, but the fact is at some point, somewhere, there is likely acreage that’s fallowed and we are trying to do everything we can to minimize that number,” Jacobsen said.
The sustainability plans are a work in progress. In some cases, they have been criticized for underestimating overdraft (the amount of groundwater pumped and not replenished) and overestimating available water to recharge the aquifers. Nongovernmental organizations say nearly all of the plans do not adequately protect domestic wells or groundwater-dependent ecosystems.
All eyes are now on DWR to see how it evaluates submitted plans and how it’s going to handle the response by agencies in the state’s less critically overdrafted basins, which must submit their plans by next year. DWR’s evaluation is predicated on the belief that sustainability can be achieved in a variety of ways using a variety of methods.
“While the path to sustainability may vary, the outcome is clear that measurable progress needs to be made over the SGMA timeline,” said Steven Springhorn, acting deputy director of DWR’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Office. “The law has this initial step of submitting the plans but that is the beginning of the journey, not the end.”
DWR is expected to release determinations on some of the plans in the first half of this year. “None of them coming in the door are perfect and that’s not a surprise,” DWR Director Karla Nemeth said at PPIC’s November 2020 conference on water resiliency. “There will be a lot of opportunities to iterate what’s working and not working.”
While many landowners didn’t agree with SGMA, they realize they have to make it work, said Rogelio Caudillo, general manager of the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency. (Photo: Lorie Shelley)
Still, once the plans were filed, and even though they were under review by the state, they took effect. The clock is ticking on achieving sustainability.
“We are seeing GSAs now working on implementation of the plans,” said David Orth, a water resource consultant who helped draft SGMA. “None of the overdrafted basins are sitting on their heels, despite the fact that the state has this two-year review process. They are working on projects and management actions, including defining ramp-down schedules, developing out water supply projects and pricing structures.”
Many San Joaquin Valley farmers are not thrilled with the law and fear its consequences for the region’s farm economy. But they know they have no choice but to make it work.
“For the most part, folks out here didn’t agree with SGMA in general, but the majority of them understood this was coming,” said Rogelio Caudillo, general manager of the Eastern Tule GSA.
McMullin: Chipping Away at a Deficit
The San Joaquin Valley is one of the most productive growing regions anywhere but its average annual rainfall, about 15 inches per year, necessitates a reliance on irrigation during the growing season. That water comes from local or imported surface water or groundwater. There’s plenty of land to grow crops, but not enough water to sustain it all.
Farms in the McMullin Area GSA are entirely dependent on groundwater to irrigate thousands of acres of crops, including grapes. (Photo: Water Education Foundation)
SGMA was written for areas such as McMullin, which is bordered on the north by the San Joaquin River but has no broad rights to the water and no means to move it if rights existed. Thus, the region is entirely dependent on wells to pull up groundwater to irrigate thousands of acres of grapes, almonds, pistachios, grains and field crops.
“We realized that this region has relied entirely on groundwater for years and I think the growers felt that would never end,” said Don Cameron, vice president and general manager of Terranova Ranch, about 25 miles southwest of Fresno. “We’ve also seen that groundwater levels have dropped continuously over the 40 years that I’ve been farming. We know we have to do something.”
McMullin shares the Kings Groundwater Subbasin in Fresno County with six other sustainability agencies, which must deal with about 120,000 acre-feet of annual overdraft. The majority of that is McMullin’s responsibility to solve. Job one is getting a handle on water use through a metering and monitoring program. That takes time, but the aim is to keep land in production. “We are looking for balance,” said Hurley, McMullin’s general manager. “We are looking for the least amount of acreage to be lost in the process.”
Video: Matt Hurley, general manager of McMullin Groundwater Sustainability Agency in Fresno County, explains how his groundwater basin plans to meet the requirements of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. (Video: Water Education Foundation)
McMullin’s plan hinges on getting growers to collectively reduce their pumping at increments that, after 10 years, will shave about 27,000 acre-feet from the annual overdraft. It’s a tight proposition given McMullin’s groundwater dependence. The plan, adopted in late 2019, aims to meter as many as 900 wells in the next few years to monitor groundwater use and allow for managing groundwater allocations.
McMullin’s groundwater overdraft is dealt with by a schedule of gradual reductions that grow into steeper cuts as 2040 approaches. The final 10 years – the second decade of SGMA compliance – will be crucial. Hurley said the expected reductions in groundwater use are steep, and how much farmland must be retired will depend on how successful the agency’s first decade has been at reducing overdraft.
More efficient farming practices and different crop selections make the task more manageable. “Cropping patterns have changed,” said Michael Naito, who grows grapes, almonds and pistachios in the area. “Forty years ago, pretty much all of this area was alfalfa and cotton that was all flood irrigated.” Now, many crops are watered with drip and micro irrigation systems.
Meeting SGMA’s 20-year timeline to achieve sustainability by 2040 means taking steps now to find money through grants and partnerships to build the canals, pipelines and other water infrastructure necessary to move and bank water in the aquifer.
“If we wanted to buy water right now, we couldn’t move it because we really don’t have any improvements,” said Hurley. “I’ve got to get a main conveyance system built during this first 10 years and do some things to prepare for the ability to buy water when it’s available and when we can afford it.”
A key element of McMullin’s plan is to develop a groundwater bank within its boundaries that outside partners will want to join to store surplus water when it is available. McMullin believes its plan will be attractive to potential partners because McMullin sits over a deep basin where ample water can be stored. Under McMullin’s concept, when the partners take back their banked water, they would leave some behind for McMullin’s use.
Pictured with his daughter Bonney, Steve Shehadey farms about 7,500 milk cows and feed stock on more than 5,000 acres in the McMullin Area GSA just south of the San Joaquin River. (Photo: Steve Shehadey)
“The capacity is estimated to be substantial,” Hurley said. “The possibilities that a water bank provides are many, and a SGMA solution for us is greatly enhanced by a bank.”
Steve Shehadey, who farms about 7,500 milk cows and feed stock on more than 5,000 acres in the McMullin Area GSA just south of the San Joaquin River, said SGMA is moving him and others to be smarter with their water use through better technology. “The number one question is how much are we using and how can we be more efficient,” he said.
Shehadey, whose groundwater levels benefit from the natural recharge he gets from the river, said everyone has to pull together to help meets the goals of McMullin’s sustainability plan regardless of their groundwater situation. “Whether or not you have good water on your property, we are in the same GSA as other people who may not be as fortunate.”
Eastern Tule GSA: Looking for Balance
Eastern Tule GSA, nestled in a southern corner of Tulare County, includes small farming communities like Terra Bella, an unincorporated town of about 3,300, and the city of Porterville, with nearly 60,000 residents. East Porterville, an impoverished neighborhood just outside the city, gained notoriety during the 2012 to 2016 drought as the face of a community in crisis with depleted drinking water wells. More than half of the land within the Eastern Tule GSA’s boundaries does not receive water as part of an irrigation district or community water system.
A new orchard in the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency’s territory. (Photo: Water Education Foundation)
Like McMullin, the Tule Subbasin’s reliance on groundwater has caused overdraft of about 115,300 acre-feet per year. Eastern Tule GSA accounts for just over half of that, or about 61,000 acre-feet per year. While Eastern Tule’s groundwater deficit fares better than McMullin, it still faces several critical issues on the road to sustainability, among them slowing subsidence of the Friant-Kern Canal and ensuring pumping doesn’t impair groundwater wells in small, rural communities, all of which are considered disadvantaged or severely disadvantaged because of meager household incomes.
The plan is to develop water budgets for landowners and adopt penalty fees for transitional pumping – amounts taken beyond safe yield. The penalty fees, which start at $245 an acre-foot and rise as more water is used, are meant to discourage overpumping, said Caudillo, Eastern Tule’s general manager.
It’s a tough go in an area dominated by agriculture, said Tulare County Supervisor Dennis Townsend, an Eastern Tule GSA board member and Porterville native. “Every decision you are making is impacting your friends and neighbors and yourself.”
Caudillo acknowledged SGMA will put a dent in the area’s farming enterprise. “We are trying to find a solution that achieves sustainability, without putting people out of business so there is at least a future for those who can make it happen.”
Steve Kisling, an almond grower who serves as vice chair of the Eastern Tule GSA, said requirements to ramp down pumping begin gradually during the first 10 years, then at a more aggressive pace after that. Like McMullin, the approach gives growers a transition period with the caveat that more aggressive actions can be taken should water levels drop faster than expected.
Eastern Tule is counting on an increased surface water supply from the Tule River Spillway Enlargement Project at Success Lake, a reservoir east of Porterville, to help recharge its depleted aquifer. When completed in 2023 the expansion project will allow the reservoir to capture more snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada and storm runoff, reducing the downstream risk of flooding while also increasing by 25 percent the reservoir’s ability to retain water for dry periods and recharging aquifers.
Townsend, who has been involved with the Army Corps of Engineers project as a county supervisor and flood control district board member, said the extra storage will help officials to “smooth out the curve” of drought and not have to dump water when conditions are wet.
“We can release that water over a longer period of time,” he said, adding that the land downstream of the lake is sandy and loamy — perfect for groundwater recharge.
Eastern Tule: Saving the Friant-Kern Canal
While the San Joaquin Valley relies heavily on groundwater, it is crisscrossed with aqueducts, canals and pipes that import water from Northern California and elsewhere to sustain farmers and cities. On the valley’s east side, the 70-year-old Friant-Kern Canal delivers clean, snowmelt-fed water from the Sierra Nevada above Fresno that makes orchards explode with a bounty of fruits and nuts. Because of groundwater overdraft around Eastern Tule, the canal is also sagging, constricting its ability to move water by gravity to farms and cities in southern Tulare and Kern counties.
Subsidence resulting from groundwater pumping has caused the Friant-Kern Canal to settle in Tulare County, constricting its ability to move water. (Note how close the bridge is to the water.) Eastern Tule’s 20-year sustainability plan projects further land subsidence near the canal as it tries to gradually reduce overpumping. (Photo: Water Education Foundation)
Subsidence affects the canal in a 33-mile stretch from around Porterville south to Delano. Johnny Amaral, chief of external affairs with the Friant Water Authority, said that while subsidence is occurring throughout the valley, it is particularly acute through the Eastern Tule GSA region. Ten water contractors between Porterville and Arvin in Kern County are losing water that the canal can’t deliver, he said.
And therein lies the problem. Groundwater pumping can’t come to a complete halt in the Eastern Tule region, but virtually any rate of pumping affects the canal. Eastern Tule’s 20-year plan projects another three feet of subsidence to the canal as it tries to gradually reduce overpumping. It also proposes a land subsidence management zone at the sag in the canal. Balancing pumping and subsidence effects is the goal.
Finding a solution to the problem takes coordination and patience. In December, the two agencies announced an agreement in which Friant Water Authority will support Eastern Tule’s sustainability plan in exchange for up to $200 million from Eastern Tule to fund repairs to the Friant-Kern Canal.
Eric Borba, Tulare County dairyman, Friant Water Authority board member and chair of Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency. (Source: Friant Water Authority)
Amaral, with the Friant Water Authority, said his agency is sympathetic to Eastern Tule’s challenge, recognizing that the groundwater sustainability plan anticipates subsidence will continue to occur on lands immediately adjacent to the canal.
“I know some people say, ‘really?’ but we think it’s appropriate and reasonable that they be able to implement the plan,” Amaral said. “But at the same time [we] recognize their plan is going to cause damage to the canal and deliveries in the future.”
Borba, the dairyman who sits on both the Eastern Tule and Friant Water Authority boards, said the canal’s role is vital because the water it delivers helps maintain a higher water table and better water quality. That, in turn, helps people who rely on small wells for their household needs, he said, especially those living in disadvantaged communities.
Many small communities are not connected to neighboring water systems and must rely on trucked-in supplies and water tanks such as this one when their wells dry up. This home is within Eastern Tule GSA. (Photo: Water Education Foundation)
Preserving Drinking Water Where It Counts
A key aim of SGMA is ensuring the survival of wells that people in small communities, many of them economically disadvantaged, rely on for their daily needs. Drought and overdraft have rendered many valley wells useless. Built to shallow depths, they are unable to reach the groundwater as it drops in the aquifer. Most of these communities are not connected to neighboring water systems and are forced to rely on trucked-in supplies when their wells dry up, which is what occurred in 2015 at East Porterville.
SGMA requires GSAs like McMullin and Eastern Tule to consider drinking water wells, but there is concern that withdrawals by large users will come at the expense of the small, individual wells.
Justine Massey, policy advocate with Community Water Center, a Visalia-based advocacy group, said drinking water concerns have not been given their due in many valley groundwater sustainability plans.
“There is substantial data missing on how communities will be impacted and they don’t have a plan for how to get it,” she said. “This is dangerous. It’s like driving blind and hoping nothing bad happens.”
Video: Ryan Jensen, community water solutions manager with the Community Water Center, based in Visalia, Calif., explains how Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency’s groundwater plan will need to take into account the needs of disadvantaged communities like East Porterville, an unincorporated community adjacent to the city of Porterville that saw its wells go dry during the 2012-2016 drought. (Video: Water Education Foundation)
A report released in 2020 by the Water Foundation, a policy and advocacy organization based in Sacramento, notes that pumping contemplated in sustainability plans throughout the valley could leave as many as 12,000 drinking water wells partially or completely dry by 2040, leaving as many as 127,000 people without their primary source of water and costing hundreds of millions of dollars to repair. (The Water Foundation is not affiliated with the Water Education Foundation.)
Eastern Tule’s sustainability plan acknowledges the difficulties ahead, noting that increased costs of obtaining supplemental water and conservation programs could hit disadvantaged communities disproportionately. In response, Eastern Tule plans to protect drinking water wells the same way it minimizes subsidence, through targeted monitoring and metering.
Many San Joaquin Valley groundwater sustainability plans do not adequately address drinking water concerns, said Justine Massey, policy advocate with Community Water Center. (Photo: Community Water Center)
Trees and crops vastly outnumber people in the McMullin Area GSA, which encompasses only one tiny community, Raisin City, with fewer than 400 residents, and a smattering of small clusters of homes. McMullin’s sustainability plan notes that two clusters of homes were identified as disadvantaged, and it got help from Fresno State’s California Water Institute to knock on doors and solicit residents’ comments on its sustainability plan. McMullin said it doesn’t anticipate any of those domestic wells going dry.
Orth, the water resources consultant, said aligning SGMA with the drinking water challenges to vulnerable communities is not a perfect process. Disadvantaged communities, he said, have long-standing issues with access to safe and reliable water, issues that groundwater sustainability agencies were not set up to deal with.
Furthermore, SGMA does not task GSAs with the authority or responsibility for ensuring drinking water for small communities. “SGMA says sustainable groundwater management should include avoiding significant and unreasonable degradation, not protection, of drinking water quality,” Orth said. “That’s a pretty gray area.”
Massey, with Community Water Center, said GSAs have broad authority to limit pumping, build effective monitoring networks and regulate recharge, all of which affect drinking water quality. “Water quality is part of the SGMA mandate,” she said. “Significant and unreasonable degradation of water quality must be avoided as one of the six undesirable results.”
Massey noted that some GSAs, including Eastern Tule, have committed to reserving domestic and small-user amounts of groundwater before allocating the rest among more heavy-duty users. “Unfortunately,” she said, “it’s not something many GSAs have done.”
Despite concerns that SGMA could hurt the San Joaquin Valley’s farm economy, fueled by crops such as almonds from orchards like this one, some groundwater agency officials acknowledge that the law was probably overdue. (Photo: Water Education Foundation)
SGMA: Only the Beginning
Despite concerns over how SGMA will affect the San Joaquin Valley’s multi-billion-dollar farming economy, some farmers in both Eastern Tule and McMullin GSAs acknowledge that the historic unmanaged groundwater use was unsustainable. But bringing groundwater use into balance with what nature and ingenuity can supply will be a learning process that will take time.
Kisling, with Eastern Tule GSA, said SGMA is necessary and probably overdue.
“It would have been much less disruptive if it had gone into effect years earlier and if the implementation [period] had been longer,” he said. “We are trying to create whole agencies that monitor and regulate groundwater pumping, something that hasn’t been regulated before, in just a matter of a few short years.”
Blattler, with the Tulare County Farm Bureau, noted that SGMA is the first step in getting basins on the long road to sustainability. “We are in an ever-adapting and evolving economy where land uses will change, commodity prices and farming costs will continue to be volatile and ownership transitions will occur,” she said. “There will be more competition for those resources in the next 20 years and “it’s not like we are going to have a finite amount of water locked in at a point in time. It is an ever-changing asset to our community that evolves as will the SGMA plans.”
The McMullin Area GSA is focused on building a conveyance system in order to buy water when it’s available, said Matt Hurley, McMullin general manager. (Photo: Water Education Foundation)
In a way, SGMA corrects for some agricultural development in the San Joaquin Valley that perhaps shouldn’t have occurred, said Hurley, with McMullin GSA.
“I personally believe that SGMA was – contrary to the many folks who think the government should have stayed out of their business – a timely bit of legislation,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as some have predicted.”
Hurley said SGMA has forced growers to accelerate their effort to be more efficient with their water.
“That is not to say we did anything bad before, but we didn’t have to fine tune it,” Hurley said. “Now, you’ve got to balance the checkbook to the penny in order to make sure everything works correctly. That says nothing about looking backward, it says everything about looking forward. I absolutely believe we will figure this out.”
Groundwater provides about 40 percent of the water in California for urban, rural and agricultural needs in typical years, and as much as 60 percent in dry years when surface water supplies are low. But in many areas of the state, groundwater is being extracted faster than it can be replenished. In 2014, amid a deep drought, the state Legislature adopted the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), making California the last Western state to regulate groundwater. Learn more about the law and how it works.
The San Joaquin Valley is in a big hole in reaching groundwater sustainability. Driven by the need to keep using water and comply with California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, people throughout the valley are looking for innovative and cost-effective ways to manage and use groundwater more wisely. Explore three examples of innovation here.
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Two men fish the Eagle River just above its confluence with the Colorado River in Dotsero. Homestake Partners released 1,667 acre-feet of water down Homestake Creek and into the Eagle River in September to test how a release would work in a compact call. CREDIT: BETHANY BLITZ/ASPEN JOURNALISM
In September, Front Range water providers released some water downstream — which they were storing in Homestake Reservoir — to test how they could get it to the state line in the event of a Colorado River Compact call.
But accurately tracking and measuring that water — from the high mountain reservoir in the Eagle River watershed all the way through the Colorado River at the end of the Grand Valley — turned out to be tricky, according to a recently released report from the Colorado Division of Water Resources.
From Sept. 23 through Sept. 29, Colorado Springs Utilities, Aurora Water and Pueblo Board of Water Works released a total of 1,667 acre-feet of water, which would have otherwise been diverted to the Front Range, from the reservoir into Homestake Creek, a tributary of the Eagle River. The release gradually ramped up from about 25 cubic feet per second to 175 cfs and then gradually back down over the seven days.
But officials were unable to put a number on how much of that water made it to the state line.
In their attempt to quantify the actual amount of reservoir release delivered to the state line, state engineers ran into challenges that caused uncertainty, they said in an email.
Although they couldn’t measure how many acre-feet officially made it, State Engineer Kevin Rein said that the exercise was still a success and that all the water, minus transit losses, crossed into Utah.
“We have heard this is a failure because not everything worked perfectly, but in my mind, this was an opportunity under non-stress conditions to find out what we need to do to ensure that things will work,” Rein said.
A goal of this project, known as the State Line Delivery Pilot Reservoir Release, was to see if the water could be “shepherded” downstream without senior water-rights holders diverting the extra water. This required Division 5 water commissioners to actively administer some headgates, especially on Homestake Creek and the Eagle River.
According to the report, the water took about 2½ days to make the journey from the reservoir to the gage on the Colorado River near Cameo — about 16 hours longer than predicted by the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center. Along the way, about 10% of the water either evaporated or was soaked up by thirsty streamside soils and vegetation — processes known collectively as transit loss.
Making sure water could get to the state line would be essential in the case of a compact call.
This scenario, the chances of which increase as climate change continues to reduce river flows, could occur if the upper-basin states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) can’t deliver the 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year to the lower-basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada), as required by a nearly century-old binding agreement.
A compact call could be especially problematic for Front Range water providers since most of their rights that let them divert water over the Continental Divide from the Western Slope date to after the 1922 Colorado River Compact. That means mandatory cutbacks in water use could fall more heavily on the post-compact water rights of Front Range water providers.
Colorado Springs Utilities and Aurora Water, operating together as Homestake Partners, said the problem was that the rate of release was too low. It was more a matter of flow volume than administration. Even in a dry year, a release of 175 cfs was not high enough to reliably track the water, especially when it reaches the Colorado River, which has a much higher volume of water than Homestake Creek or the Eagle River, and the reservoir release is a smaller fraction of its overall flow.
In an email to Aspen Journalism, Homestake Partners said: “A bigger pulse of water would overcome some of the issues that DWR had in tracking the release. This sort of result is exactly what we wanted to explore — it tells us that if we, or anyone else in the state, chooses to make a state line release in the future, a higher volume of water will probably need to be released to be reliably tracked.”
State engineers also had to deal with a river that was constantly in flux. Upstream reservoir releases and changes to irrigation diversions made for additional challenges.
State officials said it was hard to separate the reservoir release from the rest of the Colorado River’s flow at the state line because of numerous ungaged streams and return flows from irrigation that enter the river between Palisade and the state line.
“The ungaged inflows could not be subtracted from the total flow in the river, therefore the separated flows were too large and did not allow for the initial waves of the reservoir release to be identified,” officials said in an email.
The total flows at the state line at the time of the reservoir release’s arrival were around 2,500 cfs, according to DWR.
The Eagle River, left, flows into the Colorado River in Dotsero. Tracking water released from the upstream Homestake Reservoir down the Eagle and in the Colorado proved tricky for state engineers. CREDIT: BETHANY BLITZ/ASPEN JOURNALISM
River District concerns
The Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District, which protects Western Slope water interests, had several concerns about the reservoir release.
“I think it’s important that the public and the state recognize that they released 1,600 acre-feet of water during an incredibly dry period and they couldn’t actually track it to the state line,” said River District general manager Andy Mueller.
But Mueller’s concerns go beyond the trouble with tracking. He said the state engineer did not reach out to Western Slope water users who had the potential to be injured by the release. He also doesn’t trust that the cities won’t just refill the hole created by the release with more Western Slope water.
The River District’s main concern is that in a water-collection system as complex as Homestake Partners — with several different transmountain diversions bringing water from the Western Slope to the Front Range — it’s hard for the state to make sure they won’t take more water to replace the pool they released.
“From our perspective, it’s very difficult for the state to verify that they haven’t just brought the water over from a different part of their diversion system,” Mueller said. “So it leaves us with a lot of skepticism, and we voiced that in several discussions.”
To address some of these concerns, the cities are required to submit a verification plan to the state to prove three things: that they had enough space available in reservoirs on the east side of the divide to store the water, and they weren’t just releasing water downstream they couldn’t use anyway; that they actually decreased water taken through the Homestake Tunnel by the same amount as the pilot release; and that they didn’t create additional space in Homestake Reservoir to allow for greater storage this year.
“In essence, we brought the ‘hole’ we created in our storage in Homestake Reservoir through to the East Slope when we operated the tunnel in February and March,” the Homestake Partners’ email reads. “This was accomplished by not drawing down Homestake Reservoir quite as much as we otherwise could have this winter in preparation for spring runoff.”
Homestake Creek flows from Homestake Reservoir near Red Cliff. A pilot reservoir release to test how to get water to the state line in the event of a Colorado River Compact Call proved hard to track for state engineers. CREDIT: BETHANY BLITZ/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Demand management
The reservoir release also could have implications for a potential demand-management program, the feasibility of which the state is currently investigating. At the heart of a demand- management program is a reduction in water use on a temporary, voluntary and compensated basis in an effort to send as much as 500,000 acre-feet of water downstream to Lake Powell to bolster water levels in the giant reservoir — which spans Utah and Arizona — and, indirectly, to meet Colorado River Compact obligations.
Under such a program, agricultural water users could get paid to temporarily fallow fields and leave more water in the river. Front Range water providers could participate by releasing water stored in Western Slope reservoirs.
Rein was careful to say that the Homestake pilot release was in no way connected to demand management. Still, the experiment may have revealed potential problem areas should a demand-management program become reality.
“The ability to track water that is conserved consumptive use all the way to the state line is really critical for the success of that program,” Mueller said. “And if you can’t track a slug of 1,600 acre-feet of water to the state line, how are you going to track the voluntary reduction in use of a small ditch on the West Slope that maybe they are saving 15 acre-feet?”
Aspen Journalism covers rivers and water in collaboration with the Vail Daily and The Aspen Times. This story ran in the April 16 edition of the Vail Daily and The Aspen Times.
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.
