Fire in one part of a community can contaminate the water system used by other residents, as Santa Rosa, California, discovered after the Tubbs Fire. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
More than 58,000 fires scorched the United States last year, and 2021 is on track to be even drier. What many people don’t realize is that these wildfires can do lasting damage beyond the reach of the flames – they can contaminate entire drinking water systems with carcinogens that last for months after the blaze. That water flows to homes, contaminating the plumbing, too.
Over the past four years, wildfires have contaminated drinking water distribution networks and building plumbing for more than 240,000 people.
Small water systems serving housing developments, mobile home parks, businesses and small towns have been particularly hard-hit. Most didn’t realize their water was unsafe until weeks to months after the fire.
The problem starts when wildfire smoke gets into the system or plastic in water systems heats up. Heating can cause plastics to release harmful chemicals, like benzene, which can contaminate drinking water and permeate the system.
As an environmental engineer, I and my colleagues work with communities recovering from wildfires and other natural disasters. Last year, at least seven water systems were found to be contaminated, suggesting drinking water contamination may be a more widespread problem than people realize.
Our new study identifies critical issues that households and businesses should consider after a wildfire. Failing to address them can harm people’s health – mental, physical and financial.
Wildfires make drinking water unsafe
When wildfires damage water distribution pipes, wells and the plumbing in homes and other buildings, they can create immediate health risks. A building’s plumbing can become contaminated by smoke getting sucked into water systems, by heat damaging plastic pipes – or contamination penetrating into the plumbing and leaching out slowly over time.
Since 2017, multiple fires have rendered drinking water systems unsafe, including theEchoMountain, Lionshead and Almeda fires in Oregon, and the CZULightningComplex, Camp and Tubbs fires in California. Thousands of private wells have been affected too.
Being exposed to contaminated water can cause immediate harm, such as headaches, nausea, dizziness and vomiting. Short-term exposure to 26 parts per billion or more of benzene, a carcinogen, may cause a decrease in white blood cells that protect the body from infectious disease. Multiple fires have caused drinking water to exceed this level. A variety of other chemicals can exceed safe drinking water exposure limits too in the absence of benzene.
Households are not being adequately warned
In a survey of 233 households affected by water contamination, we found people reported high levels of anxiety and stress linked to the water problems. Nearly half had installed in-home water treatment because of uncertainty about the water. Eighty-five percent had looked for other water sources, such as bottled water.
In some cases, we found that advice from government agencies placed households at greater risk of harm. It has sometimes left people exposed to chemicals, caused them to needlessly spend money and given them a false sense of security. Certified in-home water treatment devices, for example, are tested only to bring down 15 parts per billion of benzene to less than 5 parts per billion, the federal standard. These devices are not tested to treat hazardous waste-scale contaminated water that’s been found after wildfires.
Following the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire near Santa Cruz, California, a local health department correctly warned private well owners not to use their water and to test it, but a nearby damaged water system and the state did not warn 17,000 people against bathing in the contaminated water. It was only after test results proved the water had been unsafe all along that the system owner and state advised against bathing in it.
In Oregon, some damaged systems encouraged people to boil their drinking water, later finding that the water had benzene in it.
After the 2018 Camp Fire that devastated Paradise, California, the local health department correctly warned the entire county not to use or try to treat the drinking water, which had contamination above EPA’s hazardous waste limit. But one water system and the state encouraged 13,000 people to try to treat it themselves.
In all of these cases, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chose not to compel water utilities to explicitly notify customers about the water contamination and its risk.
Communities have received other bad information:
Commercial labs and government officials recommended flushing faucets for 5 to 15 minutes before collecting a water sample, thereby dumping out the contaminated plumbing water meant for testing.
Homeowners were led to believe a single cold water sample at the kitchen sink would determine if the hot water system and property service line was contaminated. It cannot.
People were led to believe that benzene water testing would determine if any other chemicals were present above safe limits. This is not possible.
What to look for after a nearby fire
Signs of potential contamination after a nearby wildfire could be loss of water pressure, discolored water, heat damage to water systems inside and outside buildings, and broken and leaking pipes, valves and hydrants.
Drinking water should be assumed to be chemically unsafe until proven otherwise.
Once a system is contaminated, cleanup can take months. The water system will have to be flushed and tested regularly to track down contamination. Health departments should also issue guidance on how to test private wells and plumbing.
When testing plumbing, include the property service line as well as the hot and cold water lines. Before collecting a water sample, the water must sit long enough in the plumbing so contamination can be found – 72 hours was the Tubbs Fire and Camp Fire standard. Tests should look for more than benzene.
Building water systems can receive contaminated drinking water from public water systems and private wells. Andrew Whelton/Purdue University, CC BY-ND
Who can help?
Many of the critical public health risks identified in our new study can be addressed by public health departments with financial support from state and local agencies.
Public health departments often have experience responding to water problems, such as legionella outbreaks, and can provide technical advice about both chemical exposures, building plumbing and private drinking water wells.
Andrew J. Whelton, Associate Professor of Civil, Environmental & Ecological Engineering, Director of the Healthy Plumbing Consortium and Center for Plumbing Safety, Purdue University
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.
For a while, Chee Smith Jr. thought he was going to have to send his father to die among strangers. His family lives at Whitehorse Lake, a Navajo chapter where, until a few years ago, roughly 550 of 700 residents had no running water in their homes, including Smith’s. As Smith’s father aged and his health worsened, it became harder and harder for him to live at home.
“We had to haul water from the chapterhouse or the watering points every day for just basic things — for cooking, for laundry, for stuff like that, and also for our livestock,” Smith said. “It takes a big toll. … It gets worse in the winter when it gets muddy.”
The drive to the chapterhouse, the headquarters for local tribal governance, took 20 or 30 miles roundtrip. If the well there ran low, as they sometimes do, the next closest source required 100 miles round trip, sometimes on ice, or in blowing snow, or on dirt roads that stay slick enough days after a storm to send a vehicle skidding. Some people avoid the slick mud by leaving home before dawn to drive on the roads while the mud is still frozen, then wait until after dark, when the ruts re-freeze, to drive home again.
“We get to the watering point, and then let’s hope that the pipes are not frozen,” said Smith, former chapter president for Whitehorse Lake.
If the water ran, they filled 50-gallon barrels, which weighed more than 400 pounds, and drove them home, where water came inside in buckets and jugs. No running water also means no bathrooms in the house, and bundling up against the cold to visit an outhouse in winter.
“He didn’t want to go to a rest home. … He thought he’d be lonely because he didn’t know anybody,” Smith said.
Whitehorse Lake Chapter residents fill barrels for livestock at a community watering point. Image/Elizabeth Miller
An estimated 30 to 40% of homes on the Navajo Nation lack running water, a share second only to the rate found in remote Alaskan villages. The size of the reservation and complexity of its terrain are often blamed, but the failures start with a federal system that promised to provide a home for Navajo people, who call themselves Diné, when establishing the reservation, but has yet to deliver a fully functioning one.
Indian Health Service reports first linked devastating rates of infectious diseases among Native Americans to the absence of basic sanitary facilities in residences a century ago. Since then, infectious diseases have been an ongoing crisis, which the world took note of last year as COVID-19 spread through and ravaged the Navajo Nation. Following guidelines around washing hands and staying home were all but impossible for people who must leave home to replenish their reserves of water and who can’t even turn on a tap to wash their hands.
Addressing lack of water in homes runs into a catch in where to start: begin plumbing communities and houses when there is no water, or build the trunkline that brings water nearby when there are no local waterlines to connect it to the people who live alongside it. The Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project, under construction in New Mexico’s Navajo communities, is testing these approaches.
The project has two main trunk lines, one that runs from the San Juan River to Gallup along Highway 491, called the San Juan Lateral, and another much smaller one that follows Highway 550’s route through a string of Navajo chapters — Huerfano, Nageezi, Counselor, Pueblo Pintado, Ojo Encino, Torreon, and Whitehorse Lake — from east of Bloomfield into Jicarilla Apache communities north of Cuba, called the Cutter Lateral. On the San Juan Lateral, federal funds are paying to construct a trunkline that communities will then need to find money and develop projects to tap into.
But the Cutter Lateral connects to local chapters that linked water systems in anticipation of its arrival. That grassroots organizing, cooperation, and determined fundraising by a group of Navajo communities aided the Cutter Lateral’s progress toward completion and compelled the federal agencies managing the project into faster action. It also brought water to almost every home in Whitehorse Lake, piped from a well in a nearby community, years before the trunkline was finished in 2020.
“We were basically tying into parts of a system that was started before our project was authorized,” said Pat Page, manager of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Four Corners office, which is overseeing the Navajo-Gallup Water Project. “It really is a great example of collaboration on many different levels.”
Since the water turned on, five families moved back to the community, Smith said: “A couple of them came back to me, they said ‘Thank you for helping me, that’s what we needed, the running water and electric. That’s the main reason we moved back.’ They’re happy about it.”
For Smith’s father, the water came just in time.
“My dad was very emotional when he turned on the faucet. He couldn’t believe water was coming out,” Smith said. Water meant caretakers could come to him. He was able to spend his last year at home and die among family.
Chee Smith Jr. at the Whitehorse Lake Chapter house. Image/Elizabeth Miller.
Smith had begun thinking he might have to send his father to spend his last months in an assisted living facility in Farmington.
Andrew Robertson, a civil engineer with Souder, Miller and Associates, was at a Torreon chapterhouse meeting discussing how to reach a few families without water when an Indian Health Service engineer first mentioned the idea of a project to pipe San Juan River water to these communities.
“At first it was, ‘Yeah, right. … Sure, bring water down from the San Juan River,’” Robertson said.
For those families in Torreon, a water line to their homes wouldn’t help, because there wasn’t any water to fill it. Groundwater wells tap into unregulated water supplies that come with health concerns and are running low in several parts of New Mexico. A pipeline to bring in reliable, high-quality drinking water offered a real solution.
Robertson has focused his career on water access. He first worked along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, where he sometimes dug the trenches himself for a new pipeline. When he moved to New Mexico in 2000, he quickly saw Navajo communities facing the greatest need for that work. Working on construction projects has taken him all over the Navajo Nation.
After that meeting at Torreon, a local leader started rallying other chapters around the idea of a regional system, even before Congress approved the settlement for the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project.
“The chapters got together … and said, ‘We’re going to push for this project. Whether we get a settlement or not, we’re going to regionalize our water system. At the very least we’ll have a regional system among chapters to share water, so if one chapter’s well goes down, we can help them out,’” Robertson recalled.
Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project Map
The Navajo Nation and state of New Mexico had signed a settlement around how much water the Navajo Nation could draw from the San Juan River, a tributary of the tightly allocated Colorado River, in 2005. But it was another four years before Congress approved that settlement, clearing the way for funding and construction to begin in 2012. That settlement included the Cutter Lateral, a far smaller project than the San Juan Lateral, at just 4,645 acre-feet per year compared to 37,000.
The environmental impact statement for the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project mapped a rough line marking a pipeline to that area, said Jason John, director of the Navajo Department of Water Resources. Communities used that concept to route the pipeline to existing water systems, avoiding culturally sensitive sites and private property.
“The communities already had concrete plans on where the lines would be built, and some of it was already put into place,” John said. “They kind of got a running start before the federal funding from the settlement started flowing.”
They’d essentially put the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in the position of playing catch up. But Robertson said those federal agencies also went on to collaborate and cooperate — to listen to what the people this pipeline was serving were asking for.
It hadn’t started out looking as though things would go that way.
When the federal government came to talk to Navajo Nation residents about the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project in summer 2007, they held a series of meetings in border towns and chapter houses as part of drafting the environmental impact statement. Navajo Nation residents drove hours to attend, only to find the explanatory video about the project ran only in English and not Navajo and that they were given just a few minutes to talk.
Leonard Tsosie, a council delegate with the Navajo Nation representing Whitehorse Lake, Pueblo Pintado, and Torreon chapters and a former New Mexico state senator, said he’d come into the meeting optimistic.
“On the way over I saw a rainbow over Crownpoint, and it was a good sign, and so I just want to mention that,” Tsosie said. “I think it’s a blessing. And also rain. I saw raindrops. So that’s a blessing. It’s a blessing because this is a matter of survival for our people and for the communities.”
He asked the federal staff to consider giving more time to the elders speaking in Navajo: “It’s also not too polite to cut them off. So if you could take that into account also, because they have a lot to say about this.”
“Thank you,” was all the hearing officer said in reply.
The meeting was about listening to people, not answering questions, but people had questions. Hadn’t there been a previous project? (There had been.) Didn’t it go farther east? Why were some places left out? Stories poured forth, too.
Robertson told the visiting federal officials that in the seven years he had worked on water projects for the eastern Navajo Agency, he’d seen a friend need surgery and spend days hospitalized because of years of chronic dehydration. Another friend’s father had a leg amputated because he didn’t have water to wash the pressure sores from his diabetes.
“I’ve had a chance to see firsthand the need for water. It is very real. It is very dire, and it is very urgent,” he testified. “I know of, in the Torreon and Ojo Encino area, at least four projects alone, which would serve 800 or 900 people that are not being built because there’s not — even though there’s funding available to extend the water lines, there is not enough water to fill the pipes. The pipes would be full of air. And that problem will not go away until a water supply is made available to those chapters.”
As in, even if these communities came together and built a pipeline, local wells could stretch only so far. They needed that water from the San Juan River. The Chapter President from Ojo Encino said three wells in that area supplied water lines to that community and its neighbors, but the water table was dropping. Wells that provided for ranchers, homes, and churches were becoming useless holes in the ground that the New Mexico Environment Department recognized as a pending emergency. Houses burned when water pressure ran low in fire hydrants.
The absence of water cascades. In addition to complicating every step of daily life — from washing hands, to making stew or having a cup of tea, to doing the dishes afterwards, it drives up illnesses and complicates public health issues. No water meant a school wasn’t built in Torreon, and other buildings were abandoned because of dry taps. Businesses didn’t open, medical clinics couldn’t operate, jobs drifted away.
Whitehorse Lake Chapter and Pueblo Pintado had both been denied housing — the square, stucco-sided houses with peaked roofs housing agencies often construct — because there was no water for those houses. People who might have preferred to stay where they grew up moved to cities to have running water. Tsosie called it “the brain drain” and “the people drain.”
“When there’s no water, there’s no developments,” Chee Smith Jr. told federal officials. “So we’re kind of still like in the — kind of like a third-world nation.”
Frank Willetto, who had lived in Pueblo Pintado for 50 years and served as its chapter president since 1986, said Pueblo Pintado, by his count, is 70 miles from Farmington, 48 miles from Crownpoint, 100 miles from Gallup.
“So we’re out there,” he told the visiting officials in 2007. “A lot of people say ‘nowhere,’ but we know where we are.”
The chapterhouse had a public high school, a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding school, an Indian Health Service clinic, and a store, but not even half of their residents had water.
“The chapter is trying to get water to each hogan or house or trailer house,” he said. “When you don’t do things for your community, that means you are doing bad things for that community. And water is number one that we need.”
Willetto, who had been awarded the Congressional Silver Medal for his service as a Navajo Code Talker during World War II, had been denied veteran’s benefits to build a house because there were no fire hydrants in his community. He would be taken to Congress to tell that story again as lawmakers considered approving the settlement between the Navajo Nation and the state of New Mexico, and he’d go to Washington, D.C. on the day President Obama signed the bill approving the settlement. But he didn’t live long enough to see water in the pipes.
“The communities regard the water project as a priority,” Tsosie said. “They’ve been waiting a lifetime for this.”
Before the Cutter Lateral broke ground in Whitehorse Lake, a traditional Navajo medicine man blessed the earth on which it would be built, the people who would work on the project, and the communities who would receive its water. Again, when the Bureau of Reclamation and Navajo Nation Water Commission began construction on the lateral’s water treatment facility, the ground was blessed, and again, when everything was finished last fall.
“It’s spiritual. I don’t know how I would describe it — the same way as a person praying in a church, I guess. Asking the lord for spiritual help, spiritual guidance,” Smith said. “That it will happen, that it will help our people, and nothing will get in the way. … That’s what we bless it for, and that it will help our people.”
Even the reservoir, a pool of blue nestled among a maze of mesas in northern New Mexico, miles from the San Juan River that feeds its water and far down dirt roads from any town, was blessed. The reservoir sits above Blanco Canyon, where a single lane bridge crosses a section of the dry wash. Signs caution to yield to oncoming traffic, and watch for flash floods, which could swamp a car in the depression between where the bridge ends and the riverbank climbs out of the floodplain. Tamarisk line the banks, their bare branches red in winter. A few houses perch on promontories overlooking the empty riverbed and the canyon walls, where lines of junipers mark layers in the rock and dirt. Propane tanks and firewood sit alongside the houses. School bus stops appear on the side of some of the graded dirt roads, sometimes where there’s not a house in sight.
Installing new water pipeline has meant working in remote stretches of northwestern New Mexico. Image/Elizabeth Miller
Blue posts dot the horizon, marking the buried pipeline. The line weaves among more prevalent natural gas pipelines, marked with yellow posts. All of it has the beginnings of a grown-over, nondescript look, as though it has been there for ages. The first piece of the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project began running in October.
Water came first to Huerfano, the closest community to the source, at the start of a six-month testing phase. Other communities will come online this year, all the way to Jicarilla Apache land.
For some communities, the project means access to running water. For others, the groundwater quality is poor, so this connects residents with water they might actually enjoy drinking, moves them off increasingly strained groundwater wells, and reduces risk of exposure to heavy metals, which are known to be prevalent in New Mexico’s groundwater. In others, more water means a chance to grow.
“All things they need, and things we take for granted like schools and gas stations, they couldn’t build because there wasn’t enough water to provide those services,” Robertson said.
The first 24 hours the pumps ran for the Cutter Lateral, Robertson slept in the pumphouse. Though it dropped down to 50 degrees that autumn night, the engines kept the building so hot that he turned on the air conditioning. Noise filled the room, and he slept, listening for rattling, a shift in the hum, or anything else that indicated a problem.
“Just to make sure,” he said. “After all this time, I wanted to make sure everything was good.”
Whitehorse Lake sits in an arid, treeless landscape. Smith moved away for college and worked as a civil engineer in Tucson for eight years. But the heat proved unbearable and he missed home and the friends he’d grown up with, who had been left wondering what had happened to him. So he went to work as an engineer for the BIA and moved back to Whitehorse Lake. That time away, a college degree, and his work as a civil engineer, he said, prepared him to get things done for his chapter.
“This is my homeland, it’s where I grew up and my relatives still live out here,” Smith said. “You know how it is, I’m just used to being out here because that’s where I was raised, and I like this place.”
One paved road connects Whitehorse Lake to Grants, 50 miles away, which takes a solid hour to drive. People drive that far or farther, to Gallup or Farmington, both about an hour and a half away, Smith said, “to go grocery shopping or just to get a hamburger.”
The closest police station is in Crownpoint, 40 minutes away. Even until a few years ago, to make calls on their cell phones, people living in Whitehorse Lake had to drive miles to find a signal. They’d park on the side of the road while they talked. The only alternative was to use the office phone at the chapterhouse, which also housed a shower that residents pay to use. Electricity is also still missing from some homes, as are indoor bathrooms. All the services in the chapter come from the chapterhouse and senior center.
“I guess the big issue is, people just don’t want to live out here, because there’s no stores, the roads are dirt, so I guess that’s why we ran out of business,” Smith said.
Whitehorse Lake wasn’t originally on the map for the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project, but when chapters in that area began organizing a regional water system, they decided to include a pipeline between it and Pueblo Pintado, about a dozen miles from Whitehorse Lake and divided from it by the long buttress of tawny sandstone that is Chaco Mesa.
“The eight chapters decided they weren’t going to leave anyone out,” Robertson said. “So [when] Whitehorse Lake said ‘We want to be part of this, and we’re going to step up.’ The other chapters who had put their own money into it said they were okay with some of their money going to support Whitehorse Lake. Think about that for a minute — it’s like people in Bernalillo County saying we’re okay with our money helping people in McKinley County.”
The water flowing into the Cutter Lateral system will eventually reach all the way to Whitehorse Lake. With water, Smith hopes more stores, a gas station, and a laundromat, saving the drive to Gallup or Grants to wash clothes, could follow for Whitehorse Lake and Pueblo Pintado.
“Years ago, when we asked for stores, housing, stuff like that, and they’d tell us, ‘There’s no water. We can’t do it,’” Smith said. “There’s no excuses anymore. They can’t say there’s no water. We have water now — so start building.”
With water, Smith said, it’s time the Navajo Tribal Housing Authority reconsider allowing construction. Smith still attends meetings with updates on the San Juan Lateral, the bigger piece of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, and encourages other communities with water on the way to push for development. In Crownpoint, a bit of a headquarters for the region, he’s encouraging officials to think about everything from fast food to banks to colleges.
“I want to see development, see improvements for my people,” Smith said. “That’s what keeps me going. … I want to see better things for my people.”
Reporting for this story was supported by grants from the National Geographic Society’s Covid-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists and The Water Desk at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
Elizabeth Miller is an independent journalist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico who writes about energy and the environment, the outdoors, and a range of public policy issues. Contact her at: elizabethmmiller@gmail.com
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
Editor’s note: This story is part of a nine-month investigation of drinking water contamination across the U.S. The series is supported by funding from the Park Foundation and Water Foundation. Read the launch story, “Thirsting for Solutions,” here and the other stories in the series here.
First, Crystal Stephens noticed the new, odd odor of her tap water. “It smelled either like bleach or fishy,” says the resident of Hannibal, Missouri. Then, when she showered, she developed a cough, sinus issues and dry skin.
“People called it ‘the crud,’” she says.
In late 2015, Stephens was one of many residents in Hannibal, a city of 17,000 people on the Mississippi River, who complained about the quality of the city’s drinking water. That was after the Hannibal Water Treatment Plant introduced ammonia to their chlorine disinfection system, a move that aimed to meet federally regulated standards by lowering levels of total trihalomethanes (TTHM). Trihalomethane is a disinfection by-product and known carcinogen.
The disinfectant created by the chlorine-ammonia mix, chloramine, was effective at eliminating trihalomethanes, and provided protection against waterborne diseases. However, the use of chloramine raised a new problem: As the new chemical interacted with organic materials in the water, it created more, unregulated disinfection by-products — which coincided with “the crud” that concerned Stephens and other people drinking the water in Hannibal.
Hundreds of disinfection by-products have been found in treated drinking water across the U.S. since the 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently regulates a small number of those. The federal government also asserts that chloramines are safe at the levels they are consumed in treated water. But some researchers and activists have argued that emerging science is finding potential long-term hazards in newly identified disinfection by-products, and that regulations need tightening to protect the public.
Without such regulations, citizens in many communities around the country — including Tulsa, Oklahoma; Portland, Oregon; and Stockton, California — are questioning, and sometimes criticizing, the use of chloramines. In some instances, consumers worried about the safety of these chemicals have successfully pushed utilities to switch to other treatment options that can provide clean water, and remove disinfection by-products, without adding more chemicals.
That’s what happened in Hannibal, where, in late March, 2020 the city brought online a state-of-the-art water treatment system that uses granular activated carbon (GAC), a porous media made from high-carbon material such as wood, coal or coconut shells. This material can bind to and remove some chemicals and heavy metals from water. It’s “much like you would see inside of a Brita filter,” says Karen Marie Dietze, a water process engineer at the engineering firm Black & Veatch. “When water is filtered through the GAC media, dissolved organic compounds in the water are attracted to the surface of the GAC media and removed from the liquid stream.” Also similar to a Brita filter, the media requires periodic replacement.
Building the Hannibal facility cost US$10 million, and came about after a protracted battle between the city and some of its residents. Initial operational costs were budgeted at US$350,000 per year.
Complaints of Rashes, Breathing Problems and “Frankenwater”
Hannibal wasn’t the first city to make the switch after an upswell of negative public sentiment.
The pushback against chloramines often starts with consumers who report adverse effects from drinking or bathing in chloramine-treated tap water.
“People get rashes and people have breathing problems with chloramines,” says Randy Alstadt, administrator for the Poughkeepsie, New York, Water Treatment Facility. The city, which takes its water from the Hudson River, also tried using chloramines to lower their levels of disinfectant by-products and meet EPA regulations. It was the cheapest option offered by the engineers hired to consult on the project, says Alstadt.
But in 2016, he says, the city switched to a system that removes the contaminants using granular activated carbon, a change that came after controversy in the community over the use of chloramines. Alstadt says there were complaints, and even lost business, as one of the city’s wholesale customers labeled the Poughkeepsie product “Frankenwater” and elected to install their own well and treatment plant rather than remain with the water utility.
The Poughkeepsie water distribution system also experienced significant problems with corrosion when using the added chemical. “Chloramine is very corrosive and eats up rubber,” says Alstadt. “It eats gaskets.”
In some cases, that deterioration caused brown water to run from taps. “It looked like iced tea,” Alstadt recalls. The new system has turned things around, he says: “We’ve been very happy with what we did. It was the right thing to do.”
Battle in Hannibal
Hannibal, famous as the childhood hometown of author Mark Twain and the place that inspired the setting for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, pipes its water from the Mississippi River, and had already experienced its share of water treatment woes before the struggle against chloramines ramped up in 2015. For several years, the city’s Water Treatment Plant exceeded federal, health-based standards for disinfectant by-products in drinking water, leading the city and Board of Public Works to settle a class-action lawsuit with four Hannibal residents, including Stephens, that alleged the board had knowingly provided sub-standard drinking water.
Click the link for an interactive version of this chart on the Environmental Working Group website.
Under pressure to control disinfectant by-products from chlorine, Hannibal hired an engineering firm to present options for meeting compliance. From the available choices, the city chose chloramination to solve the problem. That decision became a hot-button issue in town as soon as customers received a notice from the Hannibal Board of Public Works announcing the plans to add chloramines to local drinking water. “It was really a fight,” says Hannibal resident Pat Berg Yapp, who, with her husband, owns The Belvedere Inn, a B&B in an 1859 mansion near downtown Hannibal’s historic district. Stephens and several other residents gathered to discuss the issue at a local coffee shop, and eventually formed a group, now called Concerned Citizens for Safe Drinking Water, to organize against the use of chloramines and instead advocate for the use of GAC. Water quality advocates Erin Brockovich and Robert Bowcock visited Hannibal, and, at a packed public meeting, spoke about the risks of chloramine by-products.
The Hannibal City Council soon declined to vote on a proposed ordinance, the Safe Drinking Water Chemical Use Reduction Act, which local citizens had brought to the council in a bid to halt the city’s use of chloramines for water treatment. After the council’s decision, chloramine opponents gathered enough signatures to put a proposition on the ballot that year to remove ammonia from municipal water treatment. That proposition passed in 2017, forcing the city to find an alternative.
Hannibal hired Black & Veatch to evaluate several methods for modifying the treatment process to reduce the formation of disinfection by-products without using ammonia. They tested enhanced coagulation, oxidation, adsorption technologies — including powdered activated carbon and granular activated carbon — and reverse osmosis. The decision to select GAC as the preferred approach was driven by its ability to effectively meet treatment goals, ease of implementation and operation, and ability to meet the city’s ordinance schedule. “Among the treatment alternatives evaluated, GAC adsorption was one of the more cost-effective approaches and would be able to reliably meet the treatment objectives under varying water quality conditions,” says Black & Veatch’s Dietze.
Graphic provided by the Hannibal Board of Public Works.
So far, “the system is performing as anticipated,” says Mathew Munzlinger, director of operations at the Hannibal Board of Public Works.
Yapp and her husband say they have noticed the change, both in the taste of their coffee and in the clarity of their drinking water. They once supplied bottled water to guests, and told them to avoid the city’s tap water. No longer. “I now tell people you can drink the water here,” says Yapp. “A year ago, I wouldn’t have told you that. Now it literally comes out of the faucet and it is as clear as a bell, and the taste is fabulous.”
For Hannibal, this also means water clear of disinfection by-products. Many other communities questioning the use of these chemicals are trying to decide if this matters to them, as the EPA reviews its rules on disinfection by-products, and experts continue to weigh in.
Editor’s note: The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a collaborator on this reporting project.
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.
Dry conditions across the West follow a hot, dry year of record-setting wildfires in 2020. Communities were left with scenes like this, from California’s Creek Fire. Amir Aghakouchak/University of California Irvine
Just about every indicator of drought is flashing red across the western U.S. after a dry winter and warm early spring. The snowpack is at less than half of normal in much of the region. Reservoirs are being drawn down, river levels are dropping and soils are drying out.
It’s only May, and states are already considering water use restrictions to make the supply last longer. California’s governor declared a drought emergency in 41 of 58 counties. In Utah, irrigation water providers are increasing fines for overuse. Some Idaho ranchers are talking about selling off livestock because rivers and reservoirs they rely on are dangerously low and irrigation demand for farms is only just beginning.
Scientists are also closely watching the impact that the rapid warming and drying is having on trees, worried that water stress could lead to widespreadtree deaths. Dead and drying vegetation means more fuel for what is already expected to be another dangerous fire season.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters on May 13, 2021, that federal fire officials had warned them to prepare for an extremely active fire year. “We used to call it fire season, but wildland fires now extend throughout the entire year, burning hotter and growing more catastrophic in drier conditions due to climate change,” Vilsack said.
Several types of drought are converging in the West this year, and all are at or near record levels.
When too little rain and snow falls, it’s known as meteorological drought. In April, precipitation across large parts of the West was less than 10% of normal, and the lack of rain continued into May.
Rivers, lakes, streams and groundwater can get into what’s known as hydrological drought when their water levels fall. Many states are now warning about low streamflow after a winter with less-than-normal snowfall and warm spring temperatures speeding up melting. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced it would cut off water to a canal serving farms in the Klamath Project on the Oregon-California border because of low water supplies. It also warned that Lake Mead, a giant Colorado River reservoir that provides water for millions of people, is on pace to fall to levels in June that could trigger the first federal water shortage declaration, with water use restrictions across the region.
These factors can all drive ecosystems beyond their thresholds – into a condition called ecological drought – and the results can be dangerous and costly. Fish hatcheries in Northern California have started truckingtheir salmon to the Pacific Ocean, rather than releasing them into rivers, because the river water is expected to be at historic low levels and too warm for young salmon to tolerate.
Snow drought
One of the West’s biggest water problems this year is the low snowpack.
The western U.S. is critically dependent on winter snow slowly melting in the mountains and providing a steady supply of water during the dry summer months. But the amount of water in snowpack is on the decline here and across much of the world as global temperatures rise.
Several states are already seeing how that can play out. Federal scientists in Utah warned in early May that more water from the snowpack is sinking into the dry ground where it fell this year, rather than running off to supply streams and rivers. With the state’s snowpack at 52% of normal, streamflows are expected to be well below normal through the summer, with some places at less than 20%.
More people are moving into the U.S. West, increasing demand for water and irrigated farmland. And global warming – driven by human activities like the burning of fossil fuels – is now fueling more widespread and intense droughts in the region. These two factors act as additional straws pulling water from an already scarce resource.
As demand for water has increased, the West is pumping out more groundwater for irrigation and other needs. Centuries-old groundwater reserves in aquifers can provide resilience against droughts if they are used sustainably. But groundwater reserves recharge slowly, and the West is seeing a decline in those resources, mostly because water use for agriculture outpaces their recharge. Water levels in some wells have dropped at a rate of 6.5 feet (2 meters) per year.
The result is that these regions are less able to manage droughts when nature does bring hot, dry conditions.
California fish hatcheries have started trucking their salmon to the Pacific Ocean because the rivers they are usually released into are too low and warm. AP Photo/Rich Podroncelli
Rising global temperatures also play several roles in drought. They influence whether precipitation falls as snow or rain, how quickly snow melts and, importantly, how quickly the land, trees and vegetation dry out.
Extreme heat and droughts can intensify one another. Solar radiation causes water to evaporate, drying the soil and air. With less moisture, the soil and air then heat up, which dries the soil even more. The result is extremely dry trees and grasses that can quickly burn when fires break out, and also thirstier soils that demand more irrigation.
Alarmingly, the trigger for the drying and warming cycle has been changing. In the 1930s, lack of precipitation used to trigger this cycle, but excess heat has initiated the process in recent decades. As global warming increases temperatures, soil moisture evaporates earlier and at larger rates, drying out soils and triggering the warming and drying cycle.
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 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.
