Headwaters Fall 2012: Agriculture-- Rooted in Colorado

C o l o r a d o F o u n d at i o n f o r Wat e r E d u c at i o n | Fa l l 2 0 1 2

Keeping Water on Colorado’s Farms Coping With Drought and a Competitive Water Market Agricultural Water Rights 101 Tasting the Fruits of the North Fork Valley’s Labor Quality + Scarcity + Opportunity = Water Headwaters | Fall 2012

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CFWE Mission in Motion Join us in exploring the value of water in your life at any of these upcoming CFWE tours:

Defining Values

• December 14, 2012—Bottled Beverage Industry in the Denver Metro area • March 8, 2013—Climate and Colorado’s Water Future at the National Ice Core Laboratory in Lakewood • May 2013—Urban Waters Bike Tour in Denver • May 2013—Lower Colorado River Basin in and around the Grand Valley • June 2013—Upper Colorado River Basin in the headwaters area • July 2013—Interstate Tour along the Platte River system in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska

CFWE tour participants got an inside look at the dairy industry in August.

On Tour With CFWE Buckle up, because a CFWE tour is coming to a water site near you! These interactive programs help participants to define and understand the many values and uses associated with water in Colorado.

In August 2012, CFWE hosted the Morgan County Dairy Tour with generous sponsor support. A diverse group of 50 water professionals, public officials and educators came together to learn about agriculture’s importance to Colorado’s rural economies. Attendees mingled with cows at the impressive Quail Ridge Dairy and saw how milk is processed at Leprino Foods, the world’s largest mozzarella cheese producer! Expert speakers also examined the dairy industry’s role in future water demands and local food production. Look for future agriculture tours in the fall of 2013.

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Increasing Awareness

Growing Capacity

Water 2012’s Impact and Next Steps The year 2012 may be winding down, but Colorado’s Year of Water is still going strong! As of September 30, Water 2012 had surpassed its goal of reaching 500,000 Coloradans with the message of celebrating our state’s water resources. Water 2012 could never have reached this goal without the initiative’s 41 financial sponsors, the 186 organizations who held local Water 2012 events, or the 600-plus individuals who offered their time, expertise and support.

To date, Water 2012 has reached: • 46,200 readers and library patrons through book club and library displays • 2,800 civic club members through the Speakers Bureau • 8,200 youth and college students through K-12 activities and university networking events • 27,000 attendees at local Water 2012 events • 321,000 newspaper readers in Pueblo, Alamosa, Grand Junction and many other cities through water-related articles, and • 100,000 Western Slope radio listeners through public service announcements.

And we aren’t done yet! Check the community calendar at www.water2012.org for more author talks, university networking events and educational tours and programs continuing through the end of the year.

Hear an in-depth recap of the year’s accomplishments, plus ideas for moving forward, at a celebratory luncheon on Jan. 30 at the Denver Marriott Tech Center. Join Water 2012, along with Colorado Water Congress, as we thank sponsors and volunteers and celebrate hard work by all. Find registration information at www.cowatercongress.org/ AnnualConvention.

CFWE’s expanded staff includes: (back row left to right) Adam Hicks, Nicole Seltzer, Nona Shipman, (front row left to right) Jennie Geurts, Caitlin Coleman and Kristin Maharg.

CFWE Welcomes New Staff The Colorado Foundation for Water Education is “lean and mean,” educating 10,000 Coloradans annually with only three full-time staff. Being efficient is important, and the organization has doubled its reach in the last five years without adding staff. But the time for growth has come!

Help us welcome three new members to the CFWE team who will help ensure we meet growing demands for water education in Colorado.

Caitlin Coleman, Program Associate Caitlin started with CFWE as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in 2011. She is so talented; we just had to keep her! Caitlin’s journalism background serves us well as she writes for Headwaters, oversees external communications, and assists with educational programs.

Jennifer Geurts, Administrative Assistant Jennie came on board in mid-2012, and her friendly presence and organizational skills keep the office running smoothly. She came to us from the National Park Service, where she led tours of national landmarks like Harpers Ferry, Carlsbad Caverns and Oregon Caves.

Adam Hicks, Development Officer Adam is our newest recruit, and will be CFWE’s first full-time fundraiser. His expertise in sales, marketing and business development will help us expand our presence and grow our support base into new areas.

Strengthening Leadership

Upcoming Class of Water Leaders As the 2012 class of Water Leaders graduated last spring, CFWE was fortunate to have an opportunity to strengthen the way in which we cultivate leadership in Colorado water. Staff, Board and program alumni worked with the OMNI Institute on an independent and formative program evaluation.

We were able to articulate exactly how the Water Leaders Program positively impacts the Colorado water profession by developing a pipeline of emerging water leaders across various fields—leaders with the knowledge and skills to navigate the complex world of Colorado water. The evaluation’s results are helping CFWE make several program modifications to improve our effectiveness in training the water leaders of tomorrow. Look for greater application of the Colorado water resources field in program content; increased engagement with past, current and future employers of program participants; more effective marketing and recruitment tools; and revitalization of the Alumni Network. In late 2012, applications will be available for the next class at www.yourwatercolorado.org. Please join us in sharing this professional development opportunity with your colleagues and networks!

Creating Knowledge

Connect With “Your Water Colorado” Blog The Boulder Water Festival hosted fourth- and fifthgraders in May.

Gain and share water knowledge by reading and commenting on the “Your Water Colorado” blog. If you’re ready for the stories in Headwaters to come to life, to receive regular water news updates in your inbox, or to share thoughts on Colorado water, subscribe to the blog. Since its January launch, the blog has received 11,000 views on 80 posts.

Headwaters | Fall 2012

Visit blog.yourwatercolorado.org and sign up for the RSS feed so you don’t miss a word.

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The Colorado Foundation for Water Education’s staff and board members work hard to educate Coloradans about the scarcity and value of water.

Nicole Seltzer, CFWE Executive Director

CFWE is the only statewide water education organization committed to presenting a diversity of perspectives on today’s complex issues in order to nurture thoughtful dialogue.

We believe Coloradans should make informed decisions about this most valuable resource—decisions based upon a thorough understanding of water’s complexities and the trade-offs of various options.

Our work raises the “water literacy” of Colorado decision-makers and the general public by examining water issues in an unbiased manner. In 2012, CFWE directly touched more than 30,000 Coloradans. Over 250 state decision-makers, educators and natural resource professionals learned about climate science, dairy production, urban water planning and groundwater scarcity on CFWE tours. Our basic water presentation has been given more than 125 times to 2,700 community leaders. Almost 20,000 Coloradans have read CFWE’s water information in print and electronic format, many of whom take the next step and attend our workshops or tours. And we helped to reach yet another 500,000 people by supporting the Water 2012 year-long celebration.

CFWE is the only statewide water education organization committed to presenting a diversity of perspectives on today’s complex issues in order to nurture thoughtful dialogue.

And with more than 450 members suggesting CFWE shed light on different viewpoints and subject matter, we do our best to provide a wide range of coverage.

We are proud to present this issue of Headwaters that focuses on agriculture. Farmers and ranchers play an important role in water issues. To provide food and fiber to the rest of us, they receive more than 85 percent of the state’s water deliveries. A majority of the senior water rights in Colorado are held by those involved in agriculture, and most of Colorado’s earliest river diversions, dams and ditches were built for its benefit. Agriculture continues to be a large economic driver, and is the lifeblood of rural communities.

All Coloradans should know about the importance of water to agriculture, so we’ve dedicated numerous resources to telling its stories. In addition to publishing this issue of Headwaters, CFWE held two tours on irrigation systems in Weld County in 2011 and a tour of Ft. Morgan-area dairies and cheesemaking in 2012. What do you want to know about agriculture in Colorado? Staff is seeking additional ideas for tours, presentations and articles. Let us know at headwaters@cfwe.org.

CFWE has many ways for you to learn about water! Headwaters is our most visible, and we hope it sparks your interest enough for you to take the next step. On the inside front cover, as well as at www.yourwatercolorado.org, you’ll find a slew of ideas such as: u Join a conversation, or start a new one, at the “Your Water Colorado” blog. u Learn your water history by reading new books on Denver Water, the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the Colorado River District. u Book a presentation through CFWE’s Water 2012 Speakers Bureau. u Inspire Colorado’s youth through the River of Words poetry and photo contest. u Get out and see water! CFWE will have a busy tour season in 2013, with three multi-day tours—the upper and lower Colorado River and the Platte River through Wyoming and Nebraska.

I look forward to exploring with you the diversity, history, beauty and challenge that is Colorado water!

Matthew Staver

Executive Director

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Contents Fall 2012

Rooted in

Colorado 13 Grown in Colorado

By Caitlin Coleman Colorado boasts ideal growing conditions for a wide range of products once water is added to the mix.

The state’s farms and ranches provide a bounty that reaches 115 nations and, in Colorado, is one of the leading drivers of the state’s economy.

20 A Public Resource

By Allen Best Colorado’s doctrine of prior appropriation is a legal system governing water’s use. A look at how the system evolved, how it actually works, and, in a watershort year like 2012, how it plays out for the state’s farmers and ranchers.

29 The Ever-Evolving Farmer

By Joshua Zaffos Access to water boosts yields and minimizes risk in an inherently risky industry, where the up-front costs are high and the returns uncertain. Faced with drought and an increasingly competitive marketplace for water rights, farmers must innovate to survive.

Water is…

8 Life

9 Scarcity

10 Fire

11 Quality

12 Opportunity

36 Travel

How much water does it take to feed a human being? It depends on your diet.

How the 2012 drought played out across Colorado; Baby steps toward legalizing rainwater capture for limited irrigation.

By March, Colorado was primed for wildfire—a recap of the 2012 fire season; How fire impacts watersheds; Mitigation efforts by land and water managers that could keep eroding sediments at bay.

Colorado moves to control excessive nutrients stemming from human waste in state waterways; How water resources are being protected at Leadville’s newly re-opened Climax molybdenum mine.

For a new generation, Colorado’s agricultural industry beckons; Resources for agricultural career training and youth educational programs; Bringing agricultural awareness into Colorado’s classrooms.

Calling all local foodies, homesteaders and agricultural dabblers, the North Fork Valley’s farmstays, wine tasting rooms, farm-to-table dinners and pick-your-own orchards await. Take a weekend to savor homegrown Colorado at its finest.

By Cally Carswell

On the cover: USDA researcher Tom Trout pictured in a corn field in northern Colorado. Photo

by Matthew Staver

Background and inset photos by Matthew Staver.

Dairy photo courtesy of the Colorado Farm Bureau.

24 Keeping Water on the Farm

By Jerd Smith Farms need water. Cities and industries need it too.

Why creative approaches are necessary to maximize Colorado’s ability to maintain the best of both worlds.

Headwaters | Fall 2012

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Contributors Jerd Smith is a Boulder-based writer and editor with a special interest in water and conservation issues. Writing for this issue (“Keeping Water on the Farm,” page 24), Jerd was struck by the new ideas being tried that even 10 years ago would never have been considered. “These are interesting times on Colorado farms, with policy makers, farmers and environmentalists searching for new, more precise engineering and legal mechanisms to help keep water on farms,” she says. “But this new era will require more cooperation among city and farm interests, and that may be among the most difficult tasks Coloradans must undertake.”

Colorado Foundation for Water Education 1580 Logan St., Suite 410 • Denver, CO 80203 303-377-4433 • www.yourwatercolorado.org

Board Members Rita Crumpton President

Joshua Zaffos writes on the environment and science from Fort Collins, where he watched the effects of drought (and wildfire) in close proximity throughout the summer. “Meeting and speaking with farmers to hear about how they’re enduring dry times—while in the midst of a drought—was fascinating and heartening,” says Josh of reporting for this issue (“The Ever-Evolving Farmer,” page 29). “I heard my share of unexpected responses, portraying reasons for both concern and optimism when considering Colorado’s future food production, natural landscape and agricultural legacy.”

Justice Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr.

Caitlin Coleman is a writer and program associate with the Colorado Foundation for Water Education. Originally from New York state, she has been interested in western water resources for years but hadn’t closely examined water for agriculture until researching her article for this issue (“Grown in Colorado,” page 13). “Now, I can’t stop looking for Colorado Proud labeling in grocery stores, spouting off economic facts or observing, as I travel, how irrigation systems differ,” Caitlin says. “It’s always interesting to talk with different people, learn new things and internalize that, but when reporting on commodities that you think about daily—food and water—the value is magnified.”

Becky Brooks Nick Colglazier Lisa Darling Eric Hecox Pete Kasper Trina McGuire-Collier Reed Morris Sen. Gail Schwartz Travis Smith Gregg Ten Eyck Chris Treese

Allen Best began writing about water in Colorado in 1977 at his first journalism job in Kremmling. But his intuitive understanding of water was formed as a boy in the South Platte Valley. His grandparents, who irrigated crops with water from the North Sterling Reservoir, had indoor plumbing. His other grandparents, who dryland farmed north of Fort Morgan, had an outhouse. His assignment for this issue (“A Public Resource,” page 20), gave him renewed respect for the pioneering efforts of farmers—and made him pine to ask questions of his long-gone grandparents and parents.

Bryan Kelsen has been working as a photojournalist in southern Colorado since 1987.

Growing up in northeast Iowa gave him an appreciation for the importance of agriculture, while subsequently living in Pueblo has given him an understanding of the value water provides to agricultural operations. “As urban areas in Colorado continue to grow, I believe it is important to be mindful of agricultural and recreational uses when allocating water for urban use,” says Bryan, whose photographs appear in two stories for this issue (“Grown in Colorado,” page 13, and “The Ever-Evolving Farmer,” page 29).

Matthew Staver is a freelance editorial and documentary photographer based in Denver. He’s a third-generation Coloradan, a second-generation photographer and the first to jump at an opportunity to spend time on a farm. He has fond boyhood memories of picking raspberries and marveling at gigantic rhubarb plants in his grandparents’ garden, and plucking up dirty carrots and red strawberries from the garden his parents cultivated in their backyard. For now, Matthew is content to water his tiny plot with a hose, but he and his wife hope to someday own a small farm. He believes that new techniques and concerns addressed in this issue of Headwaters, illustrated throughout by his photographs, will allow him and other farmers to grow crops into the distant future.

1st Vice President

Reagan Waskom Assistant Secretary

Alan Matlosz Treasurer

Steve Fearn

Assistant Treasurer

Staff

Nicole Seltzer Executive Director

Kristin Maharg Program Manager

Caitlin Coleman Program Associate

Jennie Geurts Administrative Assistant

Adam Hicks Development Officer

Nona Shipman Water 2012 Assistant Project Coordinator

Mission Statement The mission of the Colorado Foundation for Water Education is to promote better understanding of water resources through education and information. The Foundation does not take an advocacy position on any water issue.

Acknowledgments The Colorado Foundation for Water Education thanks the people and organizations who provided review, comment and assistance in the development of this issue.

iStock.com

Headwaters Magazine is published three times a year by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education. Headwaters is designed to provide Colorado citizens with balanced and accurate information on a variety of subjects related to water resources. Copyright 2012 by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education. ISSN: 1546-0584 Edited

by Jayla Poppleton. Designed by Emmett Jordan.

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C

Ten

T h i n g s To D o In This Issue: Jayla Poppleton, Editor

It wasn’t obvious a drought was in full bloom on the Sundays I spent walking past tables brimming with brightly colored produce at our local farmers’ market this summer.

The lettuce and beets, potatoes and onions, sweet corn and squash. The ripe, juicy melons and tomatoes bursting with flavor. And the growers generously visiting us from the West Slope, bearing peaches, apples, pears—everything fresh, delicious, grown in Colorado.

What could be better?

For the farmers, a little more water, perhaps—or maybe a lot. Those who weathered the drought, who brought their goods to market, fared alright. Commodity prices rose as the supply reaching the market fell off; higher payments provided some compensation to farmers who sacrificed certain acres of crops in order to give others a fighting chance of getting enough water. Still, it was a rough year, with many crops lost and cattle sold off, usually at too-low prices because feed costs had grown prohibitively expensive. For those without irrigation water—or enough of it— this year’s drought was grim indeed.

Dry times, which may increase in frequency and severity according to many researchers, are not the only cause of irrigation shortages. A complex irrigation system has evolved in Colorado over the past 150 years, with a system of water rights and irrigation ditches that serve whole communities of farmers. That system is currently struggling to adapt in an era when more and more water is being transferred from agriculture to cities, drying up farmland in the process. Those cities have oft been painted the villain in this scenario, but which one of us doesn’t rely on the water supply they provide?

It must also be noted, the sale of water rights takes place between willing parties on both sides of the deal. Farmers reap healthy sums from such sales. While it’s their right to make the choice to sell—and capitalize on what is likely their most valuable asset—they might be less likely to do so if other viable options were on the table.

And so, cities are now working with water planners and farmers to change the paradigm from drying up ag land to figuring out how to protect it. When we began work on this issue of Headwaters, we immediately made note that state water resource planners (at least those working together to script a healthy water future via the statewide Interbasin Compact Committee, or IBCC) agree on one particular issue, more so than any other: that irrigated agriculture in Colorado should be maintained. What we set out to do was find out why agriculture is so valued by such a variety of interests, and how the industry could be sustained under the pressure of shrinking—and increasingly competitive—water resources.

We invite you to explore the value agriculture brings to our state, and the myriad efforts underway to sustain it, from cities working with farmers to find flexible options for sharing water supplies, to researchers testing irrigation techniques and technologies, to administrators and legislators looking to adjust and fine-tune water law in order to accommodate today’s challenging scenarios. Farmers and ranchers provide a service that none of us could live without: They feed us, and feed us well. And now they need our support.

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Go on tour with CFWE (inside front cover).

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Enter the Headwaters photo contest (page 6).

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Pick up CFWE’s Water 101 drought fact sheet (page 9).

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Take a peek at Colorado’s new nutrient standards (page 11).

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Investigate agricultural career options and youth educational programs (page 12).

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View a snapshot of Colorado agriculture (page 16).

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Brush up on Colorado water law (page 20).

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Learn about opportunities for farmers to temporarily lease their water to cities (page 26).

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Study the differences between three irrigation systems (page 32).

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Visit the North Fork Valley for a hands-on agricultural experience (page 36).

n Jayla Poppleto Editor

Headwaters | Fall 2012

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High Country Meadow Winning photo submission by Amy Johnson Early summer brings new growth to an irrigated hayfield near Granby.

Headwaters Photo Contest

See your photo in the next issue of Headwaters magazine! The Colorado Foundation for Water Education is now accepting entries of professional and amateur photographs that tie in with the topical focus of upcoming issues. The winning photo will appear on this two-page format, while other photos may be used throughout the magazine. Find contest rules and details on future topics at www.yourwatercolorado.org.

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Life > Scarcity > Fire > Quality > Opportunity

Water

is

Colorado

Fall 2012 photo contest runners-up (left to right): Hayfield near Ridgway by Debie Schmitt; Spring irrigation in the La Plata River Basin by Bruce Whitehead; and Grazing in the shadow of Routt County’s Elk Mountain by Jay Fetcher

Headwaters | Fall 2012

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Water is Life It takes a lot of water to produce the foods we love. To sustain a caloric intake of 2,000 calories per day for a year would take 73,000 gallons of water on an all-potato diet, and 2.1 million gallons if consuming nothing but ground beef. The classic meat and potato combo? 1.1 million gallons of water.

We are what we eat

How much water is used to make the ingredients for an all-American cheeseburger and fries, and what do we get when we eat it? (Nutrition and water usage information given is for 100 grams of each food. Water usage figures are worldwide averages and vary considerably based on climate, soils, irrigation methods and crop genetics.)

Tomato 5.7 gallons of water 18 calories 0.88 grams protein 94.52 grams water

Whole wheat bread 42.5 gallons of water 247 calories 12.95 grams protein 38.58 grams water

Potato 7.7 gallons of water 77 calories 2.02 grams protein 79.34 grams water

American cheese 133.7 gallons of water 366 calories 18.13 grams protein 39.61 grams water

Lettuce 2.9 gallons of water 15 calories 1.36 grams protein 94.98 grams water

Lean ground beef 406.9 gallons of water 137 calories 21.41 grams protein 73.28 grams water

Sources: USDA Food and Nutrition Information Center, Water Footprint Network 8

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Water is Full r Acr eservoi rs w oss er th volu mes e state e a sav the , res ing g s tar 2 r sno 010-20 ted hig ervoir ace: stor wpa h 1 — 1 age win ave than ck— te ra How ge for and re r’s abu ks to m t n e inflo ver, re he firs ained dant th clo se w to sho rvoirs alf of th se to r re u p fo eceived e summ r 20 13. very lit er. tle Colorado becam e a tinderbox: By early June, most of the snow was gone, more than 80 percen t of stream ga uges were recording belo w-normal flow s, and soils throughout Co lorado were ve ry dry, setting the stage for widesprea d wildfires.

Satellite monito ring showed th e driest vegetation in the northweste rn and eastern parts of the state.

A federal for assistance: Colorado called e for ad m as w n io at disaster declar on July s tie un o’s 64 co rs to 62 of Colorad he nc rmers and ra ans.

3, enabling fa lo y nc ge er em ral qualify for fede res stalled: The recovery measu Endangered fish ered Fish ng da En r Rive Upper Colorado was unable to operate ram Recovery Prog screens in the ages and fish ss pa h fis t mos s. Recovery w flo e to low Grand Valley du much of the instead spent program staff e fish such as tiv na ning no summer manag which flourish during ss, small-mouth ba 2012. e lik s ar ye m war By the end of August: About 80 percent of the state was still in extreme or exceptional drought—at the same time last year, only about 13 percent of Colorado suffered from extreme drought levels.

Scarcity

Recipe for Drought

By Caitlin Coleman The 2012 winter season saw the lowest statewide snowpack accumulation since 2002—in some of Colorado’s river basins, 2012 became the new minimum snowpack on record. Then came March, April and May 2012, Colorado’s warmest spring in 118 years. By April, Colorado State Climatologist Nolan Doesken had already concluded that 98 percent of the state was in extreme drought, with the most severe droughts at the time in the Arkansas Basin. Record temperatures hastened melting of already-low snowpack. High temperatures continued into the summer, stressing crops, cattle and streams. A snapshot of what the drought looked like across Colorado:

suffered: nge conditions Pasture and ra pplement su to ed e forc Ranchers wer le historical ub n paying do with hay, ofte ly. Producthe short supp prices due to ght in ou dr to d relate ice of tion challenges pr e also spiked th the Midwest to $8.20 up , le ap st feed corn, another ly 60 August, a near per bushel in o months tw st ju m fro se percent increa simply s er ag an ranch m earlier. Some s early. sold their herd Crop yields fell: By early Sept ember, only 18 percent of Colorado’s so rghum crop was rated in go od condition by the USDA. Colorad o corn crops were looking similarly bl eak—64 perc ent in poor or very poor co ndition. Some farmers saw a 20 to 30 percent reduct ion in yields. Still ot hers abandone d their crops in early summer after running out of water.

Whitew ate Accord r rafting lost cu in Colora g to Dave Co stomers: do Rive stlow w r Outfitt it the perc ers Ass h the e oc hurt co ption of drou ght ma iation, mmerc y have ial raftin much a gc s were ra the drought it ompanies as self. M ft-wort any riv hy in J ticularl ers une an y those d July, mainta release parin s, Costl ed by re ow say servoir s.

gauges ber: All stream sin reBy early Septem Ba r ve Ri olorado flows; in the upper C al rm al or above-no corded norm n helped tio ita ip ec pr mer some late-sum dn’t pull the tuation but di the basin’s si ven states drought. All se region out of r will be ve Ri o Colorad that share the see what to ted breath waiting with ba water xt ne e th n itatio kind of precip year brings.

Saving Rain Rainwater capture—the interception of stormwater runoff for use in landscaping—could change the way Coloradans talk about water conservation.

“Once you implement water conservation into your land plan, the next big savings is rainwater capture,” says Harold Smethills, managing director of the 3,120-acre planned Sterling Ranch development near Chatfield Reservoir in south Denver metro. Sterling Ranch aims to use one-third the water typically needed per household in Douglas County.

Together with the Denver Botanic Gardens, project developers are demonstrating rainwater capture at Allis Ranch near their own future site.

The project uses captured runoff from the roof of an old farmhouse to irrigate test gardens, which demonstrate a range of water-wise plant selection and irrigation systems. If all goes as planned, Sterling Ranch will be Colorado’s first community

where rainwater-fed cisterns will be used to irrigate lawns, gardens and parks.

Collecting rain has long been off-limits in Colorado. Like all precipitation, rainwater is subject to Colorado water law; before it touches ground, somebody already owns the rights to use it, at least once it reaches streams or aquifers. Harvesting rainwater is treated as diverting water out of priority—you must replace to the stream an equal amount to that intercepted. State administrators’ understanding of the dynamic is changing, however. A 2007 study by Leonard Rice Engineers found that during dry years in Douglas County no rainfall made it to the stream, while in wet years, a maximum of 15 percent made it back to the stream, says Kevin Rein, Colorado Deputy State Engineer.

That study led to two pieces of legislation in 2009, one allowing limited collection of precipitation for residential rural landowners who rely on Headwaters | Fall 2012

domestic wells (the legislation the test site is currently operating under), and another providing for the eventual permitting of 10 projects to cache rainwater for beneficial but non-essential use in subdivisions across the state. Sterling Ranch is the first and, at the moment, only permitted project of those 10.

If the pilot projects prove themselves, they might pave the way for broader application of rainwater capture, says Rein, with only the obligation to replace what would have historically made it to the stream. —Caitlin Coleman

Learn more about drought’s impacts via the Colorado Foundation for Water Education’s new Water 101 drought fact sheet, available at www.yourwatercolorado.org.

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Water is Fire

Colorado on Fire After the Burn Below-average snowpack, minimal spring precipitation, and record-breaking March heat set the stage for a devastating 2012 fire season across Colorado. The High Park Fire tore through the canyons and valleys northwest of Fort Collins in June, burning 87,000 acres and destroying 259 homes. Just weeks later, the Waldo Canyon Fire outside Colorado Springs became the most destructive fire in Colorado history, burning 347 homes before firefighters and rain contained it in early July. As of mid-August, 1,242 fires had burned more than 231,000 acres statewide.

“The dry and warm conditions allowed fuels to dry out several weeks ahead of schedule. In March, we were thinking this could be ugly,” says Tim Mathewson, a meteorologist with the Lakewood-based Rocky Mountain Coordination Center, which facilitates wildfire response in Colorado, Wyoming and other states.

The last year in which spring snowpack was so dramatically low was 2002, the year of the Hayman Fire—the state’s largest fire on record.

That year, 4,600 fires scorched nearly 620,000 acres, far outstripping the 2012 totals.

Projections for next year’s fire season will not be made until spring 2013, and will largely depend once again on winter snowpack and spring conditions. However, the rust-red trees that are the telltale sign of mountain pine beetle kill across the Rockies have raised future fire risk for many communities. Under the right conditions, many of the beetle kill forests will be primed for large, intense fires.

On the bright side, Mathewson notes the current transition from a La Niña to an El Niño cycle. While La Niña typically brings drier conditions to Colorado, El Niño, though a little more unpredictable, normally results in wetter summer conditions. This is true especially in the southeastern corner of the state—which could provide some relief to a region hammered by drought now for two years running.

—Josh McDaniel

In the aftermath of the 2012 fire season, water and land managers are scrambling to minimize the impacts to watersheds. Sediment-loading of water supplies for drinking and irrigation is one of the biggest post-fire concerns. Flooding and debris flows—fast-moving mixtures of rock, mud and vegetation down steep slopes—could also damage roads, bridges, culverts, and even homes and other structures.

Todd Boldt, district conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, has been coordinating mitigation efforts in response to the High Park Fire. Together with other government agencies, he is working to mulch and seed around 5,600 acres in drainages hit by the most severe fire. Such treatments can reduce runoff and sedimentation by 20 percent. The work isn’t cheap—initial costs for mulching and seeding on Forest Service land have been around $7 million, with another $17 million in mitigation measures identified, including mulching and seeding private land, installing flood diversion structures, and repairing roads.

Officials handling the post-fire response to the Waldo Canyon Fire outside of Colorado Springs are similarly concerned about the lack of vegetation cover on uplands. Peak flows are expected to be three to four times above average in drainages that suffered moderate- or high-severity fire, and the amounts of sediment and debris moving downstream could be substantial.

Steven Sanchez, soil and water program manager for the Pike and San Isabel National Forests, says the experience gained from restoring watersheds after the 2002 Hayman Fire will result in a more effective response to the Waldo Canyon Fire, because the two occurred on similar, highly erodible soils. “We have learned that you have to quickly get ground cover in place to hold it together,” says Sanchez. The Forest Service is applying mulch to over 3,000 acres, prioritizing headwaters regions, fishery and wildlife habitat, and other sensitive and high value areas in the forest.

Meanwhile, Colorado Springs Utilities is working to install sediment basins and in-stream structures to trap sediments, slow runoff and reduce erosion in important drainages. —Josh McDaniel

Fire’s Impact on Watersheds • Charred hillsides have less living vegetation and leaf litter to intercept rain and slow runoff, increasing the likelihood of flooding and making slopes more vulnerable to erosion.

• Runoff, measured as discharge from specific drainages, has already increased in the range of 200 to 500 percent in the area impacted by northern Colorado’s High Park Fire, according to Todd Boldt of the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

• High-intensity fires can create hydrophobic soils that repel water given certain conditions: an intense, slow-moving fire; a thick layer of litter and ground fuels; and coarsely textured soils such as sand or decomposed granite.

• Hydrophobic soils not only increase the rate of water runoff and subsequent soil erosion, but can also make it difficult for seeds to germinate and for the roots of surviving plants to obtain moisture, says Deborah Kennard, a fire ecology professor at Colorado Mesa University.

• Thicker hydrophobic layers can persist for more than a year. Plant roots and soil microorganisms and animals help break down hydrophobic layers.

Doug Conarroe (3)

Flames ignite on the north side of the Poudre Canyon, just below the Grey Rock trailhead, on May 14, the first day of the High Park Fire. On July 7, heavy rains washed ash and debris from the High Park Fire into the Poudre River, killing fish (left) and causing mudslides (right).

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Water is

Quality

Climax Comes Back With Climax Mine’s August 2012 reopening, molybdenum is again big business in Leadville. The mine largely ceased production 25 years ago thanks to the plummeting market for molybdenum, a metal used to strengthen steel. Recent development booms in countries like China, India, and Brazil have heightened steel’s demand, and Climax is back to grinding molybdenite ore on Fremont Pass.

Climax was never totally dormant. Water from the mine’s vertical shaft—which was allowed to flood with runoff and groundwater after Climax closed in 1987—has been continuously pumped and treated so that it wouldn’t overflow and send mining acids and trace metals into nearby watersheds.

Sitting at the headwaters of the Arkansas River, Tenmile Creek and Eagle River, Climax is the steward of roughly 30,000 acre feet of water annually, says Eric E. Kinneberg, spokesperson for Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, the Phoenixbased company that owns the mine. Climax protects water quality using an array of practices that include recycling process water and treating water before discharging into streams, Kinneberg says.

In 2007, a new facility was built at Climax to

clean up tailings pond water before it emptied into Tenmile Creek, where, if left untreated, its load of heavy metals could kill aquatic life. Now, Freeport-McMoRan is constructing a water treatment plant at the lowest part of the mine to intercept runoff from the entire site. Plus, it has installed monitoring wells the state will inspect quarterly.

“This site has been mined for 100 years, so there’s been a lot of contamination that has already occurred,” says Tony Waldron, a program supervisor in the Colorado Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety. “We want to make sure [Climax] isn’t excessively impacting groundwater.” The division is working to establish baselines to ensure the mine doesn’t exceed standards, which vary by watershed. “Surface water will definitely have to be treated in perpetuity,” he adds.

Steve Swanson, executive director of the Blue River Watershed Group, which works to protect water quality in Summit County, has been impressed with Freeport-McMoRan. “They seem to really be concerned about doing the right thing. When the new treatment facility goes into operation, it will be state of the art—there won’t be a facility like it anywhere in the country.” —Katy Neusteter

Courtesy Freeport-McMoRan

Climax Mine Stats & Facts • Climax lies 13 miles northeast of Leadville on Fremont Pass.

• The area receives 23 feet of snow per year on average.

• The mine property covers 14,339 acres; the open pit is 1.5 miles across.

• Climax will bring 400 full-time jobs to the area.

• Freeport-McMoRan expects to mine 20 million pounds of molybdenum from Climax in 2013; prices are currently around $15 per pound.

• It cost Freeport-McMoRan $760 million to restart Climax.

Climax’s open pit mine is again producing molybdenum.

Reining in Nutrients After more than a decade of examining the state’s nutrient pollution problem, the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission established standards in June 2012 for nutrient levels in Colorado waterways.

Present in human and animal waste as well as commercial fertilizers, nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous behave the same way in water as they do when they’re applied to crops or your lawn—they make things grow. When nutrient-boosted algae and plants die off, entire sections of lakes and rivers become oxygen-deprived dead zones.

“This leads to catastrophic failure of primary aquatic ecosystems,” says Steve Gunderson, director of the Water Quality Control Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment (CDPHE). In drinking-water stores, excess organic material from decomposing plants makes water smell and taste bad, and can react with chlorine to produce carcinogenic chemicals.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires that states limit nitrogen and phosphorous pollution or face stiff regulation; Colorado is now awaiting EPA approval of its own tailored approach to preventing water quality from further deteriorating as the state’s population balloons.

Wastewater facilities in Colorado’s urban areas and ski resorts will bear the brunt of the new regulations. These point sources are like funnels, discharging treated—but nitrogen- and phosphorous-rich—effluents directly into rivers. The CDPHE will require 46 facilities, accounting for 76 percent of the state’s domestic wastewater volume, to install additional treatment.

Total costs are estimated at $1.5 billion—just 5 percent of the potential in-

vestment if the EPA were to step in with tougher rules.

The new standards will also affect nonpoint sources such as crop producers. For the next 10 years, farmers will be encouraged to voluntarily manage nutrients through best management practices, including reducing the amount of fertilizer applied and using techniques that prevent nitrogen- and phosphorous-laden irrigation water from percolating into groundwater and streams. Farms, however, will not be required to measure or treat runoff.

One reason for this is that no reliable system exists for measuring the nutrients running off an agricultural field, says Gary Teague, a former Water Quality Control Commissioner and livestock operator in Fort Morgan. State regulations already require that large confined livestock operations capture 100 percent of their manure and runoff in impoundment facilities.

The Colorado Environmental Coalition was involved in the rulemaking and supports the agricultural exemptions. Still, agriculture is not the regulations’ primary target, says Becky Long, a coalition spokesperson. “The reality is that there’s another source—people.” —Katy Neusteter

Headwaters | Fall 2012

Find Colorado’s new nutrient standards online at www.cdphe.state.co.us by searching for “Regulation 31 pdf file,” clicking on “Water Quality Control Commission Regulations,” opening “Regulation 31,” and going to page 66. Or, scan this QR code with your smart phone.

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Water is Opportunity

A Wide Open Future

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The average age of a farm operator in Colorado is 57. As both the world and state population continues to grow over the next decade, the future will hold more mouths to feed and a heap of opportunity for young people stepping into agriculture.

Yet many young people lack the capital to purchase land, equipment and water rights; they also may lack remaining funds to front operating expenses or, for out-of-staters, the know-how to recognize the importance of irrigation water in a semi-arid state like Colorado. These are some of the biggest challenges to building a viable farming business, says Jennifer Tucker Visitacion with Guidestone Colorado, an organization working to strengthen the food economy along the Arkansas River.

Tilling the ground isn’t the only way to get involved in agriculture, though. As career center liaison for the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University, Beka Crocket sees a lot of interest in ranch management, conventional and organic farming, and animal production, but says there are hundreds of jobs that relate to agriculture. Career options range from grain merchandising, accounting, engineering, seed production and zoo keeping to entomology, agronomy, quality assurance, soil conservation, ethanol production and grain elevator management. Consulting, teaching, research and sales are still more options. The agricultural education majors that saw the highest employment rates in 2012 included soil and crop science, environmental horticulture, agricultural education and agricultural business. —Caitlin Coleman

Agronomy includes crop genetics and breeding.

Programs across Colorado help people interested in agriculture get on the land or gain needed skills: • Colorado Building Farmers helps new farmers and ranchers explore farming as a business and refine their business management, production and marketing skills. The classroom program is offered through Colorado State University Extension in at least eight counties around the state. www.extension.colostate.edu/boulder/ag/ CBF.shtml

Courtesy Colorado Foundation for Agriculture

• Opportunities for young people include programming by 4-H and the Future Farmers of America. An extracurricular program of Colorado State Extension, 4-H has no career bent, but a heavy agricultural focus with an aim toward leadership development for children ages 8 to 18.

Future Farmers of America enrolls about 5,700 students in high school agricultural classes in 100 Colorado schools. Enrollees take on internships, apprenticeships or employment to gain real career experience. www.colorado4h.org or www.ffa.cccs.edu

Classroom Connection For many of Colorado’s children and their families, there’s a disconnect between food and farming.

“Kids are three or four generations removed from the land,” says Bette Blinde, executive director of the Colorado Foundation for Agriculture. CFA encourages educators to use agriculture as a theme to teach academic subjects and to help children understand where their food and fibers come from.

“One of our goals is to expose students to agricultural business so they can consider selecting a career in agriculture,” says Blinde.

During the group’s week-long Food, Fiber & More Summer Agriculture Institute, as many as 50 educators with little to no agricultural background visit farming and ranching operations, see technology and career opportunities, and experience food and fiber production. “When you get the teachers excited about agriculture they carry that excitement through to their students,” says Blinde.

CFA also provides agricultural teaching resources to educators. During its 21-year history, CFA has distributed more than 7 million copies of its Colorado Reader series, featuring more than 200 agricultural and natural resource topics. —Caitlin Coleman Colorado Foundation for Water Education

Agricultural Career Toolkit

• To overcome financial hurdles, the Colorado Agricultural Development Authority offers tax-exempt bonds for low-interest financing for the purchase of land and equipment. Land Link, a model used nationwide, matches retiring farmers with young counterparts needing land, while financially protecting both.

Land Link is slowly becoming available across Colorado; a new matchmaking database launched in May. www.guidestonecolorado.org

Teachers take to the field with the Colorado Foundation for Agriculture’s summer program: Food, Fiber & More.

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Learn the technology behind modern farming.

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• Academic programs for other agricultural careers are offered through Colorado’s top universities. Choose from the 39 graduate degree programs in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University including economics, genetics and more; study engineering or law at the University of Colorado or University of Denver; check out the new Water Studies minor at Metropolitan State University’s One World One Water Center or the water centers at Colorado Mesa University and Colorado State University. www.agsci.colostate.edu

yourwatercolorado.org

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Grown in Colorado For the Rocky Mountain state, agriculture means quality food, open space and a boon to the economic engine

By Caitlin Coleman

Headwaters | Fall 2012

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From fields of sunflowers to plains painted gold with corn and wheat; from ranges dotted with cattle to luscious orchards, vineyards and vegetable farms; Colorado produces a bounty of agricultural products.

And Coloradans who bite into a sweet peach, chew through a juicy hamburger, sip a glass of artisan wine, or fuel up with a gasoline and ethanol mix, are likely consuming Colorado’s irrigation water while they’re at it. ing,” Graff says. Livestock, after all, can be raised (and often are) through much of the year on unwatered pastures rather than being fed corn, alfalfa and hay grown in irrigated fields. “It would certainly decrease the agricultural footprint drastically—but I really don’t believe in that scenario.”

The mosaic of Colorado is, however, changing, with farm and ranch land giving way as cities grow. Additionally, as state population booms, cities are bolstering their water supplies by buying up agricultural water rights and drying up farmland. This trend is projected to continue.

Though no one expects to find all of Colorado’s irrigation headgates closed, the state’s irrigated farm lands have been shrinking even as the production of food and fibers remains valuable. With about 86 percent of Colorado’s water diversions going toward irrigated agriculture on only about 4.5 percent of the state’s land, even a 10 percent reduction in irrigation water—a more likely future— will mean a different Colorado economically and probably environmentally.

A Multi-Billion-Dollar Industry Colorado’s farm and ranch production is currently a $6.4 billion industry in farmgate receipts, according to a 2011 CSU report.

Yet there are many activities tied to production beyond the farmgate. The CSU study estimates that Colorado’s agricultural production, manufacturing, processing and in-

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When Major Stephen Long made his early expedition to Colorado’s Eastern Plains, or the “Great American Desert,” as he called it in 1820, he declared the region unfit for cultivation and uninhabitable for people sustaining themselves with agriculture. But later, when early farmers applied water to the region’s mineral-rich soils, life blossomed. “You just couldn’t stop stuff from growing,” says Dan Hobbs, an organic vegetable farmer and seed producer, who irrigates from the Arkansas River.

Over the past 150 years, Colorado’s combination of high-quality irrigation water from the mountains, its diversity of soils, and the arid climate—which reduces the incidence of crop disease—have supported local agriculture’s growth into a $40 billion industry. It remains one of the state’s largest economic sectors and employs 7 percent of the workforce.

But what if we took the water out of agriculture? Queue the eerie music. Now dissolve the corn, fade out some cows, erase the onions and potatoes, board up a few factories, close a dozen schools and focus on that list of Colorado ghost towns—it seems to scroll infinitely on and on.

“It’s a bit of a doomsday scenario,” says Gregory Graff, an agricultural economist at Colorado State University. Graff is imagining a situation that he doesn’t believe plausible—a Colorado where there’s no water for irrigation. “If we were to go all the way to zero irrigation we’d do a lot more graz-

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Colorado Foundation for Water Education

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yourwatercolorado.org

Matthew Staver Gregory Graff contemplates shrinking agricultural water supplies from a barren field at the CSU Agricultural Research Development and Education Center near Ft. Collins.

puts contribute more than $40 billion to the state’s economy annually. This vast industry is still fueled primarily by family farmers— husbands, wives and their children.

Nearly $2 billion of Colorado’s agricultural sales are attributable to international sales.

Colorado is currently ranked 24th in the nation in agricultural exports, with that number on the rise—Colorado’s agricultural exports increased by about 40 percent over the past two years. Over the past 40 years, while total farm sales in Colorado tripled from $1.7 billion in 1973 to $6.4 billion today, Colorado’s agricultural exports grew from $110 million to $1.84 billion—a 16-fold increase. “Those exports really create one of the driving forces for Colorado agriculture,” says Tim Larsen, international marketing specialist with the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

Not surprisingly, cattle along with dairy, corn, wheat and produce are Colorado’s big agricultural moneymakers and contributions to the global food market. “The rest of the world really needs Colorado’s wheat and they need our dairy products and our beef,” says James Pritchett, another agricultural economist at Colorado State University.

Colorado exports 80 percent of all wheat grown here internationally, is the top producer of millet in the country and ranks within the top five states in fed cattle, sheep, sunflower, lettuce, spinach, potato and cantaloupe production.

Already, an estimated one of every three

Colorado food and agricultural suppliers sells some of their product outside the United States. Colorado products were imported by 115 countries in 2012. But to see expanded sales, Larsen believes finding additional markets is key. In fact, it’s Larsen’s job to continue growing agricultural export opportunities for the state’s food producers. In the coming months, he’ll be meeting with buyers from South and Central America about potatoes, onions and dried beans, and bringing in Japanese importers of alcoholic beverages to sell them on Colorado’s 107 wineries, 139 breweries and 30 distilleries. Next he’ll hit Europe for an organic show and a pet food show.

Terry Fankhauser, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattleman’s Association, agrees with Larsen’s focus beyond our borders: “We produce more product than people can eat in this country.” The United States consumes about 16 percent of the beef produced worldwide, but produces nearly 25 percent of the world’s beef supply, Fankhauser says—and that is with less than 10 percent of the world’s cattle. “We’ve gotten more efficient and more effective in using genetics and yielding more, which means we’re using less water and resources to produce more.”

The United Nations estimates feeding a world population of more than 9 billion people by 2050 will require 70 percent greater food production than today’s levels. “If it’s not an Continued on page 18

Headwaters | Fall 2012

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Agritourism—Colorado’s farmers and ranchers are increasingly developing tourism opportunities associated with their operations, ranging from corn mazes to dude ranches and bird watching.

Colorado’s growing wine industry—now numbering 107 wineries statewide, most in and near the Grand Valley—is a big factor here.

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In-State Market Connections

Colorado’s farmgate receipts totaled nearly $7 billion in 2011, but total economic activity balloons to $40 billion when inputs, processing and multiplier effects are considered. Below, one value-boosting progression from field to table follows alfalfa hay to the American take-out staple—pizza.

Colorado raised 2.9 million acres in corn and hay in 2011, with a harvest valued at $1.85 billion.

In 2011, there were 128,000 dairy cows in Colorado. Each cow ate an average of 20,000 pounds of feed and yielded 23,430 pounds of milk in return.

About 2,200 Coloradans are employed by 130 dairy farms.

Together they produced 3 billion pounds—or 349 million gallons—of milk in 2011, at a value of $522 million.

Currently, Colorado dairies produce 93 percent of the milk consumed directly or turned into milk products here. Leprino Foods, headquartered in Denver, will nearly double Colorado cheese production—and up the demand for milk—with its new Greeley plant in 2013.

This illustration sponsored by the Colorado Department of Agriculture. Sources: Colorado Department of Agriculture, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, CSU Extension. Illustrations by Steven Stankiewicz 16

Colorado Foundation for Water Education

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The world’s largest producer of mozzarella cheese, Leprino supplies many popular pizza chains. In 2011, Domino’s purchased cheese from Leprino exclusively to top 6 million pizzas sold here, and to supply its franchises nationwide.

yourwatercolorado.org

Colorado’s agricultural industry is among the most diverse in the nation. The products that characterize the state’s unique regions are as varied as the soils, climate and geography. Water sources also vary, from the groundwater-rich San Luis Valley to the riverfed Western Slope to the transmountain-diversion dependent Eastern Plains. But in Colorado’s arid climate, one factor remains consistent: Irrigation water makes much of this edible abundance possible. —Jayla Poppleton r Rive latte

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Sweet Relief—The authentic, world-renowned Rocky Ford cantaloupe made a comeback in 2012. Rocky Ford growers invested nearly $1 million in upgraded safety procedures and implemented a public relations and marketing campaign to build consumer confidence after the listeria outbreak in 2011.

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Colorado’s international agricultural exports are projected to surpass $2 billion in 2013, doubling from just over $1 billion in 2009. Beef is the primary driver of this trend, but wheat, vegetables and feed grains also make a sizeable contribution. Colorado food and agricultural products were imported by buyers from 115 countries during 2012, with Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, and South Korea accounting for 79 percent of Colorado’s ag exports as of September 2012.

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Headwaters | Fall 2012

Japan South Korea

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Colorado Products Reach A Global Market

15%

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Greg Hobbs

On his 30-acre farm, Dan Hobbs grows organic vegetable and seed crops, including nine varieties of garlic.

option to curb population, then it has to be an option to figure out how we produce more food,” Fankhauser says. Fortunately, the greater non-irrigated mass of the state is ideal for range cattle production, says Fankhauser. “Cattle here are healthier; they’re robust; they’re in great shape.” In fact, Colorado’s 2.6 million beef cattle and calves comprise the nation’s 10th largest cattle herd.

Hovering just under $2 billion out of national export sales of $163 billion, Colorado still doesn’t play a tremendous role in meeting global food demands. Still, agricultural exports provide more stability in commodity prices and offer a big growth opportunity for the state’s producers, making them vital to Colorado’s economy. “We’ll never feed the world,” says Larsen. “But in key sectors, such as beef, wheat, potatoes and millet, we are already one of the primary exporters.

We can be a global market leader.”

As for meeting in-state demand, Graff says, “It’s not Colorado farmers feeding Colorado households on some sort of oneto-one relationship. Colorado farmers grow

The Colorado Proud label, launched by the Colorado Department of Agriculture in 1999, provides product recognition for locally produced foodstuffs in grocery stores and restaurants.

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for the world and Colorado consumers buy from the world. There’s no exclusivity.” National and local food sourcing, at least in traditional large grocery stores, shows up merely as a cost factor. When a grocery conglomerate can import tomatoes more reliably and at a lower cost than purchasing locally, they’ll import. But while produce is in season in Colorado grocery stores typically source locally because it’s inexpensive.

The same concept applies internationally—Colorado produces beef at a lower cost than Japan or Korea because of our vast farm and ranchland, says Larsen. “They put a 40 percent import duty on our beef, and we still are in the Japanese market for a price lower than the Japanese-produced beef.”

When it comes to international imports, Colorado is largely importing products that add to quality of life, Larsen says. We obtain a lot of our fresh produce in the winter by importing it along with other year-round commodities like seafood, coffee and liquor.

It’s more difficult to track interstate trade, but Pritchett and Graff are working on collecting that information so researchers, the public and the state all have a better understanding of those flows of goods and services. Graff is also working with Gov. John Hickenlooper’s administration on an economic development initiative called “Colorado Blueprint.” His studies will inform decision-making and help make agriculture a more intentional component of the state’s economic development effort.

The Value of Water Agricultural markets and impacted stakeholders trickle down from those international and national markets to the local level—to the Dan Hobbs-variety organic growers and

Colorado Foundation for Water Education

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to larger-scale producers who are planting and watering seeds or purchasing feeder crops to fatten livestock. Markets also impact rural communities across the state— more than half of Colorado’s counties are considered “ag-dependent.” In 24 of Colorado’s 64 counties, one in every 10 jobs is tied to agriculture; in 12 counties, it’s one in 43. “All these communities are connected to agriculture—it’s the base,” Hobbs says.

“Look at a community like Ordway where a lot of the water has been sold out—it’s struggling mightily.”

Water for irrigation is key to much of the economic activity in Colorado’s rural communities. “Water is an important factor of production—you just wouldn’t be able to produce the same amount of crop or types of crops without that irrigation water,” Pritchett says.

In 2006, Pritchett captured the value of irrigation water by studying the amount of economic activity generated by an acre of irrigated farmland. Average values ranged from about $1,235 per irrigated acre in the San Luis Valley to $335 per acre in the Arkansas Valley, but fluctuated widely depending on whether land was devoted to high-value crops or crops requiring substantial inputs. A 2012 report by the National Agricultural Statistics Service cites that an acre of irrigated cropland in Colorado is worth an average of $3,160 in real estate value alone, while an acre of non-irrigated cropland is worth $880, on average.

Other research has attempted to take into account more ancillary benefits of agricultural water, such as created wetlands.

A 2012 study of the North Poudre Irrigation Company’s 56.8-acre area in northeastern Colorado found that 92 percent of the total

yourwatercolorado.org

Bryan Kelsen Dan Hobbs raises a floodgate over one of the lateral canals that irrigate his farm, an appropriate metaphor for the work he is doing in Pueblo County to unleash the cooperative power of a network of growers in reaching local markets.

wetland area in the region was a result of agricultural water storage and seepage through unlined irrigation ditches. Many consider that leakage to be waste water, says CSU wildlife biology professor Rick Knight. “Very few Coloradans appreciate that it’s creating wetlands; it’s probably creating the majority of wetlands in Colorado,” he says.

A similar study identified 1,400 acres of irrigation-dependent wetlands in the Boxelder Creek watershed nearby. The study found those wetlands added $2,200 per acre of value annually, for both the environmental and recreational benefits provided.

The wetlands added some value simply by improving water quality, and additional value if hunting, fishing or bird watching was also available. “This study provides evidence of the potential magnitude of the benefits Colorado gets indirectly from agriculture,” says agricultural economist Chris Goemans, who worked on the study. “We need to consider what impacts moving water out of agriculture will have and how it will affect us.”

Shifting Dynamics “It’s going to be a pretty different looking landscape in the countryside here in about 30 years,” Hobbs predicts. Midscale farms are beginning to disappear as farm size grows both bigger and smaller.

To keep up with production costs, large farms are expanding further by amassing other agricultural parcels, while some land is being divided for small farms, which are becoming popular among people new to agriculture such as young people without a family farming legacy, hobby farmers and retirees.

At the same time, the local food movement has been expanding. “People are in-

terested in where their food comes from.

There are all kinds of new opportunities,” says Hobbs, citing the development of new cooperatives, which he helps foster with the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union.

According to Bill Stevenson, RMFU cooperative specialist, 68 cooperative projects in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico are currently underway with RMFU support. Cooperatives are user-owned, user-operated and user-benefiting organizations, Stevenson says. They allow food producers to market their fresh products in ways that are more efficient than what is otherwise available to them. That may be through a cooperative market, through a truck service that delivers fresh produce from farmgate to market, or through some other mechanism.

“The basic goal is to strengthen these family farm businesses and knit them together in such a way that they can build an economy of scale,” Hobbs says. “The reason for these co-ops is to do together what you cannot do alone.”

The state’s Colorado Proud labeling program, launched in 1999, has also been providing marketing opportunities for producers and making it easier for consumers to identify local products. Participating producers brightly label their product with the Colorado Proud logo and are listed on the website so that consumers can easily identify Coloradogrown and produced products when grocery shopping or visiting restaurants.

Despite increasing consumer demand for locally produced foodstuffs, water for irrigation will likely continue to be sold out of agriculture to satisfy thirsty cities, though probably not in a quick horror-flick fashion.

“Agriculture still accounts for 85 to 90 perHeadwaters | Fall 2012

cent of water withdrawals in the state. Going down to zero, that’s hard to fathom,” Graff says. “Going down to 75 percent is going to be painful enough, and that’s probably the more realistic picture.”

What water remains will be more expensive, and it won’t make sense to irrigate lower value crops. “Those will be the acres we’ll lose, so we’ll have fewer irrigated acres of wheat and sorghum,” Pritchett says. “The values of fruits and vegetables and acres of those will stay constant—probably increase as population increases. You can’t have those crops without irrigation.”

The loss will extend beyond a change in production patchwork—it will disproportionately injure Colorado’s small rural towns.

“So much of what they do has an agricultural pace to it,” Pritchett says. “You can’t replace the intensity of activity you have with irrigated agriculture with dryland agriculture.

There would be less demand for goods and less demand for services in small towns.

Those towns would suffer.”

Fankhauser also warns against moving too much water out of agriculture too quickly: “We don’t want to arrive at a time where we recognize that we need agriculture—that we need food—and the infrastructure that it takes to produce it is gone. We shouldn’t be talking about water leaving agriculture. We should be talking about how agriculture is going to need more water than it has now.

We’re behind.”

No matter what, we will continue to be the spigot of the American West—we have the mountains, Graff says. “It’s a question of how much water there is in any given year, and then the competition with alternative uses of water. Those are social questions for society to answer.” q 19

A Public Resource With a Private Right to Use

by Allen Best

Frank A. Eckhardt Jr. planted onions and sugar beets last spring with confidence.

Studying the fast-receding snows along the Continental Divide, he was more leery about corn and pinto beans.

Soft-spoken and gentle in demeanor, Eckhardt farms 3,500 acres along the South Platte River near Peckham, a wink of a place 10 miles south of Greeley. The land’s water is supplied primarily by two mutual irrigation companies, Farmers Independent and Western Mutual.

Snowmelt from the mountains delivers the water to both. By July, the lower South Platte River consists primarily of treated wastewater effluent from metropolitan Denver and return flows from irrigated fields upstream. Occasional rainstorms spike the flows.

Relatively senior water rights benefit Eckhardt and his two sons plus their neighbors, who together are the primary stakeholders in the two companies. Their most senior rights date to Nov. 20, 1865, when the first ditch of Farmers Independent was completed. That date makes it 10th in priority on the South Platte River below Denver. Two miles farther down, the slightly newer Western Mutual Ditch is 13th.

Holding more senior rights gives the Eckhardts high confidence of obtaining sufficient water to irrigate their land. Seniors such as the Eckhardts can “call” for their water and get it, assuming they do not impair the ability of an even more senior water right holder to draw water from the river. Those who claimed later rights, whether upstream or downstream, have lower or junior priorities. They can draw only after the rights of the seniors have been satisfied, making their water security a bit more tenuous.

Planting in 2011, a record year for runoff, was an act of common sense. But 2012 was the complete opposite. The little snow that fell last winter had mostly melted by April. To reduce their risk, the Eckhardts left 700 acres of their rented land fallow. But they went ahead and planted corn, to be used as feed for livestock, and after Memorial Day, pinto beans. It was a decision they would come to rue.

The Roots of Prior Appropriation Farming has occurred in Colorado for at least a millennium, probably longer. The Ancestral Pueblo people, sometimes called the Anasazi, held back rainwater for drinking water use in at least four reservoirs in what is now Mesa Verde National Park. Much later, irrigation occurred in conjunction with posts operated by the Bent brothers and other merchants of fur.

Matthew Staver (2)

Pick up a copy of the book “Colorado Water Law for Non-Lawyers” by P. Andrew Jones and Tom Cech, or access the Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Water Law at www.yourwatercolorado.org, to learn more about the prior appropriation doctrine.

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Colorado Foundation for Water Education

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yourwatercolorado.org

In 1852, Mexican-American settlers put into service the San Luis People’s Ditch, the oldest continuously operated ditch in Colorado.

Discovery of gold along the Front Range spawned the rush of 1859 and the rapid expansion of irrigated agriculture. While most newcomers sifted riverbeds with pans, a few hundred saw a surer path by taking up the plow. Among these new farmers was Frank Eckhardt’s grandfather, Robert A. Eckhardt. After two years in Black Hawk, he and other settlers in 1861 furrowed the sandy loam along the South Platte into ditches, using horses, mules and no small amount of their own labor. In later decades, the Farmers and Western ditches were enlarged and expanded. With each expansion came applications for new, and more junior, water rights as necessary to irrigate additional lands.

Colorado’s body of law governing water use, called the doctrine of prior appropriation, differs altogether from riparian law, which was adopted in western Europe and then the eastern United States. Riparian law recognizes owners of land across which streams and rivers flow as those who can make use of that water, within reason. Prior appropriation, on the other hand, assumes public ownership of the water independent of the property it crosses. An appropriation from a state water court grants the right to use a portion of the public’s resource for a beneficial use in a specific amount and location as specified in a legal decree. While greater rainfall creates a thicket of rivers, creeks and streams in the East, aridity more broadly prevails in the American West, shaping new attitudes about allocation of a scarce resource.

Influenced by Spanish miners, the new attitudes and laws first took root in the mining camps of California. A decade later, they were transplanted to Gregory Gulch, between what later became Central City and Black Hawk, and other early camps in Colorado. Rules for water use paralleled those of mining claims. Mining claims had to be worked, and water had to be used. No hoarding, no speculating was allowed. In cases where the use of water by one miner might affect another miner’s use, the older or prior use had priority. And finally, water could be conveyed away from the riparian area. Indeed, other landowners had to accommodate these conveyances, whether they be wooden flumes or—as became the case with agriculture—wide ditches. These principles from the mining camps were adopted by the territorial legislature in 1861 and then put into the Constitution at statehood in 1876.

Studying the mining camp and agricultural laws, David B. Schorr detects a deep-seated egalitarianism rooted in Jacksonian democracy and Jefferson’s concept of the yeoman farmer. Rules were all aimed at stifling monopoly control and speculation. Water was reserved for those who put it to actual use. This was not socialism, says Schorr, a law professor whose academic research has focused on Colorado water law. Rather, the reformers saw private property, widely distributed, “as a bulwark of liberty and human dignity.”

Mutual ditch companies, a clear articulation of this yeoman and egalitarian impulse, differ little from the acequias—community-operated waterways used in Spain and its colonies—including those in the American Southwest. They are rooted in communal effort and reward.

Members of the Farmers Independent Ditch, for example, must pay $150 annually per share owned, where a share is about 22 acre feet of water. The money is used primarily to pay a ditch rider, somebody who tracks and administers water allocation during irrigation season and burns weeds and in other ways maintains the infrastructure. Sometimes that infrastructure must be replaced. Two years ago, owners were assessed $24 per share to replace a diversion on the South Platte River that had stood since the 1930s.

Frank Eckhardt farms land that has been in the family since 1860. He holds senior water rights that give him an advantage in dry years; still, in a year like 2012, all bets are off.

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Monthly meetings last four to five hours, much of the discussion focused on water filings located upstream in metropolitan Denver. Attorney bills are rising. “Anymore, we have so many court cases,” says Eckhardt, who is president of both the Farmers Independent and the Western Mutual ditch companies. “We have to protect our senior rights.”

Some of the shares are now owned by individuals or entities who will want to move the water right to a diversion point elsewhere, probably near Denver. Agricultural water rights constitute most of the longest-held water rights in Colorado. As such, cities want to buy or lease those rights, because they have the highest priorities, an important consideration in lowwater years. Already, a few farms along the Farmers Independent and Western Mutual ditches have been dried up, and Eckhardt expects that trend to accelerate, creating challenges for continued operations by remaining farmers.

Changes in use of water rights can be made permanently through a state water court process or sometimes temporarily through an administrative process overseen by the state water engineer. Because a change in the use of a water right can affect other water users along a river, such changes can be blocked if other senior or junior users can show injury.

But it takes time to sort out the implications

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of these changes. That’s one reason Colorado has so many water attorneys.

Expansion of Infrastructure Early on, Colorado lawmakers authorized legislation leading to the establishment of irrigation districts to undertake the more ambitious jobs of creating reservoirs and constructing elaborate canals to deliver water to benches above river valleys. Later yet came the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District and the Colorado River Water Conservation District, followed by other water conservancy and conservation districts, all with the power to finance the construction and operation of reservoirs to further agricultural production.

During the 20th century, the federal government played a major role in the significant expansion of agriculture in Colorado. Among the first projects resulting from the Reclamation Act of 1902 was a tunnel to allow delivery of water from the Gunnison River to the flowering orchards and fertile fields around Montrose and Delta. The Colorado-Big Thompson and Fryingpan-Arkansas projects were even larger in scope, yielding Colorado River Basin water to farms of the South Platte and Arkansas valleys respectively.

Reservoir storage better allows farmers to ride out droughts. As such, reservoir water is very valuable, as has been evident in drought years of this decade. The value can

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be seen in the desert-like environment of the North Fork of the Gunnison Valley. The first farmers and fruit growers to the Paonia and Hotchkiss area tapped directly from Leroux and other creeks. But after the burst of spring runoff, little water remains. To remedy their needs, water is detained atop Grand Mesa in the Overland Reservoir and other impoundments. A winding, 33-mile-long ditch that drops 4,000 feet in elevation delivers water for roughly 60 days each summer to apple growers and other shareholders. This year, the water ran short—with a probable 20 percent reduction in the apple harvest on Rogers Mesa.

Irrigators in the North Fork Valley also benefit from the ability of Blue Mesa, Paonia and other federal reservoirs to release water to fulfill calls from senior users downstream.

Efficiency and reasonable use, taking no more water than what is required to achieve a task, are at the core of Colorado water law. Irrigators continue to innovate to wring out efficiencies. Those efficiencies matter even more in drought years.

In northern Colorado, the Cache La Poudre Management Company delivers water to 35,000 acres that grow corn, carrots, onions, barley, and other vegetables and grains. The ditch, located near Windsor, has a senior right of 1870—very good, but not quite good enough for everybody this year. Installation of remotely controlled

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Matthew Staver

�e world�s �ost precious resource deserves a law �r� �ocused only on water

Frank Eckhardt and sons, David (left) and Steven (right), harvested 450 acres of sugar beets this year, with an estimated 15 percent drop in production due to irrigation water shortages.

headgates has helped improve efficiencies, stretching water supplies up to a day or two during irrigation, says Dale Trowbridge, general manager.

In the North Fork Valley, Hugh Sanburg has also been able to achieve greater efficiency on the Cedar Park Ranch. With other family members, he has 2,400 acres 15 miles northeast of Delta, of which 500 are irrigated to grow alfalfa, grasses and small grains. They have an 1883 decree, which in August was still delivering water, although an 1896 degree had been called out to fulfill the rights of more senior, downstream users. Since Sanburg’s father was born in 1928, that had occurred only twice before.

To improve efficiency and save labor, Sanburg has deployed a terraced irrigation system, with gates every 30 inches that allow better moderation of water with less direct manipulation of siphon pipes. He believes his is the only such system outside Arizona. “It costs a little more up front, but long term, we like to think it pays for itself,” he says.

No Guarantees, Even For Seniors In the South Platte Valley, no short-term solution was available to Eckhardt and his neighbors this year. Many rely upon wells installed beginning in the 1930s that can draw water from aquifers. In the late 1960s, recognizing that wells could also draw down the adjoining river, depriving downstream users with senior rights, Colorado lawmakers instituted change. Subsequent court decisions further clarified the responsibility of state water administrators to curb well pumping by junior users unless they supply sufficient replacement, or augmentation, water to avoid harming seniors.

As corn plants emerged on the Eckhardt

farm, temperatures soared above 100 degrees and winds of 30 miles per hour made the plants thirstier. The Eckhardts had 13 wells, but were legally entitled to use just nine, and then on a limited basis—they have too little augmentation water to run the wells in a water-short year. In June, they and other farmers from Brighton to Greeley and beyond appealed to Gov. John Hickenlooper to allow them to briefly draw a limited amount of water from the aquifers, despite being out of priority. If granted, the action may have also provided relief from flooding basements and crop damage resulting from localized high water tables.

Hickenlooper refused, stating he lacked authority to override the prior appropriation system. Unless it rained, the farmers would get no relief.

“We were just hoping for the skies to open up,” says Eckhardt. A storm delivered threequarters of an inch of rain in early July, but it wasn’t enough. Finally, on July 15, the Eckhardts stopped trying. They quit delivering too little water to 700 acres. The corn, by then waist-high, stayed green another week to 10 days, then began drying up, turning October brown. “It hurt me, and them [his sons], to let something go,” says Eckhardt.

Most hope 2012 was an anomaly that won’t soon be repeated. Still, only in the rarest of years is there enough water here for everything and everybody. The prior appropriation doctrine cannot assure every user of a water supply, but it provides a mechanism to fairly distribute a limited resource, with as much certainty as possible in an arid climate, to those who have established, maintained and used their water rights—which farmers like Frank Eckhardt Jr. and his family have been doing for nearly 150 years. q Headwaters | Fall 2012

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Keeping Water

on the Farm

By Jerd Smith

Most summer nights Chad Schafer has little time to visit. He’s busy going from field to field, setting the tubes that draw water from narrow ditches along Weld County Road 41 and sending it into his fields.

Because of this year’s drought and careful rationing by his irrigation district, Schafer gets his water for just 24 hours twice a week, before it is diverted to another farmer down the line. When the water is on hand, he spends hours before and after the evening meal, managing the water and changing its settings in the fields.

Just as his father before taught him, Schafer is teaching his 10-year-old and 7-year-old sons to set the irrigation tubes in the evening. The 10-year-old is rapidly getting the hang of the work. The 7-year-old, who also loves to be at his father’s side, is good primarily for conversation, Schafer says. But that’s okay, he says. “That’s how they learn.”

The drought is the worst in the region in 10 years and may be a harbinger of a weather pattern that will bring desperately dry periods more often. The prospect of more frequent droughts is worrisome, but it is not the only issue that bothers Schafer. Through the quiet summer evening, as he slowly guides a meticulously kept pick-up along the two-lane country highways, Schafer points to stark, barren fields whose waters have been sold off for spectacular sums to cities up and down the Front Range. Even when the drought is over, this water will never come back.

On one 160-acre parcel he and his father once leased and cultivated every year, Schafer says the water sold for more than $1 million.

Now a handful of homes dot the landscape. Lawns are the only green that remains on these former corn, potato and sugar beet fields.

Despite his carefully groomed farm operation and healthy crops, Schafer, at 39, worries about the coming years and how much of his family’s water future he can control. Since his great grandfather came to Greeley in 1912 from Russia to grow sugar beets, Schafer’s family has been making its living farming. They moved to Gilcrest in the 1940s.

Chad left Gilcrest briefly when he was 19 to go to a nearby junior college. “But I missed it so much, I had to come back,” he says. His father co-signed Chad’s first loan the next year. He rented a nearby field and planted an onion crop, which he was able to successfully harvest and sell. He paid off the loan and hasn’t looked back.

Chad Schafer works with 10-year-old son Cale (near left) and 7-year-old son Colby to change the siphon tubes that fill furrows running between rows of recently planted wheat.

It takes 1.4 acre feet of water to irrigate one acre of corn over a growing season, based on the statewide average. For one acre of hay, it’s 1.9 acre feet—the same amount required by 10 people living in Denver for one year.

Sources: National Resource Conservation Service and Denver Water 24

Matthew Staver

Headwaters | Fall 2012

Moving Water Off the Farm Statewide, though the vast majority of Colorado’s current water supplies go to agriculture, there’s less available than there once was because cities are buying up agricultural water at prices of more than $10,000 an acre foot. Farmers such as Schafer, who would like to buy more land and water, can’t afford those sums. The South Platte Basin is ground zero for these permanent transfers. With more than 900,000 acres of irrigated lands, the South Platte is the state’s largest irrigated agricultural economy, dwarfing the 300,000plus acres of irrigated land in the Arkansas Basin. It’s also home to metro Denver.

The story of how the South Platte Basin’s agricultural water is shifting to urban uses is told clearly in the water records of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. In 1957, the district first began distributing the water it brings from the headwaters of the upper Colorado on the West Slope through the Alva B. Adams Tunnel into the South Platte Basin. Back then, 85 percent of its water was owned by farmers.

The district, which serves Larimer, Boulder, Weld, Broomfield, Logan, Morgan, Sedgwick and Washington counties, was home to just 150,000 people.

Fast forward 55 years. Now just 34 percent of that water is owned by farmers and 850,000 people populate the district. Two new storage projects the district wants to build will help quench the thirst of such cities as Broomfield, Erie and Greeley, but it’s unlikely any new supplies will flow back to dried-up farms. “Those projects will help slow down the transfer of agricultural water to cities,” says Northern Water spokesman Brian Werner. “But now we have to be as creative as we can with the water we have left.”

Todd Doherty, who works for the state’s water policy arm, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, agrees. In 2004, the board completed its Statewide Water Supply Initiative, identifying for the first time how much water each of Colorado’s eight major river basins controlled, how that water was used, and how much water each region would need in the future for cities, farms and industry. The study revealed dramatic shortages among fast-growing cities. With nearly all of Colorado’s water supplies already claimed, those cities are looking at nearby farms to help bridge the gaps in their water supply portfolios. In the South Platte Basin, where the Schafers farm, nearly one-third of irrigated farms and ranches will be dried up in the next 30 years if Colorado cannot find better ways to partner with farms so water can be shared, rather than removed permanently. The same scenario is likely to play out in other parts of the state. In the Arkansas Basin, for instance, some 73,000 irrigated acres could be dried up.

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100 YEARS 1912-2012

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Toward the Win-Win Since 2007, lawmakers have authorized the CWCB to spend $4 million on studies and pilot projects testing alternatives to permanent water transfers that could meet cities’ needs while keeping water on farms. Several such programs are underway, though in some cases, implementation is bumping up against the confines of Colorado water law, says Doherty. The dynamic of return flows, where some irrigation water has historically returned to the stream to satisfy water right holders farther downstream, for example, has complex implications when it comes to enacting change.

One of the goals of the pilot projects is to determine whether Colorado’s water laws need to be amended in order to make temporary water transfers easier to implement, while protecting the rights of existing water right owners.

One high-profile effort is the Super Ditch in the Arkansas Basin. The cooperative ditch is actually a legal entity that binds the water supplies and delivery systems of seven irrigation companies. The conglomerate will allow farmers who own shares in those ditch companies to fallow lands in dry years and lease their unused water back to cities such as Fountain, outside Colorado Springs. Under temporary authorization from the state, the pilot was allowed to begin this summer, but not without dispute.

Tri-State Generation and Transmission, along with several irrigation companies with systems downstream of the Super Ditch, challenged the project in water court, concerned that their own water rights—and ability to fulfill them—would be harmed, possibly through transit losses or evaporation.

Tri-State, a large power cooperative that serves 44 rural co-ops in Colorado, believes the state exceeded its authority and wants the Super Ditch to go through a full-fledged court case before the program begins. Lee Boughey, senior manager of public affairs for Tri-State, says the company doesn’t oppose the concept of rotational fallowing, but wants the program fully vetted before it’s allowed to operate.

Jay Winner, general manager of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District and of the Super Ditch, says that’s exactly why the pilot is necessary—to test the project’s viability. Legal challenges or no, Winner says he isn’t going away. He believes water leasing and rotational fallowing is the future of Colorado water and says projects like the Super Ditch provide an opportunity for farmers to generate income from their water supplies just as they do from their crops. Such an option was unheard of 50 years ago when the only legal mechanism for cities to access farm water was to buy it permanently and remove it from the land. Known as “buy and dry,” this crippled rural farm communities in places like the Arkansas Basin.

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Crowley County, for instance, once had a thriving agricultural economy. But early purchases by cities left the county with so little water that its farm economy failed. Now the county is one of the poorest in Colorado and the nation, with per capita income of just $18,966 and a poverty rate of 21 percent, according to U.S. Census data.

Those early, painful events, however, are helping inform Colorado’s modern approach to sharing agricultural water, with cities up and down the Front Range putting money into researching options alongside state agencies and nonprofits.

Southeast of Denver, the city of Parker is backing an innovative program in which farmers use regulated deficit irrigation to purposefully under-irrigate their fields while maintaining a crop yield that, while reduced, is economically justified. The saved water can be put into the river and credited back to cities that in turn pay farmers for the new supplies. “So far they’re seeing about a 30 percent water savings on corn and alfalfa,” Doherty says, “and they’re still getting a crop that is profitable.”

One of the challenges with regulated deficit irrigation, however, is in the record keeping the state must do to track how much water is applied, how much is saved, and how much is delivered to new users. “It’s going to be difficult to administer because the water commissioner can’t just go by a field [under deficit irrigation] and say, ‘Okay, it’s fallowed.’ The administration piece is the biggest hurdle there,” says Doherty.

Another initiative aimed at sharing irrigation water with cities is a broad-based look at water banking. Here such entities as the Colorado River Water Conservation District, The Nature Conservancy, the state of Colorado and Front Range water utilities, among others, are evaluating existing reservoirs, such as the new Lake Nighthorse outside Durango, to see if adequate space exists for farmers to store water they might save via fallowing or deficit irrigation. Such water, if it can be harvested properly, could help cities stave off the need to build new reservoirs or to purchase more agricultural water outright.

A water bank could also store saved water that could be released into the Colorado River to satisfy demands from downstream states during dry years, ensuring municipalities’ high country diversions could continue.

Dan Birch, deputy general manager of the Colorado River District, has been leading the water banking work. The going isn’t easy. Talks have been underway with various users for five years. Birch estimates that given the skepticism and fear among water right holders, it could easily take another five to 10 years to create a functioning program. In the meantime, the River District recently completed a study evaluating probable supply and demand for the water bank: It estimates demand for 300,000 to 400,000

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acre feet of water with roughly 1 million acre feet of potential supply annually.

But unlike the Front Range, whose growers raise crops such as corn that can be easily adapted to fallowing, the West Slope’s more predominant orchards, vineyards and alfalfa hay fields are ill-suited to such programs. The study showed the West Slope on its own could derive only about 80,000 acre feet of water via rotational fallowing programs. “It’s a different beast over here,” says Birch. “But we’re going to have to find new mechanisms or cities will have no choice but to ‘buy and dry.’”

One potential legal mechanism that combines protection of agricultural lands along with irrigation water is a new tack on conservation easements. Easements are legal tools that give landowners tax credits in exchange for agreeing not to develop their lands. Now the state and others are looking at whether conservation easements that tie water to those same lands could be involved in rotational fallowing programs.

Farms, for instance, whose lands are protected from development via easements could agree to fallow their fields in alternating years and lease that water to cities in exchange for income.

Temporary fallowing could also be used for farmers to help fellow farmers. The Yampa Valley, for example, is one of the few regions in Colorado where irrigated agriculture

may actually grow—by as much as 40,000 acres, according to the Statewide Water Supply Initiative. But rather than building a new reservoir to capture additional early season runoff for farmers, The Nature Conservancy is helping fund an experimental rotational fallowing program.

The idea, according to Taylor Hawes, the organization’s Colorado River Program director, is for water-rich farmers at the top of the river to fallow hay fields in alternating years and send the saved water downstream to ranchers in the lower valley who need additional water. Along the way, the Yampa River’s fish and wetlands will benefit as more water stays in the stream. Farmers would be paid for the water they send down the line.

Lest the Farms Go The Colorado Agricultural Water Alliance (CAWA), comprised by leaders of agricultural organizations from around the state, has met with both farmers and municipal water users as well as legislators and members of a statewide subcommittee on alternatives to permanent transfers. One thing that’s become evident: Both sides would prefer control.

Where municipalities would feel more security through purchasing water from farmers and leasing it back to them in dry years, agricultural stakeholders prefer ideas akin to the Super Ditch, where cities contract with an irrigation company or district to provide water

Headwaters | Fall 2012

on a temporary or rotating basis. “Instead of buying an individual’s water—that can put them out of business—it wouldn’t have to be the same farmers giving up water every year,” explains Charlie Bartlett, a producer in Merino, near Sterling, and chair of CAWA. Bartlett and other members of CAWA want to keep people thinking about the big picture and working together. “We all need each other in this state. I provide food that I produce, but I also need medical care, attorneys, all kinds of other goods and services that the people in the cities provide,” says Bartlett. “At the same time, much of the water we use on the farm goes back to cities, just in a different form. Milk, for example, is 80 to 90 percent water. Are these things that we’re willing to give up?”

As cities, industries and farmers look for new ways to use existing supplies, water engineering experts say a tremendous amount of research and testing of crops and hydrological systems lies ahead. Currently, any time the designated use of water changes, it has to go through water court, where engineers determine how much is actually available to be transferred. Farmers who save water through efficiency measures, for example, are currently prohibited from transferring the saved water to a municipality unless they can prove actual savings in crop water consumption, rather than overall application.

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Matthew Staver

Chad Schafer stands amid a failed corn crop spanning 60 acres, in which he had invested nearly $18,000 in seed, fertilizer and labor expenses at the start of the 2012 season.

Deriving verifiable data is complicated and involves analyzing historical crop and water diversion records, among other things. Those data can vacillate widely from region-to-region and from year-to-year. Depending on available records and engineering studies, the effort to quantify the water legally available to be transferred can also vary dramatically. This kind of uncertainty could be sharply reduced with better science and technology and perhaps changes to Colorado water law, Doherty says.

In the Arkansas Basin, engineers are developing a model that will help standardize and improve calculations on variables such as how much water a particular crop uses and how much water returns to the stream after it is applied to the land. “We have a topnotch group of engineers sitting down and

really trying to work through that,” Doherty says. “If this is successful, you could have a model in which you could punch in some input and get return flows and consumptive use quantified without going through a huge, complicated court case.”

“We hope Colorado water law is flexible enough to have these things occur,” Doherty adds. “But at the same time we want to make sure that water right holders are protected from injury. There may need to be a legislative fix.”

In the interim, farmers such as Chad Schafer continue to see less land they can afford to purchase outright or to lease.

Schafer could earn more money, grow his operations and provide a legacy for his own children if he could expand his farm. But an 80-acre irrigated farm nearby sold recently

for $1 million, he says—a price that is out of his reach.

Schafer also sees few young farmers coming into his community. “There is only one other guy I know of here who is younger than me, and my dad is getting ready to retire.”

If Colorado is able to slow the loss of irrigated agricultural lands, farmers who survive will operate in a world where food is becoming a more and more valuable commodity and that should translate into higher crop prices. For the multi-generation Schafer farmers, that scenario could provide a way forward as long as their water remains close to home.

Schafer says the temptation to sell for many people is simply too great to resist. “As long as I control it, we will not sell. But for a lot of people, they see the dollar signs.” q

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Arkansas Valley pinto beans

The Ever-Evolving Farmer Why Colorado’s producers must adapt to a more tenuous water supply and how they’re making it work

Bryan Kelsen (2)

By Joshua Zaffos

As the calendar turned to 2012, Colorado’s farmers and ranchers resumed their annual winter sport: watching mountain snowpack measurements and reservoir levels. A dry winter did little to bolster existing state water supplies.

For weeks, heavy winds raked the eastern plains and western mesas, sapping moisture from the ground. Even though many reservoirs and lakes contained sufficient water, observers saw early indications of drought, reminiscent of the harsh conditions of 2002. Worst fears became reality as winter turned to spring, and then most of Colorado experienced its hottest summer on record, dating back to 1895.

Headwaters | Fall 2012

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Bryan Kelsen (2)

Along the Bessemer Ditch near Pueblo, Tom Rusler, whose family grows a mix of onions, pinto beans and corn and also raises cattle, was among many agricultural producers who didn’t take anything for granted. After assessing the snowpack, reservoir levels and projected streamflows in the Arkansas River Basin, Rusler decided to fallow 30 percent of his family’s fields.

“We learned from the last decade, and we planned ahead,” says Rusler.

Rollbacks in planting during dry years reduce short-term crop losses in a profession defined by its risks and unexpected costs. Longer-term adaptations in farming practices, crop rotations, water use and irrigation technology are helping farmers use water more efficiently, while innovative new partnerships are also exploring how farming can persist in the face of limited water supplies. Some strategies move farther afield: Rusler’s past investments in an onion packing shed and equipment for processing and packaging beans have supported his family through the lean times.

Lessons for Colorado farmers and ranchers haven’t come easy—or cheap. Nor have they all come soon enough to keep some farmers in business. In addition to lingering drought conditions, increased demands for water from communities and industry have combined to diminish supplies for irrigated farms. Amid the pressure, some farmers have sold off water rights to cities or energy companies, while others, including Rusler and his family, are forging ahead into the parched future.

“We know there’s interest [in buying our water], and there are days when you think about that,” Rusler says, “but we’re so busy with how we make our living, we just keep our nose to the grindstone.”

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Tom Rusler (above) and harvest time on the Rusler Ranch near Pueblo (top).

Limiting Factors Farmers across the state share Rusler’s shrewd outlook and stick-to-itiveness; such an attitude is one more crop raised through tough times in a rapidly urbanizing landscape. Still, irrigated agriculture is already facing likely declines. Steady population growth is continually increasing communities’ demands for firm water supplies. At the same time, the expanding oil and natural gas industry is leasing surplus water that cities have stocked up, competing with farms that frequently lease the same supplies at a much cheaper rate.

Legal obligations to downstream states also constrain resources. Interstate water compacts and endangered species recovery plans mandate certain river flows reach beyond state lines. Additionally, groundwater wells in the Rio Grande, Republican and South Platte river basins have been shown to affect streamflows, leading to pumping restrictions and increasing demand from farmers seeking a more sustainable water source.

Such factors are partially responsible for the over-allocation of nearly every river system in Colorado, meaning that water rights held by expectant users exceed the actual supply of water available during most years.

Growing cities have turned to a “buy and

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dry” strategy in recent decades—purchasing farmers’ water rights and drying up agricultural lands to prepare for increasing demand.

Such practices have played a role in drying up at least 400,000 acres—about 12.5 percent—of the state’s irrigated farmland during the last decade, though other factors, such as housing developments, have also contributed. Even though agriculture still accounts for approximately 86 percent of the state’s water diversions, both city utility managers and rural families now generally recognize that buy and dry is threatening the state’s agricultural legacy, food production and open space. The situation is especially dire throughout eastern Colorado: The South Platte Basin, which covers much of northeastern Colorado and the Denver metro area, counts nine of the state’s top 10 agriculturalproduction counties, while the southeastern Arkansas Basin is the state’s next most significant agricultural region. These same regions are projected to house the majority of incoming residents.

Scaling Back Considering the outlook, it’s little wonder that farmers choose to focus on their field labors. But ignoring problems or resisting change isn’t an option. Families and farm operators have responded to the pressures of shrinking water supplies by updating agricultural practices and water management techniques to stretch their resources. One such shift has been a move away from more water-intensive crops.

In the San Luis Valley, unsustainable groundwater depletions led to restrictions on well pumping, threatening the region’s potato farmers. In response, the local water district instituted a fallowing program that pays farmers to idle fields or cap water use.

“We’re afraid we’re going to run out of water completely,” says Anna Brownell, whose

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family grows certified seed potatoes as the Zapata Seed Company. Brownell, who has recently returned to the farm to work with her father and brother, says the family has conserved water by growing Sudan grass and radishes, instead of barley and wheat, as cover crops while rotating fields between potatoes. By carefully tracking water use during the growing season, the Brownells make sure they don’t exceed their legal share or have to pay for excess pumping.

Operators in the valley who have failed to take similar measures have been forced to abandon potato fields mid-season after running out of water, losing large investments in seeds, fertilizer and labor.

In the South Platte Basin, Dave Dechant farms over 2,000 acres near Fort Lupton.

Impacted by well-pumping restrictions and drought effects over the last decade, Dechant has halted irrigation on several fields and turned to dryland farming on those acres using drought-tolerant crop strains and seeds. After growing mostly alfalfa—which is in high demand from regional dairies—Dechant has tried farming sunflowers and more corn and wheat in recent years since those crops use less water. He has also reduced his production from four to three cuttings of alfalfa.

The adjustments have allowed him to make the most of available supplies, but they’ve also complicated his operations. Fewer cuttings mean less income. Birds feasted on the sunflowers. During the harsh past summer, his dryland crops were a failure. If the dry conditions persist, Dechant says he’ll be forced to plant even less alfalfa and turn off more sprinklers. “I don’t want to sell my water, and I don’t like seeing farm ground dried up to go to the cities,” says Dechant, but he admits he’s contemplated that outcome. Even if plans for new water storage in northeastern Colorado come to fruition, he

Dave Dechant farms near Ft. Lupton.

concludes, “I don’t see too bright a future for irrigated farming on the Front Range.”

Researchers, however, are working to alter that outlook.

Experimental Savings A few miles outside the city of Greeley, where city blocks give way to cornfields and gas drilling pads, Tom Trout leads studies on U.S. Department of Agriculture experimental farmland. Trout, research leader for the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Water Management Research Unit in Ft. Collins, has managed the agency’s 50-acre Limited Irrigation Research Farm in Greeley since 2006. “We believe the limiting resource in the future is going to be water,” Trout says. “We’re trying to figure out how to sustain productive irrigated agriculture with less water. It’s a tall order.”

Trout and other researchers have planted corn, wheat, pinto beans and sunflowers— common regional crops—and monitored how they’ve responded to different tilling practices as well as irrigation levels and techniques. Colorado State University scientists working on-site are also examining how different combinations and rotations of crops affect field productivity. CSU soil scientist Neil Hansen has demonstrated that an alfalfa farmer can use limited irrigation in

spring and fall and let the crop go dormant in the summer and still achieve viable production. Such results are helping land managers optimize outcomes using less water, a strategy called deficit irrigation.

Instrumentation, such as infrared thermometers and weather stations, can track crop stress and measure temperatures, sunlight, wind and humidity to inform what conditions trigger harvest declines or increases in weeds. Trout says he can’t yet offer prescriptions for deficit irrigation, but the research is already influencing on-theground operations around the state.

One major finding so far has been the benefit of strip tilling—a practice that disturbs a small percentage of the soil while leaving most of the past season’s crop residue behind in the form of cornstalks and wheat stubble. Prior to the 2002 drought, most farmers carried out conventional tillage programs, fully clearing fields of leftover vegetation. Thorough tilling was easier for controlling weeds and managing ditches, especially since most fields were historically watered through flood irrigation where water is released in field-length furrows. While generally considered inefficient, flood irrigation dates back to the first generation of farmers who helped settle Colorado.

Strip tilling or no-till practices save labor and reduce fuel consumption and equipment wear, protect against erosion and crop stress, and increase crop yields. The leftover organic materials temper the sun’s heat and reduce evaporation and runoff while increasing soil health. Strip tilling also captures and retains field moisture from snow in the winter and rain in the spring, which supports early season crop growth, so farmers can save their allocated water for later in the season, Trout says.

Many farmers across the state have adopted strip tilling and no-till strategies durContinued on page 34

Headwaters | Fall 2012

31

Matthew Staver

In 2008, Americans spent less than 9.6 percent of their disposable income on food (compared to 18.6 percent in 1955). The share farmers receive hovers at 19 cents of every dollar. Source: Colorado Farm Bureau

Watering the Fields The three most common methods of irrigation in Colorado are surface, drip and sprinkler. Farmers considering their options are most commonly looking to upgrade from existing surface systems to sprinkler or drip and must consider the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Good irrigation design is essential, along with effective control and management of the irrigation system, if quality crops are to be produced while minimizing water applications.

Surface Irrigation

Drip Irrigation

Best for: Grains, pastures, sugar beets, and deep-rooted crops like alfalfa

Best for: High value crops such as onions, lettuce, sweet corn, and tree crops

Energy Use: Low or no energy requirement

Energy Use: Moderate energy requirement (usually less than sprinklers)

Up-front cost: Âą $250 per acre (higher if the land must be leveled or graded to a suitable slope) Advantages: Least expensive; minimal pressure head requirement; can rapidly get water to stressed crops given water is available; well-suited for most low cash value crops; adaptable to surge methods to improve efficiency; long useful life.

Disadvantages: High labor requirement; difficult to achieve even water distribution; moderate surface evaporation; substantial deep percolation below the root zone especially at the top of the field or in sandy areas; significant surface runoff (surface return flows); more opportunity for water quality problems due to return flows carrying salts, selenium, nutrients and other water-soluble chemicals to streams.

Up-front cost: Âą $1,500 per acre Advantages: Even water distribution; high application efficiency; very low evaporation; no surface runoff; lends itself well to full automation and scientific irrigation scheduling; enables light, frequent irrigations; excellent crop response and higher yield potential; small labor requirement assuming automation; reduced fertilizer losses; dry field surfaces for harvest; direct fertilizer injection is common.

Disadvantages: Requires installation with specialized equipment and a GPS-driven tractor; requires water filtration; limited ability to keep pace with highest crop water needs during warm conditions; more difficult to germinate a crop during the spring; more difficult to intentionally leach damaging salts out of the root zone; spent drip tape must frequently be disposed of; burrowing rodents can damage the system; requires high level of management to achieve long life and operate at high efficiency.

Drip Irrigation

Surface Irrigation

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The center pivot sprinkler was designed in 1949 in Colorado by Frank Zybach. His original idea was to reduce labor requirements and do everything with the center pivot, including harvest. Currently, 47 percent of Colorado’s irrigated land employs center pivot sprinklers.

Source: USDA NASS 2008 Irrigation Survey

To find out more about irrigation technologies and efficiencies and how they can impact streamflows, check out the Colorado Water Institute’s Agricultural Water Conservation Clearinghouse: www.agwaterconservation.colostate.edu.

Center Pivot Sprinkler Irrigation

Best for: Medium and deep-rooted crops such as field corn and alfalfa, sandy or loamy soils Energy Use High energy requirement if pumping required to achieve sufficient pressure Up-front cost: ± $1,000 per acre Advantages: Potential for even water distribution and higher yields; limited runoff; small labor requirement; reduced deep percolation and fertilizer losses; lends itself to scientific irrigation scheduling; enables light, frequent irrigations; fertilizer injection is possible.

Disadvantages: Evaporative losses can be up to 10 percent of applied water; field corners are generally fallowed or about 20 percent of the irrigable acreage; end guns or corner arms can account for some of the loss but create uniformity problems for the rest of the nozzles; operating costs can be high if pumping is required; can increase disease problems in some crops.

Fallowed Field

Fallowing

Fallowing, or taking a field out of production, is the most common approach to free up consumptive use water for leasing programs. Temporary or rotational fallowing can also benefit soil productivity for future harvests. Left barren, however, the soil will be susceptible to wind erosion and weed growth. Farmers may plant sterile sorghum or dryland wheat during temporary fallowing to recoup some of their land’s income potential and provide a protective cover crop.

If the field is to be permanently fallowed, the water right change decree often specifies that a grass cover crop be well established to control weeds.

Pilot leasing and fallowing programs around the state have proposed paying farmers anywhere from $250 to $500 per acre foot of consumptive use water made available to cities.

Meanwhile, energy companies have reportedly paid as much as $3,000 per acre foot to lease agricultural water or extra supplies from cities. An acre foot equals 325,851 gallons.

Center Pivot Sprinkler Irrigation

Sources: CSU Extension, Regenesis Management Group, USDA Agricultural Research Service, and Irrigation Association Graphic courtesy of Regenesis Management Group Headwaters | Fall 2012

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ing the past decade, following the guidance of the USDA, county extension agents and seed companies, including Monsanto. The shift has been enabled by an increase in sprinkler and center pivot irrigation instead of conventional flood irrigation, also improving efficiency and tracking of water use. Technology has played a role, too: Some farmers utilize global positioning system (GPS) software when tilling, spraying or seeding fields to maximize the benefits of strip tilling.

Learning Curve The transition hasn’t been without its challenges. “When you change to new practices, it’s a learning experience,” says Kent Peppler, president of the grassroots Rocky Mountain Farmers Union and a fourth-generation farmer in Mead, a small town near Longmont. Peppler, who raises about 500 acres of corn, wheat and alfalfa, points out that flood irrigation typically allows farmers who recognize crop stress to rapidly release water and boost field moisture during hot periods, while sprinklers can only apply water at a more limited rate. Additionally, installing center pivots is an expensive undertaking without financial assistance.

A fiercer critique from many farmers is that they do not benefit from incentives for more efficient irrigation. In fact, the consequences of greater irrigation efficiency along the lower Arkansas River have been increased

costs to farm and ranch operators.

On about 1,200 acres south of Rocky Ford, Rollie Jacquart has coped with water shortages by planting more sorghum instead of alfalfa and corn. Sorghum uses about one-third less water than corn, Jacquart estimates, but he can still sell the crop to cattle ranches and feedlots.

Jacquart, like many other farmers, has installed center pivots on some of his fields, but says the move is about saving labor, not water. Because sprinklers apply water more efficiently to crops than flooding, less water percolates deeper into the ground to eventually return to the river system to be reused. That presents a problem for state water administrators who are responsible for sending a certain volume of water downstream to Kansas under the terms of an interstate water compact and related lawsuit.

The river system—and others in the state— relies on those return flows to fulfill such obligations. Irrigators are caught in the middle, and local water districts and ditch companies must augment shortages by acquiring water from other sources.

Farmers with center pivot sprinklers have borne the brunt of this arrangement. Through a plan with the State Engineer’s Office, which oversees water rights and resources, the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District uses funds collected from irrigators to seasonally buy municipal water stored in

reservoirs and deliver it to the river to boost flows. The plan has led to resentment from farmers, and as reservoir levels drop and supplies decline, it costs more to purchase the water. Rusler, among others, credits the district with doing a good job of administering the system. But farmers and ranchers say the plan discourages them from more widely installing sprinkler systems on all their fields.

Certainly such consequences are among the reasons few farmers have considered even higher-efficiency drip irrigation systems, especially since they are expensive and require significant know-how.

The catch-22 in the Arkansas Basin hasn’t gone unnoticed in other parts of the state either. “The problem you see in the Arkansas Valley is going to move north,” says Peppler, referring to similar downstream obligations for the South Platte and Republican rivers that could trigger a comparable chain of events.

Staying in Business

By August 2012, all of Colorado was suffering drought; severe and extreme conditions dominated 90 percent of the state, and many farmers had exhausted available water supplies. If a dry winter follows, reservoirs will be critically low. Water prices are projected to roughly double in 2013, hiking costs for irrigators.

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do, fourth-generation rancher Carlyle Currier and others endured early summer heat and strong winds that dried out the ground even before cattle were moved onto pastures. Currier, who uses linear, or side-roll, sprinklers to irrigate, says reservoir storage helped dampen the drought’s impact, but he still wound up with half his anticipated hay production and was forced to buy more forage. Widespread drought throughout the West and Midwest also raised the price of hay and other feed crops, further cutting into ranchers’ bottom lines.

Volatile crop yields, commodity prices and other market effects are risks that agricultural producers must live with. Water scarcity and its consequences can exacerbate such risks, and when water, seed, fertilizer or feed costs rise and crop prices drop, the loss in revenue and production ripple through local communities and the state economy.

Many producers protect themselves with crop insurance. Sam Sonnenberg, a Sterlingbased crop insurance agent, says nearly 95 percent of Eastern Plains corn growers carry crop and hail insurance. The federally subsidized coverage provides protection if a catastrophic storm or pest outbreak occurs, or if yields don’t meet farmers’ average production. Due to this year’s drought in Colorado and beyond, the industry is projecting record claims and payments, Sonnenberg says, surpassing last year’s then-record figures.

But livestock and some crops, including alfalfa, are not eligible for the federally subsidized insurance packages, so decisions to plant alternatives to corn—and potentially conserve water—can expose operators to higher risks.

Ever-innovating to remain viable, farmers have teamed up with city representatives, water attorneys, engineers and environmentalists on several proposals to share

water without selling off agricultural supplies, while also creating a new revenue stream for strapped land managers.

A pilot project with irrigators on Lake Canal will take a first crack at temporarily transferring water to the city of Fort Collins and environmental interests through an “interruptible water supply agreement.” The city and The Nature Conservancy will pay $30,000 for 60 acre feet of water from Lake Canal irrigators during certain years, but not more than three years each decade. The agreement, allowed through a 2003 law, will compensate farmers who lease their water without requiring approval from state water courts or compromising their future.

“It’s all about how do we get valid research and, more specifically, transfer water from agriculture to other demands and not enhance the detrimental aspects of buy and dry,” says Stephen Smith, an irrigation engineer with Regenesis Management Group, based in Denver, which is facilitating the project.

Regenesis will monitor the water transfers and impacts to farm fields using software developed in conjunction with the USDA Limited Irrigation Research Farm managed by Tom Trout. The data tracking will add to what researchers know about how fields respond to deficit irrigation, dryland farming or fallowing.

Grants from the Colorado Water Conservation Board are supporting the effort, which is slated to start in 2013. Another CWCB grant project involving Regenesis, in partnership with the Colorado Corn Growers Association, Ducks Unlimited and Aurora Water, is exploring a “flex market” for water, enabling willing irrigators to lease water to cities or other interests without permanently changing the legal use.

The infusion of revenue from water leasing can help families ride out dry times, while mitigating the costs of efficiency measures.

Incoming funds can be used to purchase sprinkler or even drip irrigation systems,

Smith says, and the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, known as EQIP, will provide cost-share financial assistance for such improvements.

For now, many farmers are taking a waitand-see approach; others express skepticism to the benefits of water leasing. One lingering problem is that farmers cannot halt production for a year without losing longterm customers or labor, says Rusler. Neither can fruit growers just turn off water for a season without losing orchards or vineyards.

Those concerns notwithstanding, farmers and ranchers recognize that something has to give. Even if a wet and snowy winter refills reservoirs, financial pressures to sell agricultural water and convert it for municipal or industrial purposes aren’t going to recede. Expansion of existing reservoirs and new storage projects may ease some of the strain, and many farmers and ranchers consider such developments essential. But additional storage won’t halt the growth—or overturn drought and climate trends.

Despite his doubts, Rusler encouraged his sons to follow him into agriculture and they are already helping with operations. This new generation of farmers and ranchers is budding all over the state, hoping to preserve rural family spreads and maintain Colorado’s foodproduction legacy. At the same time, many rural children are choosing careers away from the farm, persuaded by their relatives to steer clear of agriculture’s inherent risks.

Ask 10 farmers for an opinion on the drought-constrained future of agriculture and you’ll hear back at least as many different viewpoints. There is fear and bitterness, along with poise and hope. Those rural streaks of independence also breed resilience and resourcefulness.

“Farmers are unsung heroes when it comes to being businessmen,” says Peppler. “Morning to night, we live this stuff.” q

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Courtesy Eugénie Frerichs/Mesa Winds Farm

Go. See. Do. Act.

Following a successful harvest of Pinot Gris grapes, harvest volunteers received a tasty thank-you from Mesa Winds Farm owners Wink Davis and Max Eisele (first and second from left) in September. The harvest feast highlighted local ingredients and included pairings with Mesa Winds wines.

For the Locavore

Wine and dine on a get-your-hands-dirty traipse through the North Fork Valley

By Cally Carswell For more than a century, the quality of its fruit has been Colorado’s North Fork Valley’s proudest claim to fame: In 1893, not long after the first apple and peach trees were planted here, Paonia fruit took top honors at the Chicago World’s Fair. Like the coal mines up-valley, local agriculture has since experienced booms and busts, driven in large part by the whims of nature. But now, the valley—a collection of pastoral towns located roughly between Carbondale and Grand Junction—is in the midst of a modern renaissance. A reasonable growing season and a community of back-to-the-land folks have transformed the North Fork into a hotspot of small-scale organic farms.

The robust harvests of local growers, and the space for ambitious gardeners to grow their own food, has drawn many urban and ski-town refugees to settle here. And, along with a number of momand-pop vineyards and wineries that have been established in recent years, they’ve seeded a dynamic local food scene and budding agritourism economy.

The valley’s veins—its meandering system of irrigation ditches—are fed by snowmelt from the West Elk Mountains by way of the North Fork of the Gunnison River. Their banks double as walking paths and communal foraging grounds—if you spot shoots of wild asparagus or rogue apricot and peach trees, you’re welcome to help yourself.

SEE: North Fork Valley wines, like the organic produce local growers peddle, are unadulterated: Thanks to the high-altitude and cool climate, grapes here don’t develop excessive sugars that require balancing with artificial acids—the method used to protect most American wines from cloying sweetness. The highest altitude commercial vineyard in North America, Terror Creek Winery, sits at 6,400 feet just outside Paonia and has a tasting room that’s open in the summer and early fall. So does Stone Cottage Cellars, a short drive down the wine trail from Terror Creek, which offers excellent Gerwurztraminer and Syrah. Another must-hit: Alfred Eames Cellars, where winemaker Eames Peterson makes only reds—his personal preference. You must call ahead, but his wine is worth the extra effort: www.westelksava.com.

GO: A food-centric weekend in the North Fork is best started at Fresh & Wyld, a bed and breakfast in a historic farmhouse on Paonia’s edge. Fresh & Wyld chef/owner Dava Parr’s Friday home-style dinners are made from scratch with seasonal ingredients sourced mostly from her own garden and local farms. Fresh & Wyld also delivers weekly produce boxes with tomatoes, greens, brightly-yolked eggs and more to pre-paid customers in the Roaring Fork Valley: www.freshandwyld.com. Mesa Winds, an organic and biodynamic farm, orchard and winery outside of Hotchkiss, offers two-night minimum farm stays, where interested guests are encouraged to roll up their sleeves and lend a hand harvesting fruit or herding sheep. It’s part of their mission to engage people in the farm and educate them about where their food comes from: www.mesawindsfarm.com.

ACT: Bring the North Fork’s small-scale agricultural lifestyle home by planting a few seeds in your own backyard. Hone your skills with classes offered through the local S.O.I.L. (Sustainable Organic Interdependent Living) Academy in beekeeping, soil maintenance, saving seed and permaculture: www.soilacademy.com. Further explore the North Fork Valley’s agricultural scene by connecting with the Valley Organic Growers Association: www.vogaco.org. Or search for additional agritourism opportunities or quality local food offerings across the state through the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s MarketMaker site: co.marketmaker.uiuc.edu. q

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DO: Depending on the season, pick your own cherries, peaches, apples and even basil at Delicious Orchards, located about a mile west of Paonia on Highway 133. Chipping in your own labor will save you a few bucks per pound, and you can grab lunch, a bottle of the orchard’s own European-style hard cider, and award-winning local goat cheese in the farm store and cafe. Camping is also available: www.deliciousorchardstore.com.

Cally Carswell, an editor at Paonia-based High Country News, spent her late-summer free time buried in her tomato harvest.

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Logo RMFU is a progressive, grassroots organization promoting profitable family farmers and ranchers, stewardship of natural resources, healthy food and strong rural communities, through education, legislation, and cooperation. www.rmfu.org

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Northern Water www.northernwater.org Northern Water, created in 1937, manages water resources, provides conservation services, and operates the Colorado-Big Thompson Project and other projects for beneficiaries within its boundaries, which include about 850,000 people and 640,000 irrigated acres.

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