PONCHA PASS — Thousands of feet under irrigated green crop circles, Colorado’s low-income San Luis Valley holds vast water in a super-deep aquifer, and developers 180 miles away on the booming-yet-water-stressed Front Range want to tap it to supply suburban expansion.
San Luis Valley leaders say no way, though the developers point out farmers privately have inquired about selling water rights.
The dominant sentiment: “Over my dead body,” as Ken Salazar, the former U.S. senator and interior secretary whose family has farmed in the valley since before the United States existed, told residents at a public forum this year. Once you let outsiders set up a spigot, Salazar warned, they will hold the power to drain your future dry.
Dangling money, the developers at Renewable Water Resources — which counts former Gov. Bill Owens as a principal — contend that because the urban Front Range is the richest part of the state, it has the potential to give the most to the poorest.
They envision pumping 22,000 acre-feet per year from 14 wells drilled 2,000 feet deep at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, building a pipeline costing $250 million to $600 million, and then pumping water at least 40 miles northward over Poncha Pass toward Front Range cities.
“We need between 300,000 acre-feet and 500,000 acre-feet of new water for the Front Range. The question is: Where’s that going to come from?” said Sean Tonner, managing partner of Renewable Water Resources.
“We can take it out of the Colorado River, but we know what the stresses are there. The Poudre River? The Arkansas? The South Platte is already the most over-appropriated river. Folks are looking at moving water from the Mississippi River back to Colorado,” he said. “These are the lengths people are looking to for adding water.”
Exporting San Luis Valley water would be “fairly easy” compared with other options, Tonner said.
“The economic engine of this state lies between Colorado Springs and Fort Collins,” he said. “What can we do to make a win-win where all of Colorado benefits? It is the right thing to do. It is right for all Colorado. And we would make communities in Saguache County a lot stronger.”
The San Luis Valley retort? “There is no win-win,” said Cleave Simpson, manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and a farmer, who has been traveling statewide to make the case against this trans-basin diversion of water.
Rising tensions and inequities
The intensifying water battle here reflects the rising tensions and inequities across the arid western United States, where water and control over water looms as a primary factor of power. Thirsty Castle Rock, Parker, Castle Pines and other south metro Denver suburbs, where household incomes top $110,000 and development has depleted the groundwater, can marshal assets that dwarf those of farmers in the San Luis Valley, where families’ average income is less than $35,000.
And San Luis Valley farmers already are struggling to keep existing agriculture alive in a changing environment after decades of over-pumping groundwater near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. They have drilled around 10,000 wells that have depleted a shallower “unconfined” aquifer that’s 10 feet to 400 feet down, the supply for more than 80% of the valley’s 500,000 acres of irrigated farmland. This shrinking shallower aquifer is partially connected to the super-deep “confined” aquifer that’s more than 1,000 feet down, where roughly 650 wells, 99 deeper than 2,000 feet, extract water, state records show.
State natural resources officials have ordered San Luis Valley farmers to replenish the shallow aquifer by 2030, or the government will shut off wells. So far, the recovery lags. Farmers set up subdistricts and taxed themselves to raise funds to compensate those who reduce irrigation — encouraging a shift from alfalfa and potato mainstays to crops that require less water. But early gains vanished during 2018 when low snow and hot, dry conditions forced heavy pumping to survive.
State engineer Kevin Rein sent valley leaders a letter in December warning that “curtailment” — the government shutting down wells — could be necessary to replenish depleted groundwater before the 2030 deadline. Colorado must replenish water to avoid lawsuits for violating the 1939 interstate Rio Grande Compact that obligates the state to leave water in the river system for New Mexico and Texas.
Well shutdowns could devastate the San Luis Valley economy, heavily dependent on agriculture — which has ignited opposition to any schemes for exporting water. Pumping water out at a time when self-imposed cuts likely will dry up 50,000 out of the 500,000 acres of irrigated farmland makes no sense, said Simpson, who has led valley efforts to end overpumping.
“To siphon water out of here to the Front Range is absolutely against everything we’ve worked on,” he said. “It would mean less agriculture. We’re already at an imbalance with our demands exceeding our supply. We’re working to remedy that. Moving water out of the valley doesn’t help us. People may perceive there’s a short-term economic benefit. But the economic consequences over the long term outweigh it.”
State officials in Denver say they will study Renewable Water Resources’ proposal once the developers file it at the state water court in Alamosa.
“We’ll have to have a perspective of being open to anything,” said Colorado Department of Natural Resources director Dan Gibbs, declining to take a position.
Exporting valley water
Geology studies have found that the San Luis Valley’s confined aquifer recharges naturally each year, unlike the Ogallala and Denver Basin aquifers that cities and agriculture elsewhere in the state have depleted.
The threatened state government shutdown of San Luis Valley wells doesn’t appear to be imminent.
“We’re more than 10 years out and they are continuing to work through it. We support their efforts to work through it,” Rein said. “I don’t see the potential to do that (shut wells) for several years.”
A Renewable Water Resources diagram provided to The Denver Post presented details of a water-siphon project that would begin near Moffat on a company-owned ranch with 14 wells spaced 1 mile apart. A pipeline, 24 inches to 32 inches in diameter, would convey no more than 22,000 acre-feet of water per year northward at least 40 miles over Poncha Pass to Salida, and also to a point west of Fairplay, Tonner said.
San Luis Valley water then could be diverted into the Arkansas River, used by Colorado Springs, and into the upper South Platte River that flows into a series of Denver Water reservoirs, he said.
Colorado Springs water resources manager Pat Wells said that city is not interested in water from the San Luis Valley. “Colorado Springs has not been contacted by the project proponent about the Renewable Water Resources project and has no interest,” Wells said.
Any exported valley water purchased by south Denver suburbs ultimately would be stored in the newly enlarged Chatfield Reservoir southwest of Denver and Parker’s Rueter-Hess Reservoir, still barely half full, Tonner said. Suburban water users would pay the cost of the pipelines, he said, and Renewable Water Resources would use $68 million raised from investors to purchase water rights in the valley — rights to pump 32,000 acre-feet of water for irrigation. But the developers would export no more than 22,000 acre-feet a year. The difference would mean a net gain for the aquifer.
South metro suburbs for years have been scrambling to wean themselves off dwindling Denver Basin groundwater. Castle Rock, Parker and Castle Pines, in particular, have relied on heavy and increasingly costly pumping of groundwater to supply suburban residential housing and shopping expansion. Renewable Water Resources officials have talked with suburban water providers, but Tonner declined to identify them — because “we are under NDAs (non-disclosure agreements),” he said.
At least 40 farmers have inquired about selling water rights, some of them meeting with former Gov. Owens and other Renewable Water Resources officials. Tonner also declined to identify those farmers.
Community buy-in needed
Memories of past efforts to siphon up to 200,000 acre-feet of water out of the San Luis Valley haunt the project’s proponents. Two American Water Development Inc. schemes led to showdowns in which valley residents hung together, fighting off outside overtures. State courts eventually ruled that American Water’s proposals were “speculative” because it was unclear who on the Front Range would purchase the water, killing those projects.
Gov. Jared Polis last year while campaigning across Colorado declared his opposition to trans-basin water diversions — dozens have been done in the past, disrupting ecosystems — unless parties involved work collaboratively.
The ethics of siphoning water away from low-income areas toward the richest parts of the state would have to be considered as part of the state’s water project planning process, said Rebecca Mitchell, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
“That is definitely something that has to be looked at. Is that the way we want to grow as a state? Is that what the value structure is?” Mitchell said. “There are cases where those (trans-basin diversions) can be win-win. But without the buy-in of the local community, there are going to be struggles.”
In recent months, Renewable Water Resources’ principals have been working quietly in the valley, meeting with farmers and proposing the creation of a $50 million “community fund” and possibly other payments. Just the annual interest income from such a fund could exceed Saguache County’s current budget, Tonner said.
A formal project proposal may be five years away, he said, adding that Renewable Water Resources won’t approach Polis about supporting the plan “until it is fully baked.”
San Luis Valley farmers already face pressure to stop pumping water to reduce their irrigated acres, meaning some may have to dry up their crop fields. While Renewable Water Resources is engaged in the long-reviled practice of “buy and dry,” Tonner conceded, he pointed out that valley leaders obligated to reduce pumping from the aquifer “are doing buy and dry internally already.”
By paying farmers for a portion of their water rights, Renewable Water Resources could help them stay on their land, perhaps growing different crops that require less water such as hemp, and infuse the valley with the $50 million and possibly other payments while also retiring wells to ensure a net gain of water in the aquifer.
“If our project goes away, how are you going to deal with the state ‘curtailment’ issue? How are you going to deal with the poverty levels here in the San Luis Valley? What resources do you have?” Tonner said. “I am challenging anyone else to come up with a plan. If someone has a better idea, come forward.”
