Lower Arkansas Valley water districts and other rural Colorado interests are pushing a draft bill demanding enforceable revegetation work by cities or others who buy farm water and dry up land for the benefit of Front Range cities and suburbs.
Water district and community leaders are circulating final language at the state Capitol for mitigation efforts they see as crucial to bridging urban-rural divides over the future of Colorado’s most precious — and increasingly stressed — resource.
Water buyers in the five-county Lower Arkansas region covered by the draft bill wouldn’t be able to take all the water right away. They could take 50% of their new rights at first, then earn the right to take more after meeting reclamation milestones protecting farm communities from erosion and noxious weeds. Enforceable standards for the buyer caring for the land would be set during required water court hearings for transfers of the allowable water use. Converting the land to actively stewarded dryland farming is another option for the water buyer, as some towns and counties have done voluntarily in past buy-and-dries.
While many Lower Arkansas farmers rely on the ability to sell their water rights as a financial legacy for their families, surrounding communities have been seething for decades over how some buyers have left the land. In presenting the bill proposal to other potential supporters, the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District circulates shocking photos of Crowley County’s former irrigated land looking like 1930s Oklahoma.
Even some of the water buyers who tried at first to take care of the land eventually abandoned their efforts to the whims of the arid plains’ steppe-like precipitation.
“There’s been a little success here and there over the years, but darn near all of it’s just been a complete failure,” said Jack Goble, general manager of the Lower Arkansas district and one of the driving forces seeking responsibility from buy-up cities in cooperating with threatened rural communities.
“All of our five counties have felt the pain. The backbone of our economy in the Lower Arkansas Valley is irrigated agriculture, and everything ultimately links back to that and its success. And you know, we have some of the poorest counties in the state,” Goble said, during a presentation Thursday to the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District. Those Lower Arkansas counties are Pueblo, Otero, Bent, Crowley and Prowers.
Current state law merely calls for the parties in a buy and dry to make “reasonable” efforts to take care of the dried land, Goble said.
Crowley County has been the widely acknowledged “poster child” of urban water transfers in rural Colorado, since city water buy-ups shrank the county’s irrigated acres from more than 50,000 in the 1970s to just a few thousand acres by 2024. Colorado Springs Utilities, for one, has since apologized for the Crowley County “travesty” and changed the way it cares for land where it bought water rights.
When Lower Arkansas officials were out taking pictures of Crowley County land less than a year ago, Goble said, they came across the now-regular sight of Colorado Department of Transportation workers using front-end loaders to remove truckloads of blown sand from highways.
Goble’s presentations include a map showing total irrigated farmland acres lost in the valley, topping out at 92% losses in Crowley County. Pueblo County has lost 56% of its irrigated land since 1978, with Otero and Bent counties both losing 44%.
The bill’s backers recently agreed to limit the scope to land in the Arkansas River basin, or state water division 2, but they also warn that future buy-and-dry debates are coming to northern Colorado farmland along the South Platte River, and in other basins. Republican Rep. Ty Winter, Trinidad, and Sen. Rod Pelton, Cheyenne Wells, have so far agreed to carry the bill, backers say. They are talking with Democrats to come on board.
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