Farm communities on the Eastern Plains, under the gun to deliver water to Kansas and Nebraska, are poised to permanently retire 17,000 acres of land, with the help of $30 million in state and federal funding.
From Wray, to Yuma to Burlington, growers are being paid to permanently shut off irrigation wells linked to the Republican River to ensure the vital waterway can deliver enough water to neighbors to the east, as required under the Republican River Compact of 1943.
As of this month, ranchers had already retired 10,000 acres under the program, and the rest will be set aside in coming months.
By 2029, the region must retire an additional 8,000 acres, as required under a compact resolution signed in 2016, for a total of 25,000 acres, according to Deb Daniel, general manager of the Republican River Water Conservation District, which is overseeing the initiative. This is occurring in an area on the south fork of the river.
According to Colorado State University it is one of the largest dry-ups of irrigated agricultural lands in the West.
The dry-up has allowed Colorado to meet a critical deadline with Kansas, demonstrating that it was making progress on the goal.
“We did it,” said Daniel. But more work remains.
The 2022 funding came under the American Rescue Plan Act, the COVID-relief program that Congress approved giving states hundreds of millions of dollars to buffer the effects of the pandemic.
Through that program, Colorado lawmakers approved $30 million to the Republican and $30 million to the Rio Grande Basin as well for a similar program.
This year, the Republican Basin will receive another $6 million in state funding to continue paying farmers to permanently shut off wells.
“Agriculture is the economic driver for the northeastern counties of Colorado. This is a difficult situation for the producers,” said Jason Ullmann, state engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources. “I know this work hasn’t been easy, and more must be done. I applaud the Republican River Water Conservation District for their major efforts to reach this deadline,” he said in a statement.
A new analysis shows a nearly 30% decline in Colorado’s irrigated lands in the last 25 years, driven in part by the state’s legal obligations to deliver water across state boundaries, as in the Republican Basin. Other factors include declining river flows due to climate change and drought, and the dry-up of farmlands by fast-growing cities.
Daniel said water officials hope they can continue to pay farmers to permanently retire land and to do so in a way that doesn’t cripple the regional economy.
“We need time to let these communities adjust, to adapt to having less irrigated agriculture. As these wells go down, our communities are adjusting, but most of the time, unless they have other industries, the communities just go away,” Daniel said.