Chapter 2: Water is Gold
transcript
NARRATION:
This is “The Wild West of Water.” I’m Alejandra Wilcox.
Chapter Two: Water is Gold
HUMMER:
This is Colorado —and water flows to money.
One of the first things that I'll start to ask people about when I have this conversation is, “So, what's the most important function of your operation?”
NARRATION:
That’s Scott Hummer — one of the Yampa River’s water commissioners in District 58.
HUMMER:
“….What’s the most important function of your operation? Is it the tractor that you have to run in August or is it the ability to be able to divert your water in May through a headgate that's operable, through a measuring device that's accurate?” And it’s the latter, not the former. Here, literally in South Routt County, it’s 1919.
NARRATION:
In South Routt County, where water users are primarily ranchers, it’s not uncommon to use water without measuring it.
That would be unthinkable in the rest of Colorado. When Hummer says it’s 1919 in Routt County, he means that folks in Routt County act like water is as plentiful as it was back in the old days, before the state took control and started regulating water use.
On the Front Range and just about everywhere else in Colorado, people are required by law to measure their water. That’s how they know much their water is worth, in actual dollars and cents.
When it comes to water, what makes Colorado different than most other states in the upper-48, even in the West? Hummer says that primarily, it’s how limited Colorado’s water actually is.
HUMMER:
We're dependent on snowpack. That's our reservoir, period. And as our population
continues to grow and the demand for development of water along the Front Range continues to grow, places like the Yampa, where folks like to tout themselves and tout the river and its experience as being one that's wild because we don't have the large storage buckets….
NARRATION:
By “storage buckets,” Hummer means reservoirs.
HUMMER:
.…we live in a desert on either side of the divide, and we don't have a choice. If we want to continue to live here, we can't live on conservation alone. We're going to have to construct some buckets and we're going to have to be better stewards of the water that we already have. And, um, I better shut up.
NARRATION:
Because of that scarcity, water in Colorado is often more expensive than land.
In August of 2019, a 546-acre family farm on the northern Front Range sold for just over $15.5 million dollars. Roughly $13 million dollars of that money was for the water rights alone. That water came from the Colorado-Big Thompson Project — a complex reservoir, tunnel, and canal system that transports water from the Western Slope up in the mountains down to the more heavily populated Front Range. A single unit of water from the Colorado-Big Thompson broke records during the sale at neary $66,000.
It is difficult to overstate how important water is in Colorado. Most people in states further east use a riparian water rights system, where anyone owning land through which water flows can use a reasonable amount of that water for any purpose — so long as it continues to flow downstream.
There isn’t enough water in Colorado for that — hence the complicated laws, and hefty price tags. One of the family members behind that Front Range farm’s sale told The Denver Post, “Water is gold.”
And in a place where water is gold, where not even one drop can be spared — the value of that water is more than monetary.
[background noise of water splashing and motor running]
WILLIAMS:
Can you hear it?
WILCOX on tape:
Yeah.
WILLIAMS:
So, it’s refilling, and it just has that little bit of water in it, and then it has a little electric heater in it, and so it gives them fresh water all the time, and it doesn’t take hardly any power….
NARRATION:
Steamboat rancher Steve Williams believes in conserving and repurposing the water his fluffy Scottish highland cows drink. He also has done enormous work to maintain the banks of the Yampa. The river flows through his land, Glas Deffryn Ranch.
WILLIAMS:
It's actually Welsh for Blue Valley. Um, and so my heritage is all Welsh. And so we raised Scottish Island cows on a Welsh-named ranch. We just wanted something that sounded different than so many of the traditional names here.
NARRATION:
Williams, who was a geologist on the Front Range for many years, is not a traditional Steamboat rancher. While he does not own Yampa water rights, the state maintains a gauging station on his property to measure water levels in the river. He also relinquished the right to subdivide land near the water on his property under what’s called a conservation easement, ensuring nobody could ever build there.
With support from that conservation easement, Williams worked for over three years to help build up river banks and improve the overall health of the river.
The river is important to Williams — as is its fate.
WILLIAMS:
We're starting now to feel that trickle effect coming up here with the call on the river last year that no, you just can't do whatever you wanted whenever you, as you have in the past.
I know that’s tougher for a lot of the ranchers up here that have just been irrigating, but they'll figure
out a way to, you know, continue. We just gotta be thinking ahead all the time as to where the water is gonna come from and how best to use it.
NARRATION:
The ranchers that comprise the Yampa River’s users often work on land their families have owned for generations. The water that flows through their irrigation ditches is solely used for agricultural purposes — watering crops and animals.
They’re used to having the freedom to mostly use that water how they see fit.
But 2018’s call on the Yampa signaled changing times.
In 2019, division engineer Erin Light decided it was time to start enforcing that law that’s been on the Colorado Books since the 1870s: if you want to use water, you must start measuring how much you divert. “Use it or lose it,” they say.
To do that, the state of Colorado requires users to install headgates, which is how users divert water from the river and even stop the flow of water entirely. They also require flumes, devices that allow users to measure exactly how much water they use.
LIGHT:
I will say that having the Yampa river going under administration, or have the call in 2018, was kind of my, “There we go. Now I can do it!” Because I've believed since my tenure here that people should be measuring their diversions. Why wouldn’t you measure your diversions?
And fortunately the state engineer’s in support of that so far to the extent that he's developed a new strategic plan and one of the goals is for people, everyone in division six to have a measuring device and an operable head gate.
WILCOX on tape:
Okay. And how long do they have to install?
LIGHT:
We’re giving them until November 30th.
WILCOX on tape:
And what happens if they don’t do it?
LIGHT:
We will curtail them if they’re diverting. So if you do choose to divert water, then we can curtail you. And if you do choose to continue to diver water, then it will be an enforcement action of $500 a day for every day you’ve diverted water contrary to the order.
LIGHT:
I can tell you that there's going to be upwards this week, upwards of 600 orders going out the door.
WILCOX on tape:
What's an order?
HUMMER:
It's a special document. It’s an order to comply with the statues.
NARRATION:
I’m speaking to Light and Hummer the day state orders start going out — September 30th, 2019.
HUMMER:
Most folks, in my mind, will push the envelope. They’ll say, “Oh yeah, you know, God it’s winter. No way can I get anything done by November 30th. I got to do all these other things.” But the reality check will be next year when they show up to turn on their water in May, and there’s a chain or a lock on it with a tag because they didn’t install a measuring device.
WILCOX on tape:
Why will people push the envelope? It seems like with the high stakes of, you know, you'll be fined up to $500 per day, you know, why push the envelope? Is it just, um — ?
HUMMER:
They still don’t believe it will occur.
LIGHT:
Yeah, I think that's what it is. Because I know speaking to some water commissioners, their, their water users got the notice that I sent out. You know, I put everybody on notice in March that we were going to do this. And actually I asked them to voluntarily do it by July 31st, and I've had some water commissioners say, “Oh yeah, my water users said that no, they're going to wait for the order.” And I kind of asked that same question: “Why do you think they're doing that?” And they’re just like, “Because they don't believe you're gonna do it. They are not convinced you're going to issue orders.”
HUMMER:
That story I talked to you about, where the farm was sold down in your country, around Mead, okay — the value of those water rights, from a fiscal dollar standpoint, play a role. And the only way that that farm family was able to market their water was records. And when you have no diversion records, you have nothing to base any type of claim for a fiscal value…there’s nothing there!
Up here, I kind of think that the fathers and sons and grandfathers that are involved in our ranching economy...I believe there's still an assumption by the father, or the grandfather, that the grandson's gonna follow in their footsteps. And that just may not be the case. And if they haven't taken into account that that may not be the case, and they do want to leave some type of monetary inheritance, then they need to seriously start measuring their water because they don't have anything in reality without it.
NARRATION:
Water is emotional in the West — and complex. There’s not much of it to go around, and even less is expected in the future.
HUMMER:
Northwest Colorado was developed later in time. Thus, the population and development is still catching up with the rest of the state. And unfortunately water knowledge is one of those things that has been behind the eight ball for a number of not only water users, but the general population, who move here and don't understand that this time of the year, you know, why does the river look like it does now as opposed to when it looked like what it looked like in July? Well, yeah, we don't live east of the hundredth meridian, where water flows continually at a pretty high volume.
NARRATION:
Water is the heartbeat of this green, windswept ranchland — the Yampa’s many tributaries feed the ditches that wind their way through grassy meadows, along the base of mountains. Without the water, there’s no award-winning hay.
HUMMER:
And the hay that’s produced in this country? This hay is shipped, you know, actually in around the world. A lot of this hay is used at major horse tracks, like Churchill Downs, feeding Triple Crown winners and things like that. It’s good grass. It's in demand.
NARRATION:
Without the water, the green will fade like autumn color — and Hummer says that unless things change dramatically, it could be fading fast.
HUMMER:
Climate change is real. It’s happening. And, unless water users in the Yampa River Valley begin to understand the validity of the need for change, there's a chance that future generations will not be able to utilize the water the same way that their great-great-great-grandfather did.
WILCOX on tape:
So if you don’t measure your water…there’s no value?
HUMMER:
I’m going to speak to this because of my work on both sides of the headgate. Growing up in agriculture along the Front Range, there was always a dollar value, and it increased through generations. Over here...the value of the water that's being diverted, currently in my mind, is an afterthought to some people because they've become accustomed to being able to divert two times, three times, four times their water right and never have anybody call them on it!
NARRATION:
Up next: what the value of that water really is, and why the state says it’s not just important, but essential, to measure it.
You’ve been listening to “The Wild West of Water.”
The production of “The Wild West of Water” was supported in part by Connecting the Drops.
This episode was reported and produced by me, Alejandra Wilcox. Editorial and production support from Emilie Johnson, Jared Browsh, Patrick Clark and Maeve Conran.
The music featured in this episode is “I’m Going to a River” by Don Cavalli. Liz Greeen created stunning artwork for each episode of “The Wild West of Water.” To view her art, map out the Yampa River, listen to the full podcast and learn more about this project, please visit thewildwestofwater.com.