Chapter 5: Consequences, Part II
transcript
NARRATION:
This is “The Wild West of Water.” I’m Alejandra Wilcox.
Chapter Five: Consequences, Part Two
It’s been called one of the only remaining free-flowing rivers in Colorado. The last frontier. The “wild west.” Water with few dams or reservoirs...and even fewer regulations. The snowpack-fueled Yampa River is a rare glimpse a century back in time.
The river is known for being free. But in a state as dry as Colorado, that freedom couldn’t last forever.
After the drought, and after the Yampa went on call for the first time ever in late 2018, Division Engineer Erin Light saw an opportunity she’d been waiting on for years.
Light began planning to finally bring the Yampa River — and its users — into the 21st century, and up to speed with the rest of Colorado.
LIGHT:
We stare at this, you know, red book that's the Colorado Revised statutes and you know, you turn to a certain statute and the statute says everybody shall have a headgate and measuring device. And I shouldn't say that, that's not the exact language, but it requires people to have headgates and measuring devices.
And this statute has been in place I think since 1897, or before 1900. And yet somehow or another, up here we've gone on our merry way for a century without having this in place.
And the only time we have required headgates up to this point is when a system began going under administration.
But this has just been my thought: Hey, it's just time for everybody to start installing measuring devices.
NARRATION:
Water users in Yampa were given until November 30, 2019 to install a headgate. After that date, they either have to go get one installed or stop using their water entirely.
And if people continue to use water without a headgate? The state will fine them $500 dollars per day. Here’s Marsha Daughenbaugh, a local rancher who understands why the ranchers are struggling with the state’s decision.
DAUGHENBAUGH:
My personal perspective is that the Division of Water Resources is trying to help us save our water. They are not trying to take water away from us. And if people are going to fight these headgates so badly, the division has no choice. It’s in the statues.
I really hope, now that people have been pressured and given a deadline, they’re going to step up and figure out how to pay for it and how to make this work.
WILCOX on tape:
Is this cost prohibitive?
DAUGHENBAUGH:
That’s a loaded question. When you’re in agriculture, the cost of everything is prohibitive, and you have to set your priorities, constantly, as to what you can afford to do and what is most important that particular week, year...
NARRATION:
A rancher I spoke with told me the last time he priced a headgate, it was about $800 dollars. One online retailer’s prices range from $425 to just over $1,000.
DAUGHENBAUGH:
Yes, some of these structures are cost-prohibitive. There are funds available from different sources, but they’re not that easy to get together. I hope that nobody decides to abandon their water rights because of this. The people that I’m talking about aren’t just telling everybody to go to heck. They’re trying to figure out how they’re going to make this work.
HUMMER:
So you can see, there’s a ditch right here, coming along the upper side of this meadow. It’s called the North Side ditch...no headgate, no measuring device. And one of the crankiest old owners in the world.
NARRATION:
The state does understand that what they’re asking will be difficult for some water users — and that many people are trying to comply with the orders.
HUMMER:
Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this. We’ll go by a perfect example right up here.
NARRATION:
While driving me through his territory, Hummer gestures out the window toward a pasture. I can see two gigantic, boxy metal structures sitting in the middle of the field.
HUMMER:
Here’s a guy that’s trying to comply with what we want to do. He’s got two measuring devices ordered. He just hasn’t had the time to put them in yet. So they’re just sitting out in the middle of the pasture, waiting for him to find the time to do it.
So, you know, they’re making an effort, but again, they’re ranchers. Their days are like my days. Some days, you don’t know what you’re doing until the bomb drops — or somebody drops the bomb on you is a better way to put it.
NARRATION:
The state has dropped the metaphorical bomb on many Yampa ranchers. And in some cases, those receiving state orders don’t feel what they’re being asked to do is exactly fair.
[train roaring by]
HOGUE:
You’re gonna have to compete with the train. You might wanna shut it off for a minute! [laughter]
[train whistle]
HOGUE:
My name is Mike Hogue, fourth-generation rancher, Steamboat Springs. We raise pure-bred cattle and we raise organic forages. We have some pretty senior water rights on the Yampa, about 15 cubic feet per second, dating back to the early 1900s.
NARRATION:
Hogue already has measuring devices installed, and he says they’re up to snuff. But he’s in contact with neighbors and others in the community who have indeed received state orders.
HOGUE:
I do understand why the division engineer's trying to push these things. It is a requirement by law that you measure water. But there's some of these issues that just seem to defy logic.
For example, I have a neighbor who's been required to put in a measuring device on an ephemeral stream. The only time it runs is when the snow pack’s running off.
I know of other cases where there's streams that don't have enough fall for a measuring device to even work. Why are you measuring that? And particularly for this part of the state, where all the water just runs out of the state anyway and goes to Lake Powell and it’s an expensive endeavor to buy a measuring device and put it in…it’s hard to understand why we’re doing that. It’s caused significant angst among water users.
NARRATION:
When Hogue talks about West Slope water going to Lake Powell, he’s talking about Colorado’s legal obligations to help maintain water in the Colorado River Basin. Upper basin states like Colorado contribute the majority of the Colorado River Basin’s water.
The seven states within that basin — Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming — are doing their best to plan for droughts to come.
And as the Colorado River Basin starts to grapple with the problem of how to account for the changing population and climate, many solutions are up on the table.
One of them is a demand management program, which would pay water users, on a strictly voluntary basis, to temporarily restrict their water use.
Demand management would help maintain critical water levels in Lake Powell, which the Colorado River Basin system must legally maintain.
I asked Anne Castle, the water rights lawyer, to break this down for me.
CASTLE:
The reason demand management is under consideration is because there's concern that the declining flows that we're seeing in the Colorado river system in general could at some point make it difficult for the upper basin states to meet their legal obligations to the lower basin.
NARRATION:
This means that the upper basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico wouldn’t be able to supply enough water to maintain levels of the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry.
CASTLE:
And so, demand management is being explored as a means to bank water in Lake Powell or the other upper river basin reservoirs, and save it for a rainy day in the sense of the possible future where there wouldn't otherwise be enough water in Lake Powell to meet that downstream obligation.
NARRATION:
Again, demand management would compensate users to voluntarily divert a portion of their water to Lake Powell, in the event of a “rainy day” — or rather, a not-so-rainy day — when the upper basin states might not have enough water to maintain Lee’s Ferry.
And all of these steps could help avoid a compact call…which is a much larger version of what happened on the Yampa in September of 2018.
CASTLE:
If the upper basin states weren't able to meet that downstream obligation, then, theoretically at least, the lower basin states could request curtailment of water rights in the upper basin. And it's that curtailment that we refer to as a compact call.
NARRATION:
In this scenario, the lower basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — could put a call on the upper basin states, requiring more junior users across the board to divert their water until that legal obligation was met. A demand management system would be an insurance policy: a way to avoid having to take people’s water, like it or not.
And in a place like the Yampa River Valley, where the water has always been wild, a compact call would have significant impact.
CASTLE:
There's been some work done by scientists commissioned by the Colorado River District and the Southwestern Water Conservation District that's looking at the risk of a compact call. And their recent work has also looked at the priority of water rights that would have to be called.
In order to do that, you might have to curtail all water rights junior to, say, 1950. Well, there's a lot of water rights on the West Slope and in the Yampa system that are junior to 1950. And so they would all be at risk.
NARRATION:
Water is complex in a dry place — or at least the regulations are — especially when it comes from a limited source. Especially as the summers get drier, as the climate becomes more arid, as the droughts become more frequent. Without regulation, that water will simply disappear. Even from a river as wild, as bountiful, as free as the Yampa.
WILCOX on tape:
Why is it so important to you personally?
HOGUE:
Well, water is the lifeblood of any ranching organization. You’ve got to have water to survive.
NARRATION:
Besides being complex, water is emotional. It’s the source of so many livelihoods — of so many lives. It is at the center of age-old rivalries that span generations. It waters prize-winning hay, and the prize-winning cattle who eat it.
To live near the river is to love it, both for those who seek to control it, and for those who want it to remain as free as possible.
Water is also personal — to the users, and to officials such as Scott Hummer.
HUMMER:
I mean, my vocation is my passion. It has been for a long time, but I'm a native Coloradoan. The first time my grandpa took me out irrigating, I was five years old. It’s part of my make-up.
NARRATION:
So for something as personal — and as precious — as water, in a world that is warming at an unprecedented pace, how can we keep the faucets running?
DAUGHENBAUGH:
I think for people that have water rights, we just need to be continually educating ourselves about what they are. And for those that don’t have water rights, but have water interests — which is everybody in the population — we just need to be staying on top of it, and we need to be understanding what our compact requires and what our obligation is to growing food and fiber.
Occasionally, I hear someone say, “Oh my goodness, agriculture has so much water. Surely they can give it up.” And I always come back and say, which part of the food chain would you like to give up? And regardless of how you feel socially about meat or grains, it still is going to take water to keep those people in business and those products on your table. So...I kinda wandered, what was your question? [laughing]
[wind blowing]
NARRATION:
Almost a year after the state orders went out, as snow begins to melt and newborn calves hit the ground, Hummer writes to me with an update.
In Hummer's opinion, the majority of the water right owners in his district have stepped up to the plate.
While some have complied, others are currently actively installing devices, and a number of owners have requested and been granted extensions by the division engineer.
Hummer says he is currently in the process of contacting and monitoring compliance with all orders, as well as conducting field inspections.
It is the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Western Slope hasn't been spared either cases or lockdowns. But Hummer says the flow of water and associated responsibilities do not go away, coronavirus or no.
It will be irrigation season before Hummer and the water users know it. There's work to do.
Hummer says continued water education is the most important part of his role on the ground.
HUMMER:
Every citizen of the state of Colorado is dependent on our most precious natural resource. And that’s our water.
NARRATION:
“Precious.” “Lifeblood.” Those words come up when people talk about the Yampa, from those on all sides of an issue as complicated as water in Colorado itself.
The future, and the ramifications of water use within the Colorado River Basin, are still unclear. Nobody knows for certain what demand management or a compact call would truly mean for Colorado, or the Yampa. But as the state’s last “wild” river becomes less wild, users and officials alike are working to find a way to save what everyone agrees is our most precious natural resource. And one thing is abundantly clear: like it or not, things are changing. And they’re going to keep changing.
Toward the end of an afternoon shadowing Scott Hummer, he drove me through rolling green pastures lined with irrigation ditches.
We’d been on the main road back to Steamboat for awhile when Hummer pulled up a dirt drive into private ranchland. We stopped just outside a barn filled with hay, and Hummer gestured to the jagged ridge of mountains on our left.
HUMMER:
I don’t wanna go too far in this California car, but I just kind of wanted to give you an idea...just to give you an idea, the mountains right over there — that’s the Gore range. Those are the mountains that sit right up above Green Mountain Reservoir. The divide between the Yampa and the Colorado River Basin is just...see where the far roof of that barn is way down there? It’s just about right in that area. So, you know, we are at the headwaters right here of the Yampa from the south.
Those little boys and gals, they knew what they were doing 140 years ago or whatever.
In the West, when you touch water, you touch everything, as Mr. Aspinall told us.
[water rushing]
NARRATION:
You’ve been listening to the final episode of “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.
Very special thanks to Scott Hummer, Erin Light, Anne Castle, Marsha Daughenbaugh, Steve Williams, Mike Hogue, Liz Greeen, Chuck Plunkett, Max Potter, James Eklund, Kevin Brown, Derek Blake, Don Cavalli, Rebecca Rupnow and Lena Maynard.
A heartfelt, unabashed thank you to the family and friends who have supported this podcast in its many phases for the past year, and to the professors and professionals who have guided me through my master’s degree. To the class of 2020 journalism CMCI master’s cohort: I am so proud to know and learn from all of you. And finally, to Blake, Kaylee, and Ronan Wilcox: you are my whole heart, and the reason I can do anything. Thank you.
The music featured in this episode is “The River” by The Show Ponies. 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.