Drought and water, in the West. It’s complicated.
It can even seem complicated in a small, rural community like Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
The San Juan Water Conservancy District — a governmental unit funded mainly through local property taxes, and on whose Board of Directors I currently serve — recently began the process of creating a ‘Strategic Plan’ to guide policies and spending over the next few years. Because SJWCD is funded mainly via property tax revenues, the budget fluctuates slightly depending upon how the Archuleta County Assessor’s office values the homes and commercial buildings and vacant land within the District. This year, we are projecting a budget of about $75,000.
We’ve begun the ‘Strategic Plan’ process by adopting a set of “Values.” We assume these values reflect the values held by the 10,000 or so residents living within the District — although that’s very much an assumption. Generally speaking, almost no one from the general public attends the regular SJWCD Board meetings, to share their thoughts about water management in Pagosa Springs.
The District was approved by local voters in 1987 and includes most of the commercial and residential neighborhoods located within a few miles of Pagosa’s traditional downtown. Here’s a map that shows, in magenta color, the approximate boundaries of the District, within Archuleta County.
The San Juan River flows through the District, from north to south, and then into the Navajo Reservoir at the Colorado-New Mexico border. From there, the San Juan continues into Lake Powell, to join the Colorado River.
SJWCD has had strategic plans in the past, but its most recent Plan — from 2013 — was totally focused on one project: the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir. (It was still called “Dry Gulch” in 2013, although the SJWCD Board has since attempted to assign the project a new name.) The SJWCD Board is composed of volunteers, and I’m sure each Board member hopes for the best future possible, regarding the water supply needs of our rural community. Here’s one of the “Values” statements from our draft Plan:
The Board is committed to ensuring the current and future agricultural, municipal, industrial, environmental and recreational water supply needs are met through the various conservation and water management strategies and methodologies available…
A pretty ambitious goal, perhaps, for a water district with a budget of $75,000 — about the annual income needed to support one middle-class family in Archuleta County.
Back in 2003 — following the historic drought of 2002 — SJWCD was working very closely with the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) to begin the development of yet another local water reservoir, and to that end, the two water districts hired their attorneys — they shared the same attorneys — to file a request with the courts to award them some new water rights. SJWCD and PAWSD made the case that, due to remarkable growth within the Pagosa Springs area, the community would need additional water resources in the near future. The request placed before the judge was to grant SJWCD and PAWSD enough water rights to fill a 32,000 acre-foot reservoir, twice a year. So then, dedicated legal access to 64,000 acre-feet of fresh water, annually, to be pulled from the San Juan River.
The request was based on the well-accepted idea that Archuleta County was growing at a furious rate, and local leaders wanted to make sure access to water didn’t slow down that projected growth.
But we might want to put this 64,000 acre-foot request into perspective… because I think it says something about “water” and “drought” in the American West.
In 2003, PAWSD was selling about 370 million gallons of water per year. Converted into acre-feet, that’s about 1,300 acre feet. The population of the entire county was about 11,000 residents, and most of those folks were buying water from PAWSD. According to my pocket calculator, that suggests that each Archuleta County resident was buying and using, on average, 0.12 acre-feet of water per year. In 2003.
The amount of water rights being requested by PAWSD and SJWCD to be extracted from the San Juan River — if sold at the same rate, in the same community — would have been enough water for about 533,000 people. More than the current population of Colorado Springs (494,000).
Judge Greg Lyman looked over the submitted legal documents — not too thoughtfully, perhaps — and granted 64,000 acre-feet of water rights to the two districts, thus allowing them to move ahead with the development of the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir, beginning with the purchase of the Running Iron Ranch for $10 million. The purchase was funded mainly through a loan from the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), who apparently believed the Dry Gulch Reservoir was a good idea.
My sense, based on a decade-and-a-half of researching Daily Post editorials, is that the granting of the Dry Gulch Reservoir water rights — enough water to serve 533,000 people — was not at all an anomaly, but rather that water users all across Colorado, and perhaps all across the American West, have been granted outrageous water rights from our drought-affected rivers and streams, dating back to the 1800s.
I’m guessing that, were all of those outrageous water rights to be developed and put to use, there would not be a drop of water left in the Colorado River, or in Lake Powell, or in Lake Mead.
Which would mean, of course, the end of recreational uses of the mighty Colorado, and, essentially, the destruction of our environment. And thus, the end of tourism.
Here, again, is that “Values” statement that the SJWCD Board has been discussing:
The Board is committed to ensuring the current and future agricultural, municipal, industrial, environmental and recreational water supply needs are met through the various conservation and water management strategies and methodologies available;
If the Colorado water industry were committed simply to ensuring our current desires for water, that would be a huge undertaking — if indeed, as we are being told, the West is suffering from climate change: steadily warming temperatures and steadily increasing threats of drought conditions.
I’m using the word “desires,” because it’s more accurate than the word “needs.” We desire a lot more water than we actually “need.”
It appears (based on my pocket calculator) that each resident of Archuleta County is using about 0.12 acre-feet of water annually. 39,000 gallons per year. 107 gallons per day. But if we are to include the all the water used to grow our food, extract our minerals, operate our businesses, manufacture our products, and the myriad other uses we assign to water, we might find that each American’s water consumption is more like ten times that amount. About 1,582 cubic meters per year (source: Statista.com).
1,144 gallons per day.
That’s our current desire for water. Not exactly a “need.” But a desire, for sure.
And that doesn’t count “recreational uses.”
Let’s talk about that, next…