“Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles…”
— Quote attributed to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley by US Congressman Josiah Grinnell
The San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) — one of two water districts completely contained within Archuleta County — has scheduled a Board of Directors meeting for this morning, Tuesday, October 15 at 9:30am at their office at 46 Eaton Drive, Suite 5, behind City Market. One of the main items of business for the District this year has been the creation of a strategic plan — possibly the first ‘strategic plan’ ever for SJWCD. That process has demanded that the Board become more familiar with the water rights held by the District, and how those water rights may (or may not) benefit the Pagosa Springs community as a whole, over the next 30 years or so.
I currently serve on the SJWCD Board, but this editorial is not meant to reflect any adopted SJWCD policies or plans. It’s merely a reflection of one Board member’s research, analysis and contemplation.
Back in 1877, the Carpenter family, Leroy and Martha, had relocated from rainy, humid Iowa — home to “about one-third of the best farmland in the US” — to the relatively arid wasteland of Weld County, Colorado, and were experiencing the various trials and tribulations of ‘irrigated farming’ as members of the Union Colony in Greeley.
The colony, a religiously-oriented utopian community of “high moral standards,” had been financially backed and promoted by New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, a prominent advocate of the settlement of the American West. The homesteaded colony relied heavily on ‘ditch irrigation’ technology on land near the confluence of the Cache la Poudre and South Platte Rivers, during a time when agricultural and mining interests were in conflict over water rights in a region of limited and as-yet-undeveloped water resources.
That year, 1877, Leroy and Martha welcomed their second child into the world: Delphus Carpenter.
Growing up on an irrigation-driven commune, Delph Carpenter developed certain ideas about how relatively-scarce water ought to be utilized and allocated. In particular, Carpenter came to believe that federal control of the West’s water resources would be a disaster for the farmers of Colorado, and that the individual states in the American West had the legal rights to control the water originating within their state boundaries. He also strongly endorsed the ‘Colorado Doctrine’ of ‘first in time, first in right’ — an approach to water rights that had become popular across the arid American West. Carpenter, and most farmers in Colorado, maintained that the person who first put surface water to beneficial use should retain the right to use that same amount of water in perpetuity, even when other beneficial users came along later.
This was not the way water had been allocated in the rain-blessed eastern US, where there had always been more than enough agricultural water to go around. But the American West was the opposite of ‘rain-blessed.’ Instead, it was largely desert.
One problem with state government control of Colorado water resources was, of course, the fact that all of the rivers originating in Colorado ultimately flowed beyond the state’s borders into neighboring (also relatively arid) states: Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and… the 400-pound gorilla, California.
It was a problem for everyone, but especially for Colorado, if the western states were to mutually adopt the ‘first in time, first in right’ doctrine for allocation of a scare resource. Population and water demands were both growing quickly in California by the 1920s, and at the rate things were going, the Golden State would someday be claiming the right to nearly all the water in the entire Colorado River.
Colorado could conceivably be left holding an empty water bucket.
Delph Carpenter was not content to watch the federal government assume control of the West’s water resources, however. He was well aware of the federal government’s tendency to royally mess things up. And as one of first Colorado attorneys to specialize in water law, Carpenter was perhaps more aware than anyone else in the state just how limited the water resources really were — taking the long range future of the American West into consideration.
Carpenter was not the only irrigation-minded Coloradan anxious about the future, but thanks to his law degree, he became more deeply involved than the average farmer, starting with a job as attorney for the Greeley-Poudre Irrigation District. The irrigation district had angered the State of Wyoming by constructing a tunnel through a mountain range to divert water from the northbound Laramie River — a river that served farmers in Wyoming — into the nearby Greeley-bound Cache la Poudre River — which flows into Nebraska. Wyoming sued Colorado over this diversion project in 1911. Carpenter was appointed the lead defense attorney for Colorado, and argued the case twice before the US Supreme Court in a lengthy court battle that was decided, 11 years later, in Wyoming’s favor.
This wasn’t the first time the US Supreme Court had weighed in on Colorado water issues. In the 1907 case Kansas v. Colorado, the Supreme Court had affirmed its authority to settle water disputes between the states.
The last thing a ‘state’s rights’ advocate like Delph Carpenter wanted was the US Supreme Court deciding the fate of Colorado’s water resources, and even while the Wyoming v. Colorado case was still under consideration, Carpenter was helping to facilitate an historic effort at interstate cooperation.
His efforts would to result in the 1922 Colorado River Compact, an agreement by the seven US states that had access to the Colorado River, stating how the river’s water would be shared between them. That agreement essentially determined how much irrigated agriculture — fed by the Colorado River — would be allowed in each state.
You might even say, Delph Carpenter and the commissioners who signed the Colorado River Compact decided what kinds of food we would be eating, for the next 100 years.