Some of our readers ought to have received their 2019 ballots in the mail by now, and may have already tossed them in the trash. No candidates appeared on the ballot, just two simple requests to boost Colorado state tax revenues.
Proposition CC, asks us to allow the state government to retain the TABOR refunds we’ve been getting — now and then — since 1992 when the Taxpayer Bill of Rights was voted into the Colorado constitution. CC claims it doesn’t increase taxes, and in one sense, it doesn’t increase the amount of any specific tax, but we will indeed pay more taxes — long into the future — because we will no longer have excessive taxes refunded to us. The measure doesn’t guarantee how the extra money will be spent. Maybe on education and transportation? Maybe not.
Proposition DD admits that it’s a tax increase, but only a tax increase on currently-illegal sports betting profits at Colorado casinos. If we pass DD, the state’s gambling addicts will foot the bill for various as-yet-unidentified ‘water’ projects, long into the future.
A few days ago, we received a press release extolling the virtues of Proposition DD, that read in part:
Proposition DD isn’t just a win for Colorado’s water, it’s a win for the state’s economy — which is why the measure has drawn widespread support from chambers of commerce, industry groups and leading businesses in the state.
“Colorado’s snowpack, which provides the vast majority of our water, is projected to decrease by more than 50% by the end of this century. So it’s critical that we rally industry support now to protect and conserve water resources,” said Auden Schendler, Vice President of Sustainability, Aspen Skiing Company.
“My business depends on clean, abundant water, which is why I’m pleased to endorse Proposition DD. As our rivers and streams face growing challenges, including climate change and population increases, we must fund Colorado’s precious water resources,” said Sarah Tingey of Alpacka Rafts, a member of the Colorado Outdoor Business Alliance.
Many Colorado businesses depend upon water, in one way or another, although it’s not immediately clear how massive water storage projects like Gross Reservoir, Navajo Lake, Blue Mesa Reservoir, Lake Nighthorse, and the dozens of other multi-million-dollar reservoirs that grab water from our Colorado rivers have a direct benefit to the skiing or rafting industries.
This editorial series was inspired by a gift presented to me by a Daily Post reader, a book entitled, Silver Fox of the Rockies: Delphus E. Carpenter and Western Water Compacts, written by Daniel Tyler and published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2003. Delph Carpenter’s crusade, during the 1920s and 1930s, was to avoid litigation between the different states in the American West by forging river compacts — agreements that provided fair allocation of the West’s relatively scarce water resources. In that crusade, he enjoyed considerable success, although the effort and stress eventually destroyed his health.
His crowning achievement was the approval of the seven-state Colorado River Compact in 1922, even if Arizona’s state government didn’t actually sign the Compact until 1944.
As stated previously, Carpenter grew up in a farming family near Greeley, Colorado, and his primary interest in water projects related to irrigated farming and ranching, but he watched the US Bureau of Reclamation undergo massive changes during the first half of the 20th century, with an increased focus on hydroelectricity generation as the main source of revenue to fund the water projects. Building dams that had a large return in power generation permitted the federal government to deliver irrigation water for pennies on the dollar, since power sales were repaying the construction costs. (Paid, of course, over 50 years at ridiculously cheap interest rates.) Whether the projects were close to suitable farmland became a secondary concern.
Here in Archuleta County we have a few small reservoirs and other water projects that were not built by the Bureau of Reclamation. Our reservoirs serve mainly urban and suburban areas in the community, while the more agriculturally-blessed parts of the county are crisscrossed by irrigation ditches that pull water from the San Juan and its various tributary creeks. We noted yesterday in Part Three, the US Geological Survey (USGS) published a report about 2015 water uses in Archuleta County (here) that suggests extensive irrigation within the county; slightly more than 94 percent of all the water used in Archuleta County is for irrigation. Residential and commercial uses amount to about 2,700 acre feet per year; irrigation accounts for about 47,000 acre feet. According to USGS.
Agriculture does not, however, provide 94 percent of the Gross Community Product — the community’s overall production, services and sales. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the total net income from farming and ranching in Archuleta County in 2017 was -$2.1 million. That’s negative $2.1 million, net income, from about $11.2 million in sales. That’s an average loss of $5,291 per farm. 68 percent of our farms and ranches sold less than $10,000 in products.
Agriculture uses 94 percent of the community’s water. And our farmers and ranchers have to keep using it — even if they are losing money — if they want to hold on to their water rights, which are, in many cases, senior to the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
If our agricultural community in Pagosa were able to cut its water use by 3 percent, that would theoretically ‘save’ more water than if everyone else — homeowners and businesses — cut their water use by half.
Our historical traditions, out here in the high desert, have demanded that farmers and ranchers are delivered as much water as government projects and cooperative ditch companies can provide. Between the passage of the Reclamation Act in 1902 and the 1966 controversy surrounding the Bridge and Marble Gorge dams — which would have flooded portions of the Grand Canyon — the US Bureau of Reclamation managed to place dams and reservoirs at pretty much every feasible location along the Colorado River system. Those tax-funded water projects were part of an overriding intention, by the federal government, to increase the population of the American West.
Then came the Sierra Club.