Image: The boundaries of the San Juan Water Conservation District.
Speculation is part of human nature. And I’m referring here to both kinds of speculation… one, being the simple act of speculating about why the world operates the way it does, and the other being the act of acquiring possessions one doesn’t need at the moment, in hopes of profiting from their future sale or use.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) board member, but this editorial reflects only my own opinions and not necessarily the opinions of the PAWSD board or staff.
At a special meeting on Monday, January 6, the volunteer San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) board went into a closed-door executive session (again) to discuss a particular situation… that situation being, an official announcement by the PAWSD board of directors that the Running Iron Ranch is for sale, plus PAWSD’s acquisition of a current appraisal defining the current market value of the real estate, plus PAWSD’s court filing requesting a ‘declaratory judgement’ of its right to sell the property.
SJWCD has repeatedly announced their intention to prevent this sale.
Prior to entering the executive session, SJWCD President Candace Jones made a statement.
“Back in December, we discussed holding a work session, to discuss the discord we’ve had with PAWSD concerning the Running Iron Ranch… PAWSD since intervening with a lawsuit. But the fundamental task remains the same, as I see it, which is to protect the water rights held by the Conservancy District, for the benefit of the residents and property owners of the District, and to move forward as productively as we can, to resolve the dispute with PAWSD.
“Being mindful that the Running Iron Ranch is the site that has been identified historically as the location best suited for water storage and the use of our water storage rights.
“So moving forward purposefully, and being mindful of our limited resources, I tried to put this meeting agenda together, organized around those objectives: protecting the water rights and figuring out how to move forward productively…”
A few historical facts might help us understand, more fully, Ms. Jones comments.
The water rights for a future Dry Gulch Reservoir, to which Ms. Jones hopes to protect, were first sought in 2004, several years before PAWSD and SJWCD succeeded in purchasing the Running Iron Ranch.
Municipal water districts often own water rights in reservoirs that exist on private property. In fact, most of the reservoirs in Pagosa Lakes — Lake Hatcher, Lake Pagosa, Lake Forest, Village Lake, Pinon Lake — are “owned” by the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association (PLPOA)… but PAWSD holds the right to access the water in the lakes, as needed, for a beneficial use: drinking water and irrigation. (PLPOA members also use the water, for recreational uses.)
Unfortunately, certain SJWCD board members — most of whom have served on the board for less than four years and may have a limited understanding of Colorado water law — have, like President Jones, conflated “water rights” with “property rights.”
It’s difficult to move forward productively in a legal dispute, when one of the parties doesn’t understand the law.
But the most interesting detail in Ms. Jones’ comments is the statement that “the Running Iron Ranch is the site that has been identified historically as the location best suited for water storage…”
“Historically”, the Running Iron Ranch was indeed so identified — as the best location — in 2004. But history doesn’t stand still.
In 2007, the Colorado Supreme Court decided a challenge to the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir filed by sportsmen’s organization Trout Unlimited, in two cases commonly known as “Pagosa I” (2007) and “Pagosa II” (2009). The Court determined that the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) were engaging in “water speculation” when they applied for water rights that would allow the storage of 35,000 acre-feet of raw water in a future Dry Gulch Reservoir on the Running Iron Ranch.
You can download a discussion of Pagosa I and Pagosa II, written by Supreme Court chief justice Greg Hobbs, here, if you didn’t download it yesterday.
A couple of elections subsequent to the Supreme Court rulings resulted in changes to the PAWSD board membership, and the new voter-approved PAWSD board determined — as the Supreme Court had also determined — that the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir project was a boondoggle.
“Historically”, a community work group, convened by PAWSD in 2011, determined that the reservoir was not only in the wrong location, it was, in fact, not needed at all.
“Historically”, PAWSD has been hoping, since 2013, to get its customers out from under the $10 million loan obligation related to the Ranch purchase.
“Historically”, PAWSD has now officially announced its intention of selling the Ranch — but has never announced any intention to dispense with any held water rights.
For some people, “history” must be stopped in its tracks, when a document written in 2004 states that the Dry Gulch Reservoir was a good idea. Any related Colorado Supreme Court rulings about speculation must be ignored, along with decisions by the elected PAWSD board. (The SJWCD board is not elected; it’s appointed by a judge.)
The concept of ‘Climate Change’ as a reason for building a large reservoir, did not appear in the 2004 water rights application for Dry Gulch. The justification for a 35,000 acre-foot reservoir, in 2004, was based entirely on the prediction that Pagosa Springs would eventually grow to a community of 160,000 people over the next 100 years.
All those new PAWSD customers were going to pay for the Dry Gulch reservoir, with fees and taxes.
Typically, a community needs a diverse economy to drive continued population growth. Such an economy would be a mix of manufacturing, financial services, higher education, an eclectic assortment of retail outlets, medical services, museums, galleries, athletic competitions, a commercial airport… and so on.
Such an economy, Pagosa Springs does not have. We have a couple of tourist-friendly hot springs facilities, and some trails for hiking, biking and ATV use, and a popular ski hill 20 miles away. (When we have snow.) A few thousand vacant subdivision parcels still await homes, and that will presumably keep our local construction industry going for a good long while. But anyone with any common sense understands that Pagosa Springs is unlikely to grow to 160,000 people.
So SJWCD has apparently come up with a new type of speculation to justify a future Dry Gulch Reservoir.
Enter, stage left, Climate Change.
Pagosa is not going to run out of water due to population growth. Pagosa Springs going to run out of water because the entire American West is slowly — but relentlessly — turning into the Sahara Desert, as the result of the global release of greenhouse gases. At least, that’s the position taken by SJWCD.
A document supporting this speculation arrived in the hands of the SJWCD board in 2022, in the form of a 26-page report by the Wilson Water Group. According to this report, not only can the community look forward to a dire reduction in the available raw water for domestic use, but also river recreationalists — boaters, tubers, anglers — will find the San Juan River to be an ever-less-satisfying recreational amenity…
…unless, that is, the community is willing to underwrite a relatively massive (and expensive?) reservoir to augment river flows.
The SJWCD adopted the 2022 Wilson Water Group report as its guiding document, and interpreted the report as justifying an 11,000 acre-foot reservoir covering most of the Running Iron Ranch grazing land plus some adjacent property not yet owned by SJWCD.
If the 2004 water rights application — on which you are building a house of cards, or proposing a zombie reservoir project — historically failed to mention Climate Change… well, then, we desperately need to update our speculation.