The preciousness of water and the cost of obtaining it have had Westerners joking for years that “whiskey’s for drinkin’ and water’s for fightin’…”
– The New York Times, ‘Thirst in West for Farm Water May Be Costly’ by Iver Peterson, November 1984.
As mentioned in Part One, representatives from two water district boards — Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) — heard a presentation from Texas businessman Trey Fricke on Thursday, May 29.
Mr. Fricke noted, during the presentation, that he hopes to retire to Pagosa Springs someday. As some of us have done already. In the meantime, he would like to help the community increase its supply of stored raw water.
The presentation focused specifically on the Running Iron Ranch, jointly owned by PAWSD and SJWCD.
PAWSD has announced its intention to sell the Ranch. SJWCD has claimed that PAWSD cannot sell the Ranch without SJWCD’s permission.
These conflicting claims have resulted in an ongoing lawsuit, filed in District Court.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer member of the PAWSD board of directors, but this editorial series reflects only mu own opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of the full board or of the PAWSD staff.
According to the May 29 presentation, Mr. Fricke and his company, Zipper Valley Ranch LLC, propose to purchase the Ranch for $10.4 million and dedicate a 125-acre reservoir site in the middle of the Ranch where perhaps 3,000 acre-feet of raw water could be stored, to be used by the Pagosa Springs community as a municipal water supply, and as a source of water for firefighting.
3,000 acre-feet equals about 840 million gallons… or slightly more than twice the amount of water sold to PAWSD customers during 2024.
PAWSD already has storage in various reservoirs amounting to about 4,000 acre-feet, so this new reservoir, if built, would mean that PAWSD would be able to store about five times its total annual water sales, as protection in drought years. This would be on top of about 49,000 acre-feet of direct flow water rights held by PAWSD.
The proposed reservoir, known as either the Dry Gulch Reservoir or as the San Juan Headwaters Project, has been in the planning stages since at least 2003, but does not yet have engineering, nor does the community have an established funding mechanism for the project.
Zipper Valley made an initial offer to purchase the Ranch, and become a partner on the reservoir project, back in October 2024. The initial offer was surprising to the PAWSD board because it not only would get PAWSD customers completely out of debt on the Ranch loan, but it would also dedicate the central portion of the Running Iron Ranch for a future reservoir to be designed and constructed by SJWCD, with financial and logistical assistance from Zipper Valley.
A PAWSD subcommittee met with Mr. Fricke to help revise the proposal and get it ready for presentation to the SJWCD board. Because the Ranch is jointly owned by PAWSD and SJWCD, the proposal obviously needed SJWCD approval… if the sale was to proceed in a friendly manner and avoid legal complications.
Mr. Fricke submitted the revised proposal to SJWCD in November, and requested an opportunity to meet with the board and discuss the preliminary offer.
SJWCD voted unanimously to refuse a meeting with Mr. Fricke.
We might wonder why a water district — SJWCD — whose main purpose since 1989 has been to build additional reservoir storage, would refuse to meet with the first potential partner to come along and show an interest in helping construct the Dry Gulch Reservoir.
As I understand the situation, SJWCD had several reasons for choosing to dismiss the initial Zipper Valley proposal, including:
1. The proposal did not specifically guarantee the construction of an 11,000 acre-foot reservoir on the Ranch.
2. The proposal implied that SJWCD would have to transfer its 2004 water rights to Zipper Valley.
3. The proposal would eliminate the possibility that the Running Iron Ranch and its reservoir would eventually become a state park.
4. The proposal would presumably eliminate the possibility of having a solar farm on the property to create local renewable energy.
The Zipper Valley proposal has changed significantly since January, but the May 20 presentation was the first time some of the SJWCD Board members got to hear directly from Mr. Fricke in a public setting, and hear about the significant changes.
And this was also the first time SJWCD board members and the general public were able to ask questions of Mr. Fricke in an open public meeting.
At the top of this page, I included a link to a 1984 article in The New York Times,‘Thirst in West for Farm Water May Be Costly’ by Iver Peterson.
Here’s another quote from that article, which was written 40 years ago:
“Frankly, it appears clear that large-scale reclamation projects primarily for irrigated agriculture appear to be a glory of the past, not the future,” said W. Don Maughan, deputy director of the Department of Water Resources in Arizona, the state most successful since World War II in securing Federal money for water projects…
He warned that Western agriculture would “have a big challenge in keeping their current water sources, let alone finding new sources of supply…”
The large-scale reclamation projects that took place in the American West between 1920 and 1980 were initially aimed at increased agricultural production, but later began to focus on the needs of growing cities like Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
In 1950, the population of Arizona was about 750,000. Thanks in part to massive federal water projects, the population in 2020 was 7.2 million people. Nearly a ten-fold increase.
Colorado also saw a substantial increase in population between 1950 and 2020, going from 1.3 million to 6 million. About a four-fold increase.
How about agricultural production?
According to historical data from the USDA Census of Agriculture, Colorado had approximately 33 million acres of land in agricultural production in 1950. This figure included farmland used for crops, pasture, and other agricultural activities, as reported in the 1950 Census of Agriculture.
And in 2020? Based on recent USDA Census of Agriculture data — the 2022 Census — Colorado had about 30 million acres of farmland in agricultural production. 3 million acres less than in 1950.
This is consistent with reports indicating a decline in total agricultural land over the past 40 years, driven by suburban developments and economic pressures.
It would appear that the pressure to increase water supplies is coming, not from agriculture, but from growing municipalities.
At the May 20 presentation by Zipper Valley, SJWCD board member Chuck Riehm noted that the population of Archuleta County had increased five-fold over the past 50 years. If the population were to increase at that same rate over the next 50 years, the county would then have a population of about 75,000.
If that were to happen, would we have enough drinking water?
That question is impossible to answer, because we don’t know what the per capita water demand might be in 2075. For all we know, American households will be recycling their water by then, the same way astronauts do today.
But here’s another question:
Do we really want our community to grow to 75,000 people?