Selling Water instead of Watermelons

The American population continues to shift from cold, wet, Eastern cities to the dry, warm West: Phoenix is threatening Philadelphia’s rank as 5th-largest city, and Austin’s population recently surpassed Baltimore’s. Every person that moves to Los Angeles, Tucson, or Las Vegas means local governments have to use money and political muscle to secure that much more water. As big public works projects like Los Angeles’ Owens River Aqueduct—made famous in the movie Chinatown—become rarer, Western cities increasingly look to nearby farmers with long-standing water rights to quench their thirst.

Looking to Farms for Water

Aurora, Colorado, a booming Denver suburb, entered 2005 with its reservoirs at drought levels, just as it had done the previous three years. The city has difficulty supporting the water needs of its current population—and expects another 200,000 people in the next five years, raising the population to a half-million. 

Aurora’s thirst has decimated the agricultural community 150 miles to the south, in the Arkansas River Valley farming belt centered on Rocky Ford, Colorado. Over the last 50 years, Aurora has slowly bought up the water rights from the irrigation ditch there that watered thousands of acres of cantaloupes and grains.

Stan Fedde and his family have been farming in Fowler, a 1200-person town outside of Rocky Ford, for more than 100 years. The Otero Canal, a manmade tributary of the Arkansas, provides most of the Fowler farmers with their water through a series of irrigation systems.

Fedde still resents Jimmy Carter’s grain embargo against the Soviet Union, which sent grain prices plummeting in 1980. Though the embargo is long past, the downturn it initiated for area farmers has not yet abated. Corn prices are at an all-time low, and wheat is not doing much better. As in most parts of the country, small farmers are forced to operate more and more on credit. The ever-growing debt that farmers face makes selling out an appealing option, especially when there is always a willing buyer in the form of towns like Aurora. The farmers’ water rights are more valuable than their land and can often bring a farmer enough money to pay off the debts he has amassed over the years. Even the best crop year can’t offer money like that.

The sale of water rights and farmland, however, threatens a way of life; it endangers the plans of those who want to stay like Fedde, who is not about to let four years of serious drought end his family’s farming legacy. One can hear the tense reserve in his voice when he says, “we hate to see farmers sell out.” As one farm after another closes, the area’s landscape and economics change. One-third of the Arkansas River Valley’s historic agricultural land has now reverted to grasslands as farmers have sold their water and land. With these farmers gone, many businesses in Rocky Ford have not been able to sustain themselves, thus endangering the other farmers.

The farmers have a habit of wintertime gazing at the snow pack on ski slopes for indications of the next growing season. The custom has taken on heightened significance in recent years: a heavy spring thaw not only determines the fate of the remaining farmers’ crops; it also signifies how much of a drought Aurora and other Denver suburbs will likely have, and thus how hard they will to bargain for water rights. 

A New Lease on Life for Colorado Farmers?

Now Fedde and his fellow farmers have a new opportunity to hold on to their farms, their towns, and their way of life. Last March, Aurora began a program to lease water rights, rather than buy them, as a temporary solution to the severe drought.

This solution may seem obvious, but legal precedent banning short-term water agreements formerly stood in the way. A recent court reversal of this ban has allowed Aurora to begin offering short-term leases. Under this arrangement, farmers are paid for their water on a per-acre basis at a rate that is determined by historical average crop prices. In most cases, farmers leased a fraction of their total water rights and continued planting the rest. Fedde, for example, leased 60 percent of his total acreage this past year, leaving that much of his land unirrigated. With prices last year below the historical average rate and crop yields down, Fedde said this opportunity “helped a lot.” His farm staved off what would have likely been major losses.

Aurora has also encouraged a number of practices that make the farmers’ use of water more efficient. The city has offered subsidies for farmers to install drip irrigation systems, which result in considerably less evaporation than from other irrigation methods. In the first year of the program, 700 acres’ worth of drip irrigation was installed. To protect topsoil in fields left fallow, Aurora also requires contracting farmers to plant a cover crop.

Besides allowing farmers to keep their land and water rights, the lease program allows Aurora to access water much faster than the traditional method of purchasing water rights, according to Doug Kemper, manager of water resources for Aurora. While acquiring full water rights provides the city with long-term water supplies, the acquisition process is time-consuming and expensive. All decisions regarding water rights in Colorado must be heard by a special court, and it frequently takes up to ten years to fully transfer these rights. With the worst drought in 300 years, Aurora did not have any time to waste. The short-term leasing arrangements also saved Aurora from building up water resources that it may not need in non-drought years. Had it been faced with an overabundance of water, Aurora might have felt compelled to plan for an artificially high level of population growth to justify having built a bigger water system. A system of short-term leasing may encourage more responsible growth.

While he’s pleased with the new lease agreements, Fedde does not harbor any illusions that Aurora is interested in the well-being of farmers in the long-term. “Realistically, they probably don’t care (about us). Their goal is to grow and to get water.”

The long-term result of this agreement remains to be seen. One factor unlikely to change is the growing number of people crowding into Colorado and other Western states. And some scientists argue that the recent “drought” is just a return to normal conditions after an exceptionally wet past few centuries. The Arkansas River Valley’s farms could keep fading into grasslands if the short-term leases are renewed and renewed until they effectively become permanent. More optimistically, farming communities like Fowler and suburbs like Aurora alike may become less water-intensive and learn to accommodate new growth. In any event, the water rights Western farmers have so long taken for granted are now as much of a market commodity as Rocky Ford cantaloupes.

Colorado Foundation for Water Education

http://www.cfwe.org/default.asp

Todd Hartman. “Dividing the waters.” Rocky Mountain News. 11 July 2003.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com

Scott Horsley. “Farmers Find Fresh Profits in Selling Water Rights to Cities.” NPR. 29 Aug 2003.

http://www.npr.org