The snowpack of the Rocky Mountains here in Colorado, provides much of the American West with precious, clean water. The great irony of the water here is that for all of its abundance, Colorado does not get to use very much of the water that originates within its boundaries. The rights to the water were negotiated away many years ago by politicians. These men lacked the foresight to see that fresh water would one day be more valuable than almost any natural resource. They believed there was so much water that no matter how the country grew, there would always be more than enough to satisfy the requirements of the people. The mere suggestion that Colorado would one day be home to millions of permanent residents would have almost assuredly garnered you the moniker, lunatic!
It used to be that when you bought land in rural Colorado it was based on the section model. The Public Land Survey system here in the United States was based on the concept of a section of land. A section of land is a square mile. A section contains 640 acres. Thirty-six sections made a township for purposes of mapping the country on a rectangular grid. The family farm of old was almost always based on a 40 acre parcel, or a sixteenth of a section. To this very day, a domestic well in Colorado gets one acre foot of water per 40 acres. If, for example, a person owned 80 acres of land, they would be entitled to two acre feet of domestic water.
Unfortunately for those of us who live in Elbert County, only one other county in the state has less water in terms of lakes and ponds. Phillips County, in the northeast corner of Colorado which only has 688 square miles of land within its boundaries has only .11 square miles of surface water. Elbert comes in second boasting just .17 square miles of surface water, but we are three times the size of Phillips County with 1,851 square miles. What that means is that our only source of water to speak of comes from groundwater wells.
All of that said, Elbert County sits over a set of five nested aquifers that comprise the Denver Bedrock Aquifer System. The Division of Water Resources have given the Denver Bedrock Aquifer System a special designation. Our water is classified as Not nontributary ground water. According to the Colorado Division of Water Resources, “Not nontributary ground Water means ground water located within those portions of the Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe, and Laramie-Fox Hills aquifer that are outside the boundaries of any designated ground water basin in existence on January 1, 1985, the withdrawal of which will, within one hundred years, deplete the flow of a natural stream, including a natural stream as defined in sections 37-82-101 (2) and 37-92-102 (1) (b), at an annual rate of greater than one-tenth of one percent of the annual rate of withdrawal.”
The Denver Bedrock Aquifer system is not able to recharge itself at a rate that will keep up with the rate with which we are depleting it. It has a finite amount of water and it will go dry in a period of time that the state hoped would extend over a 100 year period of time. But it is actually a guessing game as to how much water is actually in the five aquifers. To make matters worse, the CDWR (Colorado Division of Water Resources) did not change its model of water allotment for domestic wells to reflect actual demand and as a result, the upper two aquifers of the Denver Bedrock Aquifer System are over-allocated by a significant amount.
Remember from the beginning of the article, it used to be that there was an acre foot of water per 40 acres. But Elbert County has no water infrastructure and so as development began to radically increase from 1985 on until the present day, when a developer built higher density sites (let’s say five acre parcels) the DWR gave each five acre parcel an acre foot of water. That means that potentially eight times as much water or more was being drawn from the top two Dawson aquifers as was being allowed when the average parcel was 40 acres. Three decades later, these top two aquifers have been so badly over allocated, some water engineers are saying these water sources cannot produce the actual amounts that have been promised. Today, when you try to actually adjudicate your water rights, the CDWR is actually denying adjudication in some cases or giving fractional amounts of what was given just a couple of years ago.
The price of digging a well hundreds of feet deeper into the Denver Aquifer layer to get domestic water is becoming very expensive. Also, the deeper you go to get water, the more brackish it becomes. We have no other options in Elbert County but to try and exert all pressure to insure the conservation and accurate allotment of these precious water resources.
None of the things discussed so far actually address the most potentially dangerous situation that is looming on the immediate horizon… water speculation.
Water has been sold to the Metropolitan Denver area to fill reservoirs for staggering amounts. Water has been sold for more than $10,000 per acre foot.
That means in the case, of landowners, many of whom I know, that own 60 acre parcels with adjudicated water rights, could could sell their water (100 acre feet of water per year on average) for $1,000,000 per year at that price. That amount will surely rise by leaps and bounds in the not too distant future! Now before you go crazy thinking that your ship has arrived, remember that there is no water infrastructure, no pipelines, etc. That is where developers step up and offer to buy your water at greatly reduced prices because they will be responsible for building said infrastructure and they will also point out that they will need to make enough money to remain solvent.
Remember again, that once a not nontributary water resource is depleted it is gone forever. Once depleted you have no legal recourse to regain your water. You will not have any water… just a pipeline and a dry well. Who do you think will be there to sell you water at prices that are even more exorbitant than the $10,000 per acre foot price you were paid that began this fantasy of quick riches? If you guessed the developers, you would be correct.
Water rights, water districts and water laws are very confusing and very important. I am including a state precipitation map for Elbert County. We are generally very arid except the area around the Palmer Divide. In my humble opinion there needs to be a greater focus in Elbert County on just who has rights to the water and who stands to profit from the depletion of the Denver Bedrock Aquifers. This education should be a major topic of discussion by our elected officials in meetings with the public. We know that shadowy groups representing developers and water districts have been exerting pressure on the BOCC to allow new water districts to be formed to gain control over unadjudicated water rights. Why are we hearing so little as to what our water future in Elbert County is going to look like.
Is this just another case mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur? Is this one of those things that is just better left to the likes of former commissioner Kurt Schlegel and the developers who stand to make a fortune if we abdicate our choice to protect the finite water resources of Elbert County?
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