When Tim Turns on the Big Tap!

      Unless you have been living under a rock, by now you are probably aware that the Independence Water and Sanitation District has applied to the State water court to expand its decreed water usage from “in house and irrigation” on the subject property to now also include “domestic, municipal, industrial, commercial, stock watering, fire protection and exchange and augmentation purposes,” both on and off the Subject Property (Thank you, Susan Schick.). 
     The purpose of this article is to tell you a couple of facts about water rights that you may or may not know. Up front, I encourage you to get involved, check all the information out from reliable sources and stand up for your rights. NOW.  The next few months will probably be a difficult period of time for many who are living in Elbert County, in particular those in the northwestern portion of the county, who never considered that water issues might be the most difficult hurdle to clear when considering whether to stay or move somewhere else.  Yes, this is just that serious. 
     Tim  Craft is the developer and owner of the proposed Independence, a 1000 acre expansive subdivision on an old homestead to the north of County Road 158 in Elbert County, very close to Douglas County to the west.  Before you begin to look for some diatribe here making Tim Craft out to be doing something unlawful because he improperly filled out his water papers, you need to know that, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Craft purchased the water rights when he purchased the land, just as prescribed by Colorado law.  That does not make him a bad person, but to say that his presence and his project will not adversely impact many of you living in Elbert County is a huge understatement. 
    Much of the upcoming turmoil will be coming to you as a result of several past iterations of the Elbert County BOCC, the Colorado Division of Water Rights, and the vast array of people who have learned how to become extremely wealthy on the fresh water in our aquifers.  Nothing that a developer can build on top of the ground can surpass the value of the water under the ground.  Water is going for as much as $85,000 per acre foot in water deals here in our state. Before Gaye and I adjudicated our deep water rights on our 60 acres, we had the domestic rights to 1.5 times, and using the 40 acre set formula, we originally had 1.5 acre feet of water per year.  After adjudicating our water rights, we are now entitled to approximately 100 acre feet of water per year from all five aquifers.  If we had a pipeline and a willingness to sell our adjudicated water, then theoretically, we could be making $8,500,000 per year.  We do not want to sell our water.  Some people do.  Tim does.  He has said so.
     The standard for the amount of water given to a property for domestic use was based on the old notion of a family farm being forty acres.  If you had a farm of forty acres you automatically were allotted a domestic well permit for one acre foot of water per year.  The Colorado Division of Water rights still uses that formula today.  But people started moving into rural areas to get out of the city.  They often wanted only a couple of acres of ground to garden and raise a few chickens.  But the State still gives the same amount of water for a domestic well to a two acre home as it does to a forty acre farm.  It does not take a mathematical genius to see that the same forty acres of ground that once had one family with a single well might now have twenty homes on the same footprint with twenty wells, each automatically allocated one acre foot of water per year.   So this formula, from the State of Colorado, designed to protect the water from the aquifers, actually has become one of the culprits in depleting our underground water.     
     Take a drive down County Road 158, the road that forms the southern boundary of the Independence project.  To the south are lots of homes on acreage that ranges form 2 to 5 acres in size.  The homes there are on well and septic.  Heck, estimates say that 96% of the county is on well and septic.  What we know for certain is that the wells in this area are going down at an alarming rate. 
    There are areas across the county line in Douglas County that desperately need water.  When you do not have water you will pay whatever the going price is.  Now along comes Mr. Craft and Independence.  Tim Craft has been allocated 350 acre feet of adjudicated water per year in the upper Dawson alone.  If nobody had ever adjudicated that water until today, I can promise you that the water courts in Colorado would not allow the owner to have 350 acre feet from the Upper Dawson.  You could apply for the water rights but they would send you a letter back to say that there is not enough water in the Upper Dawson to give you that much water.  They would go on and on about how you would have to do an augmentation (replenishment) plan due to the over-allocation of water in the now shallow aquifers and you would get a pittance of what the original owner was able to get when the papers were first filed.  Mr. Craft would have to drill deeper into the lower aquifers for his subdivision, (possibly the Denver or Arapahoe)  not into the top aquifer (Upper Dawson) that the majority of property owners surrounding him have drilled into.
But Tim gets the whole 350 acre feet which I will from henceforth refer to as the BIG TAP!
          When the BIG TAP eventually gets turned on it is going to cause the people who live in that area to have to dig deeper wells (if they can afford to do so) and that is a prohibitively expensive proposition.  To be honest, it will break the financial backs of many.  The developers know it, the BOCC knows it and the Colorado Division of Water Resources knows it.  Still, at least two members of the BOCC continue to spew disinformation about how much ground water is in our aquifers, saying there are a thousand years of water below our feet.  The fact the State of Colorado has labeled our aquifers as not non-tributary says that they are aware of the problem. The aquifers are not recharging fast enough to keep them from drying out all together. It took millions, upon millions of years for our aquifers to become the resource they are. It is therefore inevitable and currently happening as I write this, that the water tables are dropping and when it is gone…well, you are going to get thirsty, to say the very least. Mr. Craft’s project, what he will do with his water rights, will put loads of money in his pocket, but a dire strain on the aquifers and everyone else reliant on that upper aquifer.  You may own the rights to the water if you have adjudicated, but the State of Colorado owns the water under your feet, no matter how much or how little.
      The BIG TAP  is something that could be controlled either by a judge or by our Elbert County Board of County Commissioners.  The impact, as brutal as it could be, might be lessened if the local government interceded and helped to put a plan into place to help those who are vulnerable.  But up to now, that has not been the way things have gone.  They seem to only be interested in rampant growth and look down their noses at anyone who did not have the foresight to drill deeper when they came out here.  “Caveat emptor (Buyer beware),” they will say.
     So now we find ourselves back at the picture I made for this story.  Tim is going to reap lots of money for his water.  The little kid (surrounding property owners) is going to get hosed.  That said, I have been involved in many causes over my nearly seven decades and when many people stand together, put partisan bickering behind them and raise their collective voices in unison, sometimes good things happen.  Sometimes, but if it is going for us, Elbert citizens who rely on and cherish the water beneath our feet, you need to, we need to remember the words of the poet, Omar Khayyam, when he said, "The bird of time has but a little way to fly --- and Lo! the bird is on the wing."