There’s a new state law aimed at reducing soil erosion caused by the transfer of water rights out of the Arkansas River Basin. Once effective next year, it will require revegetating the land with native plants before water can be used elsewhere.
Municipalities and developers often purchase and move irrigation water away from agricultural areas, often known as "buy and dry." State Representative Ty Winter, whose district covers much of the Lower Arkansas Basin, spoke during the legislative session.
“The metroplex grows, we see urban sprawl and we see more people moving to the city," he said. “There's only one place the water can come from and that's agri-centered communities. When that water's bought and taken from the land, at the end of the day what you're left with is a piece of ground and it's what we do with that piece of ground that's the next question.”
Winter said moving the water and leaving the farmland dry results in, “beautiful lawns and beautiful golf courses in the urban areas. But what's left in my district is fallow fields, dust and weeds." This, he said, causes environmental and economic problems for the surrounding communities.
Gerry Knapp is a revegetation and water consultant working in the Arkansas River Basin. He said beginning next year, water rights owners in the basin must take better care of the land if they want to transfer the water elsewhere.
“In other words, if you don't do the revegetation, you don't get to use the water for the new uses,” he said. “That's the best incentive and also the best accountability measurement.”
That revegetation would likely include native short grass prairie plants, but it won’t be quite the same as the original prairie ecosystem.
“Once the revegetation has been accomplished and established, (the landscape) will still vary from year to year," he said. “There'll be some species that will increase, some that'll decrease.”
Revegetation used to be an afterthought in the water law court decrees that guide the changes in water uses, Knapp said.
“Now it's really an important piece that all parties have to consider in the process, “ Knapp said. “I think it's actually quite an improvement over where we were.”
But it doesn’t really solve the loss of the water to the region.
“You can't balance out the removal of the water with just the revegetation,” Knapp said. “There's a lot of economic impacts that aren't addressed through this legislation. This is strictly what happens to the land.”
The new law also requires a water right owner to implement other soil management practices to help prevent erosion.
The legislation had broad support among most state lawmakers. There were a few who expressed concerns along with their yes votes though. That included Cleave Simpson whose district covers part of the San Luis Valley and Rio Grande River Basin.
During the hearings for the bill, Simpson said there's an unintended consequence. “If you make it incrementally just a little bit harder in Division Two (the Arkansas River Basin) to transfer water rights from ag to municipal, guess where they go to look for other transfers: the Rio Grande Basin, the Colorado River Basin, and the South Platte where maybe the barriers and the obstacles are a little less intrinsic and cumbersome.”
Knapp disagreed with this perspective and said the law could serve as a model or be expanded in the future to cover other areas.
“It's already difficult to take water out of any basin,” he said. “This bill does not change that very much. It may increase the cost of acquisition and removal a little bit, but I just don't see that change being big enough to warrant that concern.”
Representative Michael Carter’s district includes parts of Arapahoe and Adams counties, including the city of Aurora, which is a major player in transferring water rights from the Arkansas River. He said during the legislative session that Aurora has created a water task force to have conversations with the agricultural communities and work together to find solutions.
- The Colorado Springs Utilities Board opposes Aurora's recent purchase of water rights in Otero County
- Despite recent precipitation, it's still dry in southeastern Colorado and that has dire implications for agriculture in the region
- Perspectives on water after 30 years of talking about it in the Arkansas River Basin
- More than half the water use in the Rio Grande River Basin is unsustainable
- New preserve on Purgatoire River in Southeastern Colorado established to restore prairie habitat
- Progress on a 70-year-old promise to pipe clean drinking water to southeastern Colorado
