Signs pointing to return of drought

S. Platte flow estimates cut by half; snowmelt down due to winds, heat

Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 22, 2006 at midnight

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There are troubling signs that drought is swiftly returning to the South Platte River Basin, even as farmers and cities battle over irrigation water.

In the past 50 days, forecasts for the river's flows have dropped roughly 50 percent, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The South Platte, which supplies half the water for metro-area cities and thousands of acres of farmland, will generate just 150,000 acre-feet of water between now and Sept. 30, according to the NRCS.

Utility managers had been counting on a previous forecast of roughly 300,000 acre-feet of water melting out of the snowpack.

High temperatures and hot winds have robbed the river of billions of gallons of water, vaporizing moisture from the snowpack even as parched soils along the river's banks soak up water from the stream.

As temperatures along the Front Range hit 90 degrees in recent days, South Platte farmers caught in an irrigation well crisis dug deep into their sugar beet and onion fields, trying to gauge how much longer the crops will last without water from the wells.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Seven weeks ago, farmers and water utility managers were confident that heavy mountain snows would melt, flooding some rivers, turning farm fields green and filling reservoirs.

The April 1 forecast for South Platte water supplies stood at 118 percent of average, the best it had been in years.

Thirty days later, though, it had plummeted to just 65 percent of average.

"Where is the water?" one farmer asked angrily at a meeting last week.

Chris Pacheco, assistant snow survey supervisor for the Natural Resources Conservation Services, said much of the long-awaited snowmelt from the mountain watersheds that supply the river isn't reaching the stream because the soils are simply too dry.

"People are worried because in the South Platte, rainfall plays a huge role in the water supply. We didn't get any precipitation in the basin in April. And now we're seeing unusually warm temperatures," Pacheco said.

A similar scenario played out in 2002, though the winter was drier.

Denver Water, the state's largest water utility, said it has seen demand surge in recent days, as hot spring weather settled into the metro area. But its reservoirs are 86 percent full and rising, according to Bob Steger, water resources engineer, well ahead of the 72 percent mark they hit at this time in 2002, when levels began to fall.

Still, it is the long-term trend that has farmers and water managers worried that 2006 may signal that Colorado is entering a chronic dry spell.

Winters have been routinely dry since 1997. Only one year out of the past eight, 2005, has delivered average or above-average snows to the state, according to the NRCS.

This year, of Colorado's eight major river basins, only one, the Rio Grande, is in worse shape than the South Platte, with the Arkansas Basin also witnessing hot temperatures and rapidly shrinking streams.

"Going into April, we knew the southern half of the state was going to be bad, but we were still hopeful for the north," said State Engineer Hal Simpson, Colorado's top water regulator. "By May 1, though, the whole state was below average."

The return to drought along the South Platte has transformed what was a regulatory standoff over irrigation wells into a bitter water battle, pitting cities against farmers and neighbor against neighbor.

Up and down the river, a strict brand of liquid accounting is taking hold, as lawmakers and water regulators struggle to accommodate the competing demands of the state's largest urban center and its largest irrigated farm economy.

The South Platte Basin was once home to more than 1 million acres of irrigated farms, the most profitable in the state. Half of those acres relied on about 6,000 irrigation wells, according to the state engineer's office.

When the 2002 drought struck, cities and farmers who relied on the river's surface supplies sued the state over its management of the wells, which pull from the same shallow aquifer that supplies the river.

In 2003, after months of bickering in the legislature, a strict new law was passed that requires well owners to put more water back in the river to compensate for the use of the wells.

Since then, nearly one-third of the wells have stopped pumping, their owners certain they couldn't find or couldn't afford to buy the water needed under the new law.

Water officials believe the shutdown of 440 irrigation wells two weeks ago is simply the most visible sign that the South Platte is a river under siege, one where the competition for water is fierce and the regulatory battles long.

Simpson said everyone realized the 2003 law would inevitably shrink irrigated farmland in the basin.

"We all knew that," he said.

As cities have claimed more and more farm water for their own systems, farmers have been caught short.

Last week the farmers turned to the Western Slope for salvation, something they've done over and over again in the past 125 years. The hope is that the extra water flowing over there will cool the strife and save crops here - at least for this season.

On Friday night, giant pumps that lie just outside Granby at the confluence of the Upper Colorado and the Fraser rivers began pushing water uphill and east, over the Continental Divide to the South Platte irrigators.

It isn't clear whether that delivery will allow the irrigation wells to begin pumping because legal issues remain unresolved. Negotiations are expected to continue this week.

Even if well owners are allowed to use the West Slope water, it is only a temporary fix to the long-term water shortages forecast for the South Platte Basin.

"There was a time when I started that we all thought there would always be enough water," said Noble Underbrink, a 20-year veteran of running the Northern Colorado Conservancy District's West Slope operation.

"We manage as well as we can. But this is Mother Nature . . . and that old saying is still true: Man plans, and God laughs."

smithj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5474

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