Platte River use studied

Task force to make water plan for lawmakers

Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 30, 2007 at midnight

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GREELEY - A new task force charged with bringing calm to the battle-weary South Platte River Basin has 90 days to create a water plan for lawmakers to consider in September.

Any solutions likely will have to serve farmers and fast-growing cities equally, and may focus on better managing the river's scare supplies, as well as improving reservoir systems on the Eastern Plains.

The task force appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter met here for the first time Friday with about 100 anxious water users.

The task force enters the water arena as a five-year battle wears on over how best to use the river's increasingly scarce supplies.

Harris Sherman, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, told water users that the state was looking for fresh ideas, and would not attempt to undo hard-won legal decrees or strict new laws designed to protect the river.

"We're not a court. We're not here to overturn court decisions. We're here to focus on the facts and potential solutions," Sherman said.

Last year, the state ordered 440 wells to shut down because they had not been able to comply with a strict new law designed to protect the river.

Powerful irrigation wells in this rich farm region pull water from the same aquifer that supplies the river.

Though the state encouraged the drilling of the wells as far back as 80 years ago, studies begun in the 1960s showed the wells were beginning to harm the river's surface flows.

The current battle erupted in 2002 when the drought left those with surface water rights with dry fields, while those with deep ground-water wells were able to continue irrigating.

The subsequent water crisis triggered a Colorado Supreme Court ruling and a new state law designed to protect the river.

The fight has pitted farmers who use wells against those who rely on the river's surface supplies.

Cities that also rely on the river, such as Greeley and Boulder, and big communities like Highlands Ranch, also have joined the fray, worried that well use is harming the river and their water rights.

But as the state has tightened its oversight of the South Platte, well users have been hard-pressed to find extra water to keep their farms going. More than $30 million in cash flow has evaporated from places like Morgan County, which is heavily dependent on the deep wells.

Thousands of acres of land now lie fallow.

"The old gentlemen's agreements that we used to rely on have now gone away," said Dick Wolfe, assistant state engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources who is helping staff the work group. "So we're seeing less cooperation in the system."

The task force will hold five meetings this summer to meet its September deadline at the state Capitol, when a special legislative panel will convene, if potential resolutions are at hand. Its next meeting is set for July 16. For more information visit www.dnr.state.co.us or call Russ Zigler at 303-866-3556.

smithj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5474

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