Water Fights
How drought is changing the American West
The blizzards that dumped 8-plus feet of snow on Colorado in March and April were too little, too late for Ron Aschermann, a fourth-generation farmer in southeast Colorado's parched Arkansas Valley. After four years of drought, he and scores of other area farmers had already given up on planting this spring. For the moment, he says, "there's water to start a crop." The Rocky Ford Ditch, an irrigation canal in which he shares the water rights with 51 other farmers, is brimming with mountain runoff. Yet Aschermann fears a repeat of last summer, when the ditch ran dry in July and farmers went six weeks without a drop. "The crops just burned up," he says.
So Aschermann and his fellow shareholders in the ditch are packing it in. Rather than endure another year trying to coax onions and alfalfa from the bone-dry earth, they have decided to sell their water rights for $19 million to the thirsty Denver suburb of Aurora. The controversial transfer, now under review by a state district court judge, would reduce the already-beleaguered valley's farm production by about 2,600 acres. Diverted 160 miles north to fast-growing Aurora, the water would be enough to supply about 12,000 households during what could be another scorching summer.
Shriveled. Although spring storms have caused flooding in parts of the Midwest and replenished some eastern reservoirs, much of the West remains gripped by drought. Despite late-season snows, reservoirs in cities like Aurora remain less than one-third full, and even average precipitation won't refill them for three years or more. Unfortunately, National Weather Service forecasters now predict a return to dry weather in much of the region, all but guaranteeing more of the water shortages that have already cost residents from Colorado to California billions of dollars in water bills and shriveled vegetation.
While some climatologists blame global warming for the drought's severity, such episodes are hardly a new phenomenon. Studies of ancient tree rings suggest that dry spells have plagued the West for centuries. A megadrought about 700 years ago may have contributed to the disappearance of the Anasazi Indians, the region's first known human settlers. And three droughts over the past century--including the one in the 1930s that spawned the Dust Bowl--devastated agricultural life across the West, driving out homesteaders and shuttering towns.
This time around, however, it is not just farmers and ranchers who are hard pressed for water. Now the agrarian Old West must compete with the New West's burgeoning suburbs and even with endangered species that depend on ample stream flows. "The drought is a warning signal," says Gail Norton, secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, which last week released a map highlighting western communities likely to experience water-supply crises over the next two decades. "Water shortages will be repeated even in average rainfall years because there's simply not enough supply to satisfy all the growing demands."
Until recently, Westerners could avoid this looming problem. Lulled by nearly two decades of above-average precipitation that preceded the current drought, cities like Aurora failed to acquire the water supplies needed to keep pace with their booming populations. Meanwhile, residents--millions of whom migrated from the East in recent decades--have landscaped homes and businesses as if they still lived in wetter climes, carpeting thousands of square miles with bluegrass lawns and other thirsty vegetation.
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