A stormy meeting in Yuma about water

Republican River district sees need for changes to keep Colorado in compliance with an interstate compact. Some say, what problem?

by Allen Best

Cumulus clouds towering over the Great Plains on Tuesday afternoon inspired visions of Greek gods casting bolts. In McCook, Neb., the storm dumped five inches of rain accompanied by hail that ranged from the size of golf balls to baseballs.

McCook is located along the Republican River, which originates on the eastern plains of Colorado far distant from mountain snows. Despite summer thunderstorms, it’s a dry area with an average annual precipitation of about 17 inches. The water in the river that flows into Nebraska comes almost entirely from the Ogallala Aquifer, much of that water deposited millions of years ago.

In Colorado, the North Fork of the Republican River flows through Yuma. It stormed there on Tuesday night, too, lightning flashing occasionally through the windows. But the storm inside a room at the Yuma County Fairgrounds was of an entirely different sort.

The simple question was how did those farmers who pump water from the underlying Ogallala aquifer wish to tax themselves? For Colorado to honor its compact commitments to Nebraska and hence Kansas, both of them downstream, it has to make changes.

Those who spoke loudest said they did not want to be taxed based on the volumes of water they use. Some questioned the need for any fees. Some questions suggested a denial that any problem exists. Just let us keep pumping the aquifer as we have!

The meeting was the finale of six meetings held across the Republican River Basin in recent weeks. Like the others, it was well attended. At least 75 people showed up, many wearing the cap and blue jeans they had worn earlier in the day while working in their fields of corn and other crops.

In November, directors of the Republican River Water Conservation District must decide exactly how they want to move forward. To stay in compact compliance, the district wants to expand a well field that has allowed them to do so, if sometimes with narrow margins.

A 1942 compact among Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas specified how much water the upstream states must allow to flow downstream. That wasn’t an issue until the massive application of high-capacity pumps and then center-pivot sprinklers in the 1960 and 1970s allowed farmers to mine the aquifer in the Republican River Basin. In Colorado, more than a million acre-feet of water were pumped in peak years.

This has had the effect of reducing flows in downstream states. Kansas sued Nebraska, and then Nebraska sued Colorado. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, as all interstate compacts must.

The upshot is that Colorado agreed to toe the line. The Republican River Water Conservation District was created in 2004 with the principal function of keeping Colorado in compact compliance.

That’s a tall order. Rod Lenz, the president of the board of directors, said that farmers in the district need to figure out how to reduce their pumping to extract an average of 600,000 acre-feet a year. They have averaged 700,000 acre-feet in recent years.

The warming climate has not helped. Drought most definitely does not. In 2022, a hot and dry year, farmers pumped 940,000 acre-feet.

By reducing pumping to 600,000 acre-feet, farmers in the basin will have a longer glide path as they figure out more sustainable ways to farm.

Pumping at current rates will cause some areas to lose water in 25 years, although other areas will have water for many more decades. Yuma lies in one of the more water-flush areas.

“We’re not here to regulate,” said Lenz at a meeting in Joes the prior week. “We’re here to stay in compact compliance.”

That’s a thin distinction but one suggestive of the tricky line being negotiated by directors. Change must occur, but change is rarely welcomed except by babies with soiled diapers.

The district’s directors have adopted a two-pronged strategy for keeping Colorado out of the courtroom with Nebraska. One strategy, which was initiated in 2016, involving taking land out of irrigated production. By early 2025, more than 17,000 acres had been removed from irrigation, almost entirely within the river’s south fork area. The Ogallala in that area around Cheyenne Wells, Burlington, and Idalia never was as thick, the reservoir of water amid the underground rocks never as plentiful. In many places, the aquifer has been drained.

The second strategy to ensure compact compliance has been to mine water from north of Wray, where the aquifer has greater quantities of water, to deliver at the Nebraska border to ensure compact compliance. Those wells have produced 98,519 acre-feet in the first 10 years.

All of this has not come cheaply. More than $123 million has been spent by the district so far, a combination of federal and state funds along with assessments by the Republican River district of irrigated lands. Those assessments began at $5 an acre but have elevated to $30 an acre.

At the meeting in Yuma, as they had the week before in Joes, Lenz and other directors outlined their thoughts and choices. Foremost in their current strategy is to continue to pay landowners enough money to take land out of production to achieve the goal of 25,000 acres before the end of 2029. The district has about 8,000 acres to go. Landowners are paid for full or partial retirement of land from cultivated agriculture.

More controversially, they also want to expand the well field that allows water to be pumped and then delivered to Nebraska. They plan eight more wells at an estimated cost of $11 million.

Beyond that, they envision even more wells, elevating the total cost to more than $165 million to keep in compliance. That would allow the farmers now mining the Ogallala to continue to mine it without drastic alteration.

The immediate question is whether to stay with the existing assessment of $30 per acre of land. Another approach would be to adopt a fee, half of it to be based on amounts of land being irrigated and half on the amount of water pumped. The third option is the amount of land being irrigated and a tiered rate based on amount of water used, with those using more water paying more.

These latter two proposals would have the effect of encouraging conservation. Directors say they would keep the district’s budget at $15 million annually. However, it’s not clear what impact expanding the well field will have on that budget.

A show of hands at the Yuma meeting showed little appetite for changes in the fee structure. Some questions from audience members suggested rejection of the need for change. Do you really need this money? And is this expensive expansion of the well field needed? Might just two wells, not eight, suffice?

One speaker even challenged whether Colorado had to comply with the compact.

The short answer is that yes, it must. It’s that or agree to spend considerable money in litigation that would go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, as it has already twice.

The question beyond that question is what would be the stance of Colorado’s governor and attorney general in 2030 if Colorado were to choose to violate the compact? The state water engineer — an appointee of the governor — has authority to shut down all wells in the basin as necessary to comply. Would the state water engineer do so?

That strategy would be risky, responded Randy Hendrix, the river district’s engineering consultant. Wells could be shut down for multiple years.

A few audience members, however, did acknowledge the difficult challenge. “I want to thank all you guys for the hard work. This is a hard job, hard subject,” said one audience member.

What can be said with certainty is that directors of the district who fielded questions managed to keep their cool in the face of the sometimes hard questions and statements.

At their quarterly meeting in November, directors must figure out how to move forward. Or, as some suggested, just ignoring Nebraska and the state engineer and letting those chips fall where they may.