Climate scientists issue their latest, stern warning while farmers in Colorado’s Republican River Basin grapple with how to be sustainable
by Allen Best
The International Panel on Climate Change this week issued its latest report, warning of a dangerous temperature threshold that we’ll breach during the next decade if we fail to dramatically reduce emissions. A Colorado legislative committee on the same day addressed water withdrawals in the Republican River Basin that must be curbed by decade’s end.
In both, problems largely created in the 20th century must now be addressed quickly to avoid the scowls of future generations.
The river basin, which lies east of Denver, sandwiched by Interstates 70 and 76, differs from nearly all others in Colorado in that it gets no annual snowmelt from the state’s mountain peaks. Even so, by tapping the Ogallala and other aquifers, farmers have made it one of the state’s most agriculturally productive areas. They grow potatoes and watermelons but especially corn and other plants fed to cattle and hogs. This is Colorado without mountains, an ocean of big skies and rolling sandhills.
Republican River farmers face two overlapping problems. One is of declining wells. Given current pumping rates, they will go dry. The only question is when. Some already have.
More immediate is how these wells have depleted flows of the Republican River and its tributaries into Nebraska and Kansas. Those states cried foul, citing a 1943 interstate compact. Colorado in 2016 agreed to pare 25,000 of its 450,000 to 500,000 irrigated acres within the basin.
Colorado has a December 2029 deadline. The Republican River Water Conservation District has been paying farmers to retire land from irrigation. Huge commodity prices discourage this, but district officials said they are confident they can achieve 10,000 acres before the end of 2024.
Rod Lenz and siblings moved to the Republican River Basin in 1974 to take advantage of new technology that allowed them to draft the then-vast stores of the Ogallala and other High Plains aquifers. Top, the main stem of the Republican River flows into Nebraska augmented by water from special wells and a pipeline constructed at a cost of $60 million. January 2023 photos/Allen Best
Last year, legislators sweetened the pot with an allocation of $30 million, and a like amount for retirement of irrigated land in the San Luis Valley, which has a similar problem. Since 2004, when it was created, the Republican River district self-encumbered $156 million in fee collections and debt for the transition.
It’s unclear that the district can achieve the 2030 goal. The bill unanimously approved by the Colorado House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee will, if it becomes law, task the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University with documenting the economic loss to the region – and to Colorado altogether – if irrigated Republican River Basin agriculture ceases altogether. The farmers may need more help as the deadline approaches.
This all-or-nothing proposition is not academic. Kevin Rein, the state water engineer, testified that he must shut down all basin wells if compact requirements are not met. The focus is on the Republican’s South Fork, between Wray and Burlington.
Legislators were told that relying solely upon water that falls from the sky diminishes production 75 to 80 percent.
In seeking this study, the river district wants legislators to be aware of what is at stake.
Rod Lenz, who chairs the river district board, put it in human terms. His extended-family’s 5,000-acre farm amid the sandhills can support 13 families, he told me. Returned to grasslands, that same farm could support only two families.
An “evolution of accountability” is how Lenz describes the big picture in the Republican River Basin. “We all knew it was coming. But it was so far in the future. Well, the future is here now.”
Much of the agricultural production in the Republican River Basin supports livestock sectors, including this dairy near Holyoke. Photo/Allen Best
The district has 10 committees charged with investigating ways to sustain the basin’s economy and leave its small towns thriving. Can it attract Internet technology developers? Can the remaining water be used for higher-value purposes? Can new technology irrigate more efficiently?
“We do know we must evolve,” Lenz told me. The farmers began large-scale pumping with the arrival of center-pivot sprinklers, a technology invented in Colorado in 1940. They’re remarkably efficient at extracting underground water. Aquifers created over millions of years are being depleted in a century. Now, they must figure out sustainable agriculture. That’s a very difficult conversation.
The Republican River shares similarities with the better-known and much larger Colorado River Basin. The mid-20th century was the time of applying human ingenuity to development of water resources. Now, along with past miscalculations, the warming climate is exacting a price, aridification of the Colorado River Basin.
Globally, the latest report from climate scientists paints an even greater challenge. To avoid really bad stuff, they say, we must halve our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. They insist upon need for new technologies, including ways to suck carbon out of the atmosphere, that have yet to be scaled.
We need that evolution of accountability described in Colorado’s Republican River Basin. We need a revolution of accountability on the global scale.
Yuma and adjoining counties routinely rank among Colorado’s top producers of corn. Photo/Allen Best
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Your article should provide a wake-up call for all of us. It signals a dire need to find alternative energy solutions to address the overbearing carbon footprint.
Unless you live in Eastern Colorado, understanding the gravity of draining Bonny Reservoir in 2016 was lost on most Coloradans. It would be like draining Horsetooth Reservoir, and all that it provides for people living along the northern front range. The people in Burlington and other towns in the Republican River drainage have been dealt such a gut punch. They lost a primary source of irrigation water, and a one-of-a-kind recreation spot for families in the area.
Whether we live in the Republican River Basin, or along the Front Range, the problems faced by farmers in the Basin should be everyone’s problem. No farms, no food.
Last fall, my wife and I spent a week in the Fort Scott area. We had the opportunity to talk to several current and retired farmers. They have very serious concerns about water levels in the area.
They also told about a decrease in crop production.
The most surprising comment I heard several times was “we need to take climate change very seriously.”
This reminds me of the article you wrote about your decision to purchase a hybrid rather than an electric vehicle. As I recall, it was based not upon whether an EV would be appropriate for most of your driving needs but on the fact that it will make it hard to travel to remote corners of the state occasionally. Many drivers are making the same decision regardless of the climate impacts of that choice. In reality, your car should serve the majority of your driving needs. You can rent for the few times a year that you drive to remote locations or find another way to get there. I have had an EV for 2 years, and I live in one of the most remote parts of the West Slope. I have driven to the Front Range once a year during that time in my EV (I’ve also taken the train). It’s not easy or as quick as filling up at a gas station, but the vast majority of my driving is within an hour or two of home, which my Bolt handles easily. Moreover, what’s a little inconvenience when the world is burning up and drying up?
Finally, remember that hybrids have all of the negative environmental impacts of a gas-powered vehicle PLUS all of the negative impacts of an EV. Of course, what we really need is to move beyond individual cars altogether and limit our carbon footprint in every way possible. This is an emergency, and we are not responding as if it really is.
My decision to buy a hybrid instead of an EV was based on a whole array of factors, and the lack of charging infrastructure in Springfield was a minor one. By far, the most important was the sheer lack of availability of an EV when I needed a car, or at least when I thought I needed a car. Months of waiting. There was also the cost and my relative absence of tax appetite. A small consideration was the lack of charging infrastructure at my home. Then, this opportunity to buy a used hybrid from somebody I trusted landed in my lap. By 2025, buying an EV will be a much easier decision, I believe.