Giving Compass' Take:
- Emily Payne reports on the proposed plan for Colorado's San Luis Valley to reduce groundwater pumping and how it can balance restoration of its aquifer with its agricultural economy.
- How can the cost to small farmers and the agricultural economy be balanced against restoring depleted aquifers and protecting clean water?
- Ask a custom question to find other nonprofits focused on clean water and agriculture.
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Water regulators and farmers in Colorado’s San Luis Valley are in a lose-lose situation.
Either they adopt a plan to aggressively manage the use of groundwater from their rapidly declining aquifer, likely forcing a contraction of the local agricultural economy, or continue overpumping and further lower the water table, which will likely force mass shutoffs of well water in the future.
“It’s really draconian,” Colorado state Sen. Cleave Simpson, a fourth-generation valley farmer and general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, said in an interview in March. “I don’t know how my community is going to survive.”
But Simpson sees no other option.
San Luis Valley groundwater provides roughly 800,000 acre-feet of irrigation water annually in the highly productive agricultural region. But after decades of overpumping and persistent drought conditions, the aquifer reached a record low in August.
Simpson estimates the district has spent roughly $100 million over 14 years trying to reduce groundwater pumping, which fell by about one-third over the past decade. Despite those efforts, officials say the aquifer’s long-term storage is getting “worse and worse.”
“Everything we’ve tried to do is failing, just because we don’t have snowpack, we don’t have inflow,” said Simpson.
Now, a proposed groundwater management plan would dramatically increase the fee thousands of well users pay for pumping from the aquifer.
That would deal a blow to the local agricultural industry, with some producers saying the additional cost will put them out of business. But if the region does not meet aquifer restoration goals soon, state engineers can shut down the valley’s wells entirely—a situation that would devastate its economy.
The groundwater plan was the subject of a weeks-long Colorado water court trial this summer, with a ruling expected later this year. Regardless of the outcome, the case is likely to be appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, Judge Michael Gonzales said.
Read the full article about balancing aquifer restoration and agriculture by Emily Payne at Inside Climate News.