RWR, AWDI and SLV water. NM Democrat Governor Lujan uses public health to suspend the 2nd Amendment while CO media talk about pillows and CO Dem's say, well, nothing.
Putting a pin in the Closed Basin (for now)
This will be the last installment (at least for now, if an interesting development pops, I'll update) in the series about the Closed Basin Project in the Northern San Luis Valley.
I wanted to revisit one last detail I hadn't touched on, the effort by some to take water out of the Valley up to DougCo and how it ties in.
In fact, a whole lot of threads from the various posts leading up to this tie up in this final installment; many of the themes and concepts will converge here.
In keeping with the rough idea that lots of people look to the trapped water in the closed basin as a solution to their problems, thirsty Front Range communities in need of water (DougCo in particular) have looked to it and the San Luis Valley in general as a source.
Not an unprecedented idea; I would point you to prior posts where I've discussed the City of Parker buying water from farms out near me, and the 5280 article about Crowley County (linked first below) is a cautionary tale of what "buy and dry" looks like when taken to an extreme.
I think, however, that as landowners got savvier and saw the results of what selling water rights can do, they pushed back more and more. That is the story I've been told by some in the valley.
To get a better handle on these dynamics check out the second and third links below. In order, they are the promotional site for Renewable Water Resources (RWR), the group wanting to take water out of the valley, and an article from Colorado Politics about how the 6 different counties in the Valley are banding together to stop the export of water out of the area.
Read the promotional site and then take a second to reflect on the language. Next, look at the attached screenshot from the CoPo article which quotes one of the people working for the project.
Does that strike you as familiar in the sense that it echoes some of the thinking behind the Closed Basin Project (to be fair, at least as I have conceived and presented it)? Does it strike you as magical thinking? I mean, twice the water back for what's taken out and more money to boot? We really CAN have both!
If you've a functioning brain and have lived on this planet longer than 5 minutes you, like me, probably wondered what the catch is.
It's this. RWR will not be taking one apple out and giving you more than one apple back. They will take one apple out and give you more than one orange. If that.
A long time ago, RWR bought quite a bit of ranchland (with its associated SURFACE water rights, an important detail which will be relevant later) and have been holding it. Now, merely putting this water in a pipe and sending it to DougCo is a no-go as far as the state and others are concerned. See screenshot 2 attached--RWR acknowledges this themselves.
To work around this, the RWR people got clever. They are wanting to trade this SURFACE water to the state and/or the Rio Grande Conservation district for UNDERGROUND water from the lower, confined aquifer in the valley (remember that below the open aquifer which I've referred to as the closed basin, there is a lower, confined aquifer).
Why?
It makes what is essentially a buy and dry scheme more palatable by letting it be called something other than ... buy and dry. The game works like this. What RWR bought is the surface water rights. Keeping the numbers simple, say that RWR's surface rights entitle them to use 2 acre-feet of water in a year.
What RWR is saying is that they'll not use their 2 acre-feet of surface water (letting it continue on downstream) provided they can pull 1 acre-foot of water out of the deep, confined aquifer. Fair enough. 1 for 2. A good deal in my book.
However, let's consider what happens in a lean water year. Surface water tends to be more dependent on the vicissitudes and whims of mother nature, so in a lean year, RWR is entitled to take 2 but if 2 ain't available, it doesn't matter. If only half an acre-foot of water would pass on the surface, they're still going to pull their 1 acre-foot out of the ground (because underground water is more consistent). In that case, you're trading 1 for half. Not a good deal.
As a quick aside, the water in the aquifer is likely also cheaper for RWR because it's cleaner and likely sweeter (less salty) than surface runoff. There would be less processing needed to make it domestic water.
Unfortunately, that's not the whole of it.
Putting aside the issue of whether or not you would consistently get 2 acre-feet of water in the Rio Grande while they took 1 out to send to the Front Range, you have to remember that the natural world is a complicated system. It's not ever going to be as simple as 2 for 1 with no consequences.
For example, pulling water out of the confined aquifer lowers the pressure in the aquifer. Lower pressure means less flow for others taking out water (and this applies to both the confined aquifer and the unconfined sitting above it). If you have a sprinkler system you know exactly what I mean: when your sprinklers run, every other tap in your house is slower.
So, anyone else (farmers/ranchers) in the area would likely find their wells not producing as well. True, more water is going downstream, but if you are on a well ...
Not a good thing. As I say, I think this RWR scheme is buy and dry by another name. Small wonder, then, that the landowners and people living currently in the valley are none too happy at this idea. To them it must look an awful lot like the Closed Basin Project: someone else coming in to take water out and give it to someone else.
Now the 6 counties in the San Luis Valley have reached an intergovernmental agreement to slow/stop/prevent the water being removed (see the third link below), but a question remains as to whether or not they can actually stop it and whether or not the agreement holds if and when the money gets high enough (and I don't have any trouble imagining the money climbing as the need in the Front Range gets higher and higher).
https://www.5280.com/high-dry/
https://renewablewaterresources.com/water-in-the-valley/
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/agreement-block-water-export-san-luis-valley-douglas-
county/article_5642c8a0-2d77-11ee-a3ee-87a0d82bce26.html
Related:
In the post above, I said that it remains to be seen if the counties banding together can stop RWR from taking water out of the valley.
The reason why is that the track for this has already been laid.
Understanding this requires a bit of a look backward. The first link below is a court opinion writeup by CU law school. It concerns the case of American Water Development Inc. (AWDI).
AWDI tried a long time ago what RWR is wanting to do now. They bought water rights and were ready to take water out of the valley to put it somewhere else. AWDI's argument (see the attached screenshot--by the way does that wording look familiar to the Closed Basin Project?) was that the water in the confined aquifer was non-tributary, i.e. that it didn't affect any surface water, nor any other well owners.
Again, the connection here to the kind of language you get from the Closed Basin Project is pretty interesting. And, while I'm no expert, I believe the arguments have shown themselves to be just as wrong here as in the Closed Basin Project.
The court case ended up going all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court (see their ruling linked second), where the ruling essentially was that AWDI failed because the water didn't have a buyer at the time they were proposing to take it out.
What is the meaning of this for RWR?
RWR has the water rights. We now have some case law to guide when and how that water can be moved. The only missing piece would be a buyer. Again, I'm no expert, I'm no lawyer, but by my understanding of things, if RWR convinces DougCo to pony up money for the water, they'll have both working capital AND a customer.
With both, they may just decide to run a court case up the flagpole, 6 county agreement or no.
https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=groundwater-law-hydrology-policy
https://law.justia.com/cases/colorado/supreme-court/1994/92sa141-0.html
Why I spend my time watching the intersection of guns and public health.
If you have wondered why it is I so carefully watch the intersection of public health and gun control, it's because of things like the below.
If you haven't already heard, the governor of our neighbor to the South, New Mexico, recently put in an emergency health order to suspend for 30 days the right to carry guns (concealed or open) in public. See the attached screenshot from the article below.
This is why I watch. This is why you should watch.
The same sort of rhetoric we heard in COVID, the same sort of government action is being applied to your Second (and not First) Amendment rights by the Democrat governor of New Mexico.
My guess is that this gets struck down pretty quickly in the (now multiple) planned suits and legal actions, but perhaps that's the point. Like with Biden, let's toss out some red meat to our base with the cynical knowledge that nothing real will come of it, save for the real political capital it generates.
Regardless of the motive, you would be wise to be concerned over things like this and give some serious thought to getting involved with groups that will stand up for you (and, frankly, for us all gun owner or no because one infringement in one area is an infringement everywhere).
Things like the government trying to use public health as an excuse to take rights away might seem farfetched, until of course, they happen.
Quick little side note. It's funny to me how little I've heard about this in our state, either from our politicians or media. You can bet that if a Republican suspended abortions for 30 days both our left-leaning media and politicians would be all over that like white on rice.
The fact that (at least to my knowledge and please correct me if I'm wrong) none of this has appeared in local media or in the mouths of local politicians speaks volumes.
https://apnews.com/article/albuquerque-guns-governor-concealed-carry-fc5b4b79bf411b8022c3ad58975724d7