Water call in Ouray County

Posted by Erin Eddy

www.ourayland.com
www.ridgwayland.com

November 21, 2008

Written by:

Samantha Tisdel Wright

Thirsty desert cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles could conceivably leave Ouray County high and dry, if proper action is not taken to protect water rights, attorney Andy Mueller warned the Ouray City Council this week.

"All kinds of rights are subject to being cut off," Mueller said, "even municipal rights."

Mueller is Ouray County's representative on the Colorado River Water Conservation District (CRWCD) Board, which since 1937 has been protecting Western Colorado water on behalf of the more than 500,000 Coloradoans who live on the western side of the Continental Divide.

The Colorado River, the vena cava of the American West into which much of the snowpack and springwater of the San Juan Mountains eventually drains, meanders its way through seven states before (just barely) making it across the border into Mexico and the Gulf of California.

It's water is divvied up according to two "Colorado River Compacts" dating back to 1922 and 1948.

In 2007, the Colorado State Legislature commissioned a study to determine just how much of our namesake river's water is left to develop.

"The study goes to the heart of a Colorado River District concern that the Colorado River basin not fall under a compact call," wrote board president Peter Kasper in the district's annual report, "whereby Colorado might have to cut back on its water use in order to meet water delivery obligations to other states downstream."

Thus far, the Colorado River Basin, to which the Uncompaghre River is a tributary, has remained free from a dread compact call.

"And we want to keep it that way through good planning that acknowledges that there is a finite water supply," Kasper emphasized.

Downstream Colorado River states would like nothing better than to open up the compacts for renegotiation, but Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, with their much smaller populations and political clout, are "afraid we would get run over," if that ever happened, Mueller said.

Even with good planning, climate change and urban sprawl are growing threats to upstream water users in the Colorado River Basin.

The affects of climate change are already beginning to manifest in a shorter run-off season, which impacts the flow of the river and the people who depend upon it downstream. The Colorado River Water Conservation District Board has been actively generating innovative ideas, such as water banking and planned fallowing to help up-stream water users get through dry years without triggering a compact curtailment.

"We can't turn fire hydrants off," Mueller said. "Cities will be looking at alternative ways to augment their water rights. They could, for example, buy up ranch land with pre-1922 rights and then let that water flow to Lake Powell, to make up for the water they take at the headwaters."

It's not just the cities downstream in the Colorado River watershed that have cast a larcenous eye upon the pristine water of the San Juans. Sprawling Front Range Colorado communities are equally thirsty and greedy, often exhibiting what Mueller called a "buy it and dry it" mentality when it come to water rights.

This spectre could loom for Western Slope communities like Ouray and Ridgway if protective action is not taken, Mueller warned. "It's a huge issue that will take years for a solution. And it has the potential to impact the county."

Only once in the recent past has Ouray's water been subject to call. That was during the drought of 2002. If the letter of the law had been explicitely followed at that time, Mueller said, the city should have stopped the diversion of Weehawken Spring, its sole municipal water source.

City Council and staff have been actively addressing the issue of water rights in recent months and have hired Wright Water Engineering to conduct an inventory of the city's water rights and options for augmentation.