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The Grand Valley’s Inland Rivers 

“In the early morning hours of September 4, 1881, the sound of a bugle echoed across the valley of the Grand River in western Colorado, signaling the opening of the valley to settlers.”

So opens Joe Simonds’ history of the Grand Valley Project written for Reclamation in 1994.[1] The Ute Indians, whom historians believe lived in Colorado since 1300 AD, had left Grand Junction under Army escort the week before, bound for Utah. In 1882, less than a year later, the Grand Valley Irrigation Company began diverting 520 cfs from the Colorado River a mile south of Palisade after the river exits Debeque Canyon. Today the Grand Valley Canal snakes westward for thirty miles, watering fields that lie two-to-four miles north of the Colorado River. It terminates near Loma where Interstate 70 leaves the Colorado River for the last time. (Today, many often casually refer to “Grand Junction” when discussing a broader region that historically was known as the “Grand Valley.” Grand Valley is the broad plain west of Debeque Canyon and includes cities from Palisade to Mack, with Grand Junction being the largest).

If ever an oasis was carved out of the desert, this is it. To get the lay of the land, I once drew a map that included the Colorado River and the big irrigation canals. Interstate 70 cut right through the center of the map. My hand-drawn map perfectly matched Grand Junction as seen on Google Earth. Finding the irrigation canals is easy since they divide green irrigated fields from the tannish gray desert surrounding them. Nothing is irrigated outside the irrigation canals. Canals in the Grand Valley divert a million acre-feet out of the Colorado River each year, mostly to irrigate 79,000 acres, divided between 42,000 acres of farmland and 37,000 acres of cities and suburbs.[2] About a fourth of the diversion generates power needed to pump the water up to the Orchard Mesa before pouring back into the river.[3] The two big diversions take about 1,600 cfs from the Colorado River for seven months each year from April through October, dwarfing the amount the river itself carries through Grand Junction during that period, outside of high spring flows.

About a third of the irrigated farmland in the Grand Valley has already disappeared.[4] In 2024 Grand Junction was the 18th largest city in Colorado with 70,641 residents. In the 2010 Census[BG1] [KR2] , Grand Junction  was listed as the 15th largest city in Colorado with 58,566 residents, three times bigger than the next largest city on the Western Slope, Montrose. Demographers project the portion of the Colorado River basin that’s covered by the Colorado Basin Roundtable (Division Five), will have the second fastest percentage growth of all the basin roundtable areas, from 337,550 people in 2020 to 454,992 by 2050 (the South Platte Basin is growing fastest, 1.7% per year from 811,833 people in 2020 to 1,229,522 projected in 2050). The Colorado Roundtable projects it will lose 58,000 acres of irrigated agriculture, about ninety square miles, and much of that will be in the Grand Valley.

Mesa County is proactively trying to preserve farmland in the Grand Valley. It signed an intergovernmental agreement with Fruita and Grand Junction in 1998 to preserve irrigated land and to establish buffers separating Fruita, Grand Junction, and Palisade to keep the communities distinct. It discourages development of a commercial strip along I-70 between the cities and requires the governments to provide notice to each other before rezoning land in the buffered areas to permit subdivisions or sewer lines.[5] The buffers will keep Grand Junction separate from Fruita and Palisade, a simple measure that few other Colorado cities have embraced.

[6]

Mesa County and Fruita also developed a TDR program to permit Transferable Development Rights to be transferred from rural “sending areas” to residential “receiving areas” that generally allowed either seven or eight additional residences to be built for each TDR.[7] In February 2005, Keith Fife, director of long range planning for Mesa County, reported that no transactions had occurred to date although several parties expressed interest.[8]  This was still the case in 2024 as no landowner had conserved property in return for receiving TDRs.[9] TDRs permit increased density in Fruita but there still isn’t demand for the increased density as developers are still building single family residences on larger parcels.

With higher housing prices, demand for denser townhouse developments may grow, and Fruita’s TDR program could suddenly become popular. These programs can take years to establish, and starting early as Fruita did may someday look prescient. Although the TDR program has not yet gained traction, the buffering is working as seen from Google Earth. Undeveloped agricultural land still separates Palisade, Grand Junction, and Palisade.

When the Colorado West Land Trust interviewed grape and orchard growers in Palisade in 2010 they learned that at least 1,000 acres needed to remain in agriculture to sustain the industry. The land trust is closing in on this goal after obtaining over 60 easements that preserve over 900 acres. The Mesa County Land Trust and the Gunnison Land Trust merged to form the Mountain West Land Trust in 2020, and they have over 130,000 acres under easement.[10] In Gunnison County, over half of irrigated agriculture is under easement.

Hay and corn accounted for 93 percent of the crops grown in the Grand Valley in 2020, destined to feed cattle and livestock. Unfortunately for the river, less than one of every three acres, 29 percent, were sprinklered. That's better than 2000 when only 22 percent of fields were sprinklered, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. Nearly all irrigation is done by gated pipe, the white plastic pipe that allows water to trickle out of pre-drilled holes, one for each irrigation furrow. It is another form of flood irrigation. Grapes and orchards accounted for only 2 percent of all irrigated land in the Grand Valley in 2020.[11] The land is generally flat in the Grand Valley and relatively little work is required to ready the soil for crops. As with all river valleys, the land slopes down to the river, ranging in steepness from 100 to 10 feet per mile. This is ideal for flood irrigation since the water naturally flows across the surface or down the irrigation furrows. Alongside the river, soil contains sand and silt carried down by the river, but most of the surrounding land is composed of Mancos shale gradually washing down from the eroding cliffs above. Mancos shale, formed when the interior of the United States was covered by a large inland sea, naturally contains about 1-3 percent alkali, but this can be reduced to 0.2 percent as irrigation water dissolves and carries away salt in the upper layers of soil. Few, if any, water wells are drilled into the Grand Valley since the groundwater is too salty for crops or people. Excessive irrigation watering can wick alkali salts to the surface, making the soil surface appear white. When this happens, accumulated salt can be periodically flushed from the soil—and ultimately into the Colorado River—with a healthy rain event. Over time, chronic excess flood irrigation causes water to seep underground, dissolving salts and carrying them back to the surface. Historically this harmed irrigators whose farms were lower and closer to the river, causing productive orchards near Fruita to fail in the late 1800s.[12] Sprinklers or drip irrigation can reduce this problem by delivering water just to the root zone so that deeper lying salts don’t wick up to the water table.

When Interior Secretary James R. Garfield visited Grand Junction in 1907, he chose the Grand Valley Project as one of the first six projects for the nascent Bureau of Reclamation. Grand Junction farmers were skeptical at first, grumbling that the government would take too long. More likely they feared losing a bonanza — if the irrigation works could be developed, they could control the desert lands that would be irrigated and cash in. The first westerners to inhabit the American West were as much speculators as they were pioneers. Reclamation withdrew its support for a time, but the project proved too big for the citizens. On November 14, 1907, citizens, landowners, and homesteaders met in Grand Junction and unanimously voted to let the government develop the project. The first step Interior Secretary Garfield took was to remove the lands that would be irrigated from potential sale so speculators could not buy the land first. Instead, the government would sell them in an orderly manner.

The best-known feature of the Grand Valley Project is the red-roofed “roller dam” near Cameo in Debeque Canyon, eight miles upstream from Palisade. It is officially called the Grand Valley Diversion Dam, but often referred to as “Cameo diversion dam” or “the roller dam,” as it is near the area known as Cameo and features six rollers across the river. It can divert up to 1,675 cfs from the Colorado River. The rollers are each 70 feet wide, with a seventh roller sitting above the spillway on the river left side next to I-70. The ends of the seven-foot diameter rollers have gears with teeth so they can be raised or lowered by chain. When they are lowered all the way down, water can only course over the top. But if logs or other debris such as ice floes pile up or there is no need to divert water from the river, the rollers can be raised so water and any collected debris can flow beneath the rollers and flush downstream. The roller dam was designed by German engineers, but when World War I broke out Reclamation took over the project and manufactured the rollers in Pittsburg steel mills to German specifications. It was the largest roller dam in the world when built and is now on the National Registry of Historic Places. The Colorado Roundtable has awarded several grants to the Grand Valley Water User’s Association, which manages the dam and irrigation canals, in order to rehabilitate the roller dam, including $42,500 in June 2015, the 100-year anniversary of the dam. After a century of use, cement lining the canal and housing the rollers was disintegrating, a process engineers call “spalling.” To date, the rehabilitation does not include any environmental remediation. When the rollers are all the way down, they divert up to 1,675 cfs into the Government Highline Canal on river-right, the opposite side of the river from I-70. The primary canal parallels the Colorado River for about 5.5 miles, passing through three tunnels before exiting into Palisade just after the interstate leaves Debeque Canyon and enters Grand Valley.

A portion of the railroad track running through DeBeque Canyon lies between the Government Highline Canal and the river, and it was once jacked up 12 feet to prevent the track from flooding. The Highline Canal was dug to deliver water all the way to Mack, 32 miles west, the last town in Grand Valley. The next town is Green River, Utah, 60 miles further west. In all, Reclamation dug 160 miles of canals and lateral ditches between 1914 and 1917 to water the Grand Valley.

There are two major canals at the top of the Grand Valley, the Grand Valley Canal built in the 1880s and the Government Highline Canal built thirty years later.

The Grand Valley Canal, built in 1882, is privately owned by the Grand Valley Irrigation Company, so its ditch shares can be freely bought or sold.[13] There is significantly more municipal development below the private Grand Valley Canal, but subdivisions are gradually replacing alfalfa and other crop fields between it and the Government Highline Canal, or below the Orchard Mesa canals on the south side of the river. Ditch water is freely available to water outdoor lawns, and that water is not counted when Grand Junction calculates municipal water use by its residents, which can make it appear that Grand Junction residents are the most conservation-minded in the state. But residents can water their lawns without limit, and with 11 acre-feet diverted for every acre, there is no practical limit to how much they can water their lawns. There’s no way to tell how much they are using.

The federal Grand Valley Project irrigates about 9,000 acres in Orchard Mesa on the south side of the Colorado River. The Orchard Mesa Irrigation District now serves 6,688 customers living in 3.8 square miles, an indication of how fast it is urbanizing.[14] Orchard Mesa gets its water through a clever engineering scheme that shunts water under the Colorado River from the Government Highline Canal.

 Just before the Government Highline Canal exits DeBeque Canyon through Tunnel 3, half the flow (800 cfs) in the canal is shunted into a siphon. It drops into a pipe that’s buried beneath the Colorado River and siphons up into a canal on the other side of the river where I-70 is. The canal looks like a concrete box attached to the hillside about 12 feet above the interstate. It is visible for the last mile or so just before I-70 crosses the Colorado River for the last time and exits Debeque Canyon. The Orchard Mesa canal snakes long the east side of DeBeque Canyon for 3.5 miles. After passing through another tunnel, two-thirds of the water carried by the canal pours back into the Colorado River below Palisade, spinning turbines and generating hydroelectric power. The power is used to lift water through four white pipes visible from the interstate.  The pipes lift 90 cfs 41 feet up to Orchard Canal #1, and another 70 cfs is lifted 89 feet further to Orchard Canal #2.[15] The ditch water then flows by gravity for 15 miles and eventually pours into the Gunnison River below the Redlands diversion dam, just above the Gunnison River’s confluence with the Colorado River.

Readers who find this confusing can readily see the green fields irrigated by the irrigation works on Google Earth. But trying to see the irrigation works for yourself can be tricky. Even though the U.S. government constructed the irrigation system, they are off limits to the public and “No Trespassing” signs abound. They can, however, be seen from some road crossings. Redlands Water & Power, which diverts 850 cfs from the Gunnison River just before it confluences with the Colorado River (the “Junction” in “Grand Junction”), warns the public that irrigation canals and their access roads “are not open for use by the public unless and until . . .the canal companies consent to their use. The [Redlands Water & Power] Company has never consented to any public use of its canals, access roads, or any other feature or facility of the canals.”[16]

The 1882 Grand Valley Canal and the 1908 Government Highline Canal account for 90 percent of the water diverted from the Colorado River in the Grand Junction area (the years refer to the water priority date, not the date the projects were completed). By 2010, nearly 40 percent of the irrigated agriculture had been converted to residential subdivisions and cities, over 27,000 acres. Only 10 percent of the 42,000 remaining farmed acres were sprinklered, with the rest soaked by flood or furrow irrigation.

Figure 14.1 Graph showing amounts diverted in two ditches in Grand Valley

The updated graph with figures through 2023 is included below; the old graph is included below

In the graph, the orange bar (top of left bar) represents water that pours back into the river near Palisade after turning turbines to generate the power needed to lift irrigation water up to the Orchard Mesa canals. State of the art when constructed in 1933, the Orchard Mesa 2.2 megawatt hydroelectric plant was built to lift water to irrigate fields 41 and 130 feet above the Colorado River.[17] Today we no longer need hydroelectric energy to lift this water. The water dedicated to producing hydroelectricity could be left in the river by replacing it with solar panels on the baking hillside that drops down from Grand Mesa, and using solar energy to lift the water up to Orchard Mesa. It would cost about $3 million to build a 3 megawatt solar farm plus the cost to buy the 20 acres needed for the solar array.[18]

This would leave another 800 cfs in the river for the 3.5 miles between the mouth of Debeque Canyon and the Orchard Mesa pumping plant. The yellow and red bars reflect additional water that could be left in the Colorado River if all fields were sprinklered and irrigation systems were upgraded to deliver water efficiently. The takeaway is that 75 percent of the left bar and 50 percent of the right bar represents water that could be left in the river if we used it differently. And we wouldn’t have to dry up a single acre of irrigated land.

The fruit grown in the Grand Valley today is a fraction of what it once was. In 1915, it was reported that 15,340 acres were in fruit from Loma to Palisade. “During the apple boom of 1895, a large number of the newly planted orchards were sold to eastern buyers, mostly professional people with very little knowledge of fruit growing, soils, and soil drainage,” Grand Junction native and Colorado State University historian Joyce Sexton wrote in 1996.[19] As overuse of irrigation water and poor soil drainage resulted in unhealthy trees, “many orchards were replaced with other more tolerant crops,” Sexton continued. The more tolerant crops are alfalfa, pasture grass, and corn, today being grown on 87 percent of the irrigated acres. Only 791 acres, less than 2 percent of the remaining irrigated acreage, grow fruit like grapes and peaches for which Grand Junction is famous.[20] As such, I estimate that well over half of the water now diverted could be left in the Colorado River if all fields were irrigated with sprinklers or drip irrigation.

The 15-Mile Reach

The 15-Mile Reach describes the stretch of the Colorado River that nearly dries up in the late summer and fall. It starts where the Grand Valley Canal diverts 640 cfs from the Colorado River just south of Palisade and ends 15 miles downstream at the confluence with the Gunnison River. And remember, this location is also downstream of the roller dam. The big diversions make this one of the most dewatered stretches of the Colorado River until the Morelos Dam, 1,000 miles further downstream, completely dries up the Colorado River just below the border with Mexico.

To leave more water in the 15-Mile Reach, consultants from Cal Poly University at San Luis Obispo recommended improvements in 2008 to the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, the organization that provides irrigation water to fields on the south side of the river. Since the canals were dug a hundred years ago, “There have been only minimal improvements done to the irrigation system, even though external pressures and operating conditions have changed dramatically over the years,” the Cal Poly engineers said in their report.[21] They also noted that the canals are “old, [have] few control structures, and offer little flexibility.” Between 2000 and 2008, a membrane liner was placed on four miles of one canal to stop it from leaking. Other than this, the only other progress the engineers noted in their report was a public education campaign pleading with irrigators and residents to use less water. Irrigators are entitled to a specific flow rate, in cfs, and not entitled to a volume of water. The Orchard Mesa Irrigation District’s employees don’t measure how much water flows into the lateral ditches, according to the report, and about half of the 85 lateral ditches coming off the two canals did not even have flow meters. The Cal Poly engineers identified twelve locations where water spills from the canals. From August through October, they estimated that at least 50 percent of the total water supply spills from the canals, amounting to over 9,000 acre-feet.[22] The water isn’t actually spilling onto the fields, it’s just flowing down the canals unused before pouring back into the river. In 1999 and 2000 up to 90 percent of the water was spilling from the canals. That’s water that could be left in the river, and in the 15-Mile Reach. This is remarkable when you stop to consider all the hand-wringing that goes into figuring out how we keep the 15-Mile Reach from drying up each year between August and October.

In 1999, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a Programmatic Biological Opinion, or PBO, that recommended that 21,650 acre-feet be released over 90 days between August and October specifically to keep water in the 15-Mile Reach and help sustain endangered fish species. Reclamation provides half this flow, but water users on the upper Colorado River must provide the other half, amounting to 10,825 acre-feet.[23] Known to Colorado water insiders as “10-825 water,” or “fish water,” it amounts to a daily flow of about 60 cfs over 90 days from August through October. The Colorado River is 546 feet wide at the roller dam, nearly two football fields, and 60 cfs spread across the river amounts to a flow of water only 1.33 inches deep. By comparison, up to 1,675 cfs is diverted from the Colorado River at the roller dam in Debeque Canyon, nearly thirty times more.

Pursuant to a recent agreement, today the east slope delivers half of the “10825 water” by releasing it from Granby Reservoir, and the west slope delivers the other half from Ruedi Reservoir on the Fryingpan River above Basalt. Orchard Mesa Canal flow rates have to be kept high enough to meet required irrigation deliveries, even after crops have stopped growing in September. Urban lawn watering is also uncontrolled. The Cal Poly report says, “The irrigation infrastructure and technology of the entire delivery system greatly limits what can be done in urban areas to shut off or reduce the deliveries when irrigation is adequate.”[24]

What they’re saying is you can only be so efficient when your ditches were hand-dug a hundred years ago and the control structures are 2 inch by x 12 inch boards placed across the ditch! The following graph from the report indicates just how much more water is flowing through the canals than the crops need. I reproduce this graph because it is the first time I have seen an official water publication compare the amount of water diverted with the amount needed to irrigate fields. You won’t find this graph in the 2015 or 2023 Colorado Water Plans.

Figure 15.2 Amount of water diverted v water needed to irrigate crops (Cal Poly)

“In a gross sense,” the report concludes, “diversions to the main canal are about five times consumptive use.” Just by improving deliveries to prevent canal spills, the Cal Poly engineers said 17,000 acre-feet could be left in the river. In 1905, the fledgling Bureau of Reclamation said, “The supply greatly exceeds the present demand and doubtless will always be greater than can be used in the valley.”[25] We’ve known for over a hundred years that we’re diverting far more water from the Colorado River in Grand Junction than irrigators need. And I don’t think this is a rare instance in Colorado.

A Water Bank?

The River District, CWCB, and several other parties, including the Nature Conservancy, conducted discrete meetings for years to discuss developing a water bank. One concept discussed was that irrigators choosing to participate would receive base payments each year, and larger payments in drought years when they were asked to cut back water use. Large irrigators low down in western Colorado river basins like Grand Junction might be first in line to participate in a water bank. Grand Junction farmers divert 730,000 acre-feet from the Colorado River every year to irrigate about 51,000 acres, consuming about 130,000 acre-feet at 2.5 acre-feet per acre. The other 600,000 acre-feet they divert from the Colorado River is “push water” allegedly needed to push irrigation water to fields. They grow nearly 32,000 acres of hay and pasture grass, so they could deliver 60,000 acre-feet toward a compact call under the 1922 Colorado River Compact if they stopped growing hay and alfalfa, which accounts for 83% of the crops grown in the Grand Valley.[26] That’s one reason the state was looking to Grand Junction to create a water bank to deliver extra water to Lake Powell.  Another was the proximity to the Utah state line—there were no irrigators downriver who could swipe the conservation savings.

 Mark Harris, now the former general manager of the Grand Valley Water User’s Association, discussed the Grand Junction water banking program for the first time at a Colorado Roundtable meeting on May 22, 2017, five years after I first got wind of it. At the time, some Grand Junction irrigators were being paid about $580 per acre to stop growing alfalfa and corn, and the water savings were being sent down to keep Lake Powell water levels from declining to the level of the outtake tubes in Glen Canyon Dam. Such irrigators only pay $17 per acre-foot for their water, so renting it to keep the big dam operating could be a perpetual cash cow. In that instance, the irrigators were being paid with money raised from Denver Water and water providers from Arizona, California, and Nevada. Irrigators got 70 percent of the funds that were raised, and the rest was paid to the GVWUA to run the program and to improve infrastructure. When I asked Harris if this violated the Colorado River Compact, which was intended to forbid the Lower Basin states from buying water in the Upper Basin, Harris replied, “We’re not focusing on that, that’s a bigger issue.” The Colorado River Compact “equitably apportions” 7.5 million acre feet to each of the Lower and Upper Basins in order to do an end run around prior appropriation. But does this prevent the Lower Basin states from purchasing water from the Upper Basin states? The Compact does not say this, but there appears to at least be a cultural prohibition on the practice.   

“Western slope agricultural water has a bullseye on it, and a big chunk of that water is managed by the GVWUA,” Harris continued. “We think our competitive advantage is our water. We have tens of millions of dollars invested in infrastructure that is now a hundred years old. There are no funds available from the federal government to improve the infrastructure. The water-banking project provides the potential to add an income stream for infrastructure improvement.” When I asked if there was any push to replace flood-irrigation with sprinklers in Grand Junction, Harris said, “When you use a center pivot or side roll, once you learn how to use it you don’t have any runoff, but you probably also increased consumptive use.” That’s what Arkansas Basin irrigators have been saying for decades.I find it curious that irrigators recoil at the mention of sprinklers, a technology that will make their farming more efficient and enhance their revenue. There must be something they’re not telling me It fits right in with a water banking program, since irrigators can reduce consumptive use by just irrigating less of the circle.

“We’re loath to do anything that affects how the system works—it works great now,” Harris said. In 2017, thirteen irrigators agreed to participate in a consumptive-use reduction program, and ten were chosen by lottery. They each fallowed about 120 acres and generated 3,178 acre-feet of consumptive use savings, or 2.53 acre-feet per acre. At $580 per acre, an irrigator could receive $70,000 a year for fallowing 120 acres and doing little more than keeping the weeds down. Colorado Basin Roundtable member Carlyle Currier asked if he could participate in the water bank. Grand Junction water attorney Mark Hermundstad said no, since there’s no way under Colorado water law to prevent someone downstream from taking the water that Currier would have left in Plateau Creek.

I asked Harris if any irrigators were harmed because return flows declined after irrigators fallowed their fields. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a water meeting, probably 150 and counting by now, where someone hasn’t mentioned return flows. Harris said there was no evidence that any irrigator was harmed by reduced return flows. It’s a problem that doesn’t exist, at least in Grand Junction.

The GVWUA’s Conserved Consumptive Use program in Grand Junction was completed in 2018. As demand management programs were being tried, it was common to hear that was unfair to make, or induce, Upper Basin irrigators reduce their consumption while the Lower Basin kept overusing their share of the Colorado River. But the concept came back in 2023, known as the System Conservation Pilot Program (SCPP). It is a Reclamation program that pays irrigators to conserve water with the goal of leaving water in the river so it flows into Lake Powell and can be delivered to the Lower Basin states. Irrigators save water by either partially or fully fallowing their fields, or by changing the crop. For instance, switching from thirsty alfalfa to triticale, a rye-wheat hybrid, saves at least half the water that alfalfa consumes.

The SCPP administrators estimate water savings by using eeMetric, a computer model developed by the University of Idaho that uses satellites to measure evapo-transpiration at the surface according to the heat and water vapor radiating off the soil.[27] It is the same system that the Open ET website uses to measure water consumption on every field in the West. The Upper Colorado River Commission adopted eeMetric by a formal resolution on June 14, 2022, a development as earthshaking to the water world (or at least to me) as the revelation two generations ago that smoking causes cancer.[28]

In its resolution adopting eeMetric, the Commission moved away from the “inflow outflow” method of determining consumptive use, a method it had been using since the Commission formed in 1948 that attempted to measure consumption as the difference between the water diverted from a river to an irrigated field, and the water returning to the river after it had saturated and percolated through the field. It involved estimating return flows, a process that can only be likened to an educated guess (albeit a very expensive educated guess considering all the engineering and lawyer time spent reaching and challenging the educated guess). With eeMetric there is no more guesswork as to how much water is being consumed on a field. Neither Open ET nor eeMetric are mentioned in the 2023 Colorado Water Plan, but they remove the biggest roadblock we have to being able to freely transfer water in Colorado. When you know how much water an irrigated field consumes, you can transfer it.

In 2023 BuRec received $125 million in SCPP funding under the Inflation Reduction Act passed during the Biden administration. It is called “System” water because it is attributed to the entire Colorado River system, and not credited to the irrigator or the state where the conservation takes place. This rankles the Upper Colorado River Commission representatives from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico because the Upper Division states do not get credit for the conserved water toward the 75 million acre feet they have to deliver to Lake Powell every ten years.

Despite this, the CWCB recommended that the Upper Colorado River Commission approve 50 SCPP applications from Colorado irrigators for the 2024 summer irrigation season. The 50 Colorado irrigators are saving 16,760 acre-feet on 12,213 acres for total compensation of $8.8 million. On average each grant recipient is receiving $176,346 per ranch to conserve 335 acre feet at a rate of $526 per acre-foot. Across the Upper Division, 67,468 acre feet is projected to be saved in 2024 on 47,757 acres, for total payments of nearly $31 million.[29] 

The Colorado River District is concerned about SCPP, as shared by General Manager Andy Mueller at the Colorado Basin Roundtable’s meeting on September 23, 2024.[30] The River District thinks SCPP should be subject to local control and undergo careful planning. It developed a decision support tool for the Uncompahgre Basin within the Gunnison basin that looks at soil health, local economics, where the best yields are and where drying up irrigation from SCPP could have greater or lesser benefit. This in itself is remarkable—we’re actually asking ourselves where the most valuable resource in the West is best used? Readers, fasten your seatbelts!

Mueller said, “The SCPP program is creating a market place to transfer water to other uses.” Pitkin County Commissioner Kelly McNicholas Kury commented that “we have only monetized some of the uses (i.e., compensating certain uses with money), but not all of them. This is a problem. We are not monetizing conservation’s benefit such as the environmental and recreational benefit of leaving water in the river.”

The irrigation companies operating the Grand Valley Project and the Grand Valley Canal, the two big Grand Junction diversions discussed and graphed earlier, have a senior call on the Colorado River at the Cameo roller dam in Debeque Canyon. Known as the Cameo Call, it is a collection of four water rights with seniority dates between 1882 and 1914. It permits them to call 1,820 cfs down the Colorado River so the irrigation companies receive their water each summer. Mueller said the River Commissioner reduced the Cameo Call by 26 cfs in August 2024 because 800 acres irrigated by the Grand Valley Canal were enrolled in SCPP and didn’t need the water.

Since the Grand Valley Canal needed less water, less was delivered. That would have permitted the Twin Lakes Irrigation Company, which is 95-percent owned by Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and Aurora, to divert 26 cfs more water through the Independence Pass Tunnel from the upper Roaring Fork River to Twin Lakes in the Arkansas River drainage on the east slope. Since the Twin Lakes diversion helps cause the Roaring Fork to drop to as little as 5 cfs in August, Mueller fears that enrolling land in the SCPP could have the domino effect of drying up the Roaring Fork through Aspen. Mueller thinks Aspen should have its day in court and be able to stop a Grand Junction irrigator from enrolling in SCPP if that could cause the Roaring Fork to dry up through Aspen.

This is a great example of the hairball that is Colorado water law—enrolling land in SCPP which is supposed to conserve water so it can be sent down to Lake Powell can paradoxically allow that water to flow eastward to the Front Range where it can be reused to extinction and lost to the west slope forever. Mueller’s fear is legitimate, but so is Pitkin County Commissioner Kelly McNicholas Kury’s concern that there is no way to keep water in Colorado rivers when more is needed to keep them healthy. The legislature decided in 1876 that there was no requirement to keep enough water in rivers to keep them healthy, and it’s been that way ever since.

 Mueller’s other concern is that if SCPP participation keeps growing it could have a big impact on the informal water sharing agreements that govern how water gets used in Colorado. On many streams, irrigators will allow junior irrigators to divert water out of priority because senior irrigators don’t need the water and it’s the neighborly thing to do. In 2023, 63 irrigators in the four Upper Basin states received $16 million in SCPP payments to conserve 37,812 acre-feet. The numbers basically doubled the next year, as 115 irrigators received $31 million to conserve 67,468 acre-feet in 2024. If this continues, by 2028, 5 years after BuRec began funding SCPP, over 1,200 irrigators will be receiving $432 million to forego diverting over 680,000 acre-feet a year in the Upper Basin.[31] It would largely reduce the risk of a Compact Call, but it could also toll the death knell for Upper Basin agriculture as the implement dealers and other support services needed to support the ag industry could disappear along with the irrigators.

The Colorado River District’s position is that “any SCPP or Demand Management Program in the Upper Basin should only be implemented if the Lower Basin has committed in an enforceable manner to reducing consumptive use by a minimum of 2 million acre-feet of actual use on an annual basis.”[32] If they keep overusing their allotment, SCPP will reduce irrigated agriculture in the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin will get more than their Colorado River Compact share and essentially write the Compact out of existence.

Another problem with SCPP is the difficulty in shepherding the conserved water down the river once an irrigator foregoes irrigation. Given the gaging system on the rivers in Colorado (and the Upper Basin as a whole) it is almost impossible to ensure that water conserved high in a river basin will make it down to the river without being used by another irrigator. (Said irrigator, btw, would likely be well within their legal right to use the water  without ongoing shepherding and administration of the water in the river). When I asked Mueller at the Roundtable meeting if the Colorado River District favored a new Colorado water right to protect this water, Mueller said without further explanation that he thought this was a bad idea. He thinks the irrigator should have to go to water court to get a water right for the conserved consumptive use and let the court manage the process.

 Today you can practically walk across sections of the Colorado River in Grand Junction when flows are low. If we wanted to leave as much water in the river here as we could, how would we do it? We would line irrigation ditches, build efficient diversion structures, coordinate and stagger deliveries so that only the fields being irrigated receive water, and sprinkler fields. My research suggests this could leave 1,300 cfs in the river without drying up a single irrigated acre of farmland or bluegrass in the Grand Valley.

A tougher question could be whether there will be any irrigated agriculture left by 2050. Grand Junction has already lost a third of its irrigated farmland to city sprawl, and it’s projected to grow nearly five-fold to 250,000 people by 2050. Water has always been inexpensive in the Grand Valley. An owner of a 3-acre parcel paid only $133.50 for 25 acre-feet of water in 2015, plus another $100 to cover the cost of maintaining the roller dam and canals.[33] That’s less than $10 an acre-foot. In the private Grand Valley Canal, users pay $235 for 5.5 acre-feet each year.[34] Despite the cheap water, most irrigators lost money in Mesa County in 2012. The average farm earned only $37,360 revenue compared to average production expense of $38,069, and that’s before irrigators received anything for their own labor.[35] Ten years later, the story is the same. The average farm in Mesa County earned $38,574 gross income and spent $43,044 for a loss of $4,470 per farm, again before paying the owner a salary.[36]

To preserve agriculture in Grand Valley, as in the rest of Colorado, it will take zoning regulations, widespread use of conservation easements, and committed citizens rallying to save it. We’ll probably have to pay irrigators to relinquish their development rights. If we do nothing, local control will likely lead to continued sprawl and ag dryup. But whether the Grand Valley remains rural or urban, we could leave a lot more water in the Colorado River through Grand Junction if we wanted to.

Figures

Figure 15.1 Amounts diverted in two ditches in Grand Valley[37]

Figure 15.2 Amount of water diverted v water needed to irrigate crops

Notes

[1] Simonds, W. J., “The Grand Valley Project,” 1994, Bureau of Reclamation, https://www.usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=122.

[2] The 2022 USD Agricultural Census reports that Mesa County had 43,201 acres of irrigated crops, of which irrigated hay and pastureland comprised 83%, corn 5%, and orchards 7%.  "USDA Census of Agriculture," 2022 Census, Table 24, Chapter 2: County Level Data, Colorado, http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_2_County_Level/Colorado/st08_2_001_001.pdf

[3] The CDSS website indicates that the Grand Valley Canal and the Grand Valley Irrigation Project diverted 1,008,024 af each year on average between 1994 and 2023, 90 percent of all diversions from the Colorado River in Water District 72. About 25 percent of the diversions are to generate power to lift water up to Orchard Mesa, so I estimate the average water diverted annually for irrigation is 728,231 acre-feet. For a list of the water rights by cfs, see: US Bureau of Reclamation, “Final Environmental Assessment Orchard Mesa Irrigation District Canal System Improvement Project,” Aug. 2013, Table 3, pg. 19, http://www.usbr.gov/uc/envdocs/ea/OrchardMesa/final-EA.pdf.

[4] The CDSS Structure Summary Report’s 2020 irrigated Land summary indicates that 29.272 of 38,219 acres within the Grand Valley Water Users Association’s service area (the Grand Valley Project) were irrigated, leaving 8,947 acres that are presumed to be urbanized. For the Grand Valley Canal managed by the Grand Valley Irrigation Company, 22,672 of 40,000 acres were irrigated, leaving 17,328 acres presumably urbanized. Together, 26,724 of 78,219 acres are assumed to have been urbanized, 34% of the total.

[5] Mesa County/Fruita/Grand Junction Cooperative Planning Agreement, MCA 98-11, signed February 9, 1998.

[6] Mesa County Cooperative Planning Areas, downloaded jj-24-2024, https://www.mesacounty.us/departments-and-services/community-development/planning/plans-planning-department/cooperative.

[7] Transfer of Development Rights/Credits Program Agreement signed by Mesa County and the City of Fruita on August 2, 2005, MCA 2002-152-A, Section 1.20, https://www.mesacounty.us/sites/default/files/2023-01/MCA%202005%20-%20Fruita%20%26%20Mesa%20County%20Transfer%20of%20Development%20Rights_Credits%20Program%20Agreement.pdf

[8] SmartPreseervation, Fruita, Colorado

[9] Conversation with Rob Bleiberg, Executive Director of the Colorado West Land Trust, Nov. 25, 2024.

[10] Mountain West Land Trust 2023 Annual Report; conversation with Rob Bleiler, Executive Director.

[11] Id, CDSS Structure Summary Report.

[12] Holmes, J., Rice, T., “Soil Survey of the Grand Junction Area, Colorado,” 1905, Bureau of Reclamation, pg. 967-969, https://archive.org/details/usda-GrandJunctionCO1905

[13] The Grand Valley Canal is operated by the private Grand Valley Irrigation Company. It has an 1882 water right for 520 cfs, supplemented with a 1914 water right for another 120 cfs. Its 48,000 shares of water stock irrigate approximately 40,000 acres through 97 miles of canals and laterals. Water rights in the GVIC service area are transferable and are not tied to the land. Shareholders can buy and sell water shares between themselves. “Grand Valley Irrigators It’s the desert. Live with it,” downloaded Apr. 30, 2017.

[14] “Orchard Mesa, Colorado,” Wikipedia, citing the 2020 Census.

[15] Burt C., “Water Resources Conservation Plan for the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District,” Irrigation Training and Research Center, Jan. 2008, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, pg. 1. Orchard Mesa canals 1 and 2 receive 171 cfs and 18 cfs is also pumped into the Vineyards canal. Also see Reclamation’s website on the Grand Valley Project at https://usbr.gov/projects/index.php?id=464. See also, “About OMID,” Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, downloaded 11-21-2024, https://omirrigation.com/about/history/

[16] Redlands Water & Power home page, Canal Trespassing Info, downloaded 11-21-2024, https://redlandswaterandpower.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Tresspass-Letter-7-24-23-3.pdf. The “Facts” section of the website describes the 850 cfs diversion, 670 cfs in 1905, 80 cfs in 1941, and  100 cfs in 1994.

[17] "Grand Valley Project," Bureau of Reclamation, downloaded 11-23-24, https://web.archive.org/web/20120925150942/http://www.usbr.gov/projects/Project.jsp?proj_Name=Grand+Valley+Project.

[18] It costs about $1 per watt to build a solar array on land (compared to about $3 for rooftop installation), so a 1 Mw solar array would cost about $1 million, plus the land, which is generally about 4-8 acres to leave adequate space between the panels. "How Much Investment Do You Need For A Solar Farm?," Coldwell Solar, downloaded 11-23-24, https://coldwellsolar.com/commercial-solar-blog/how-much-investment-do-you-need-for-a-solar-farm/#:~:text=How%20Much%20Does%20it%20Cost,between%20%24890%2C000%20and%20%241.01%20million.

[19] Sexton, J., “History of the Fruit Industry in Mesa County,” 1996, CSU Western Colorado Research Center.

[20] Irrigated acreage is from GIS records reported on the CDSS Structure Summary for structures 645 and 646 in Water District 72, the Lower Colorado River.

[21] Burt, footnote 5, pg. 1.

[22] Burt, Figure 4, Measured Main Canal Spill 1999-2000, pg. 7. A typical spill is shown in Figure 25 on page 36.

[23] “Final Programmatic Biological Opinion for Bureau Of Reclamation’s Operations and Depletions, Other Depletions, and Funding And Implementation of Recovery Program Actions in the Upper Colorado River Above the Confluence with the Gunnison River,” Dec. 1999, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, pg. 8, https://coloradoriverrecovery.org/uc/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/09/FinalPBO.pdf

[24] Burt, pg. 8.

[25] Holmes, pg. 969.

[26] These figures are from Structure Summary Reports maintained by the Division of Water Resources for the Grand Valley Project (structure ID 646) and the Grand Valley Canal (ID 645)..

[27] “Metric,” Wikipedia, downloaded 11-23-2024.

[28] “Resolution of the Upper Colorado River Commission [regarding] Consumptive Use Measurement in the Upper Colorado River Basin,” June 14, 2022, http://www.ucrcommission.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-06-14-Resolution-Consumptive-Use-Measurement.pdf

[29] Ostdiek, A., and Garrison, M., "System Conservation Pilot Program report to CWCB Board," July 17, 2024, pg. 3, https://dnrweblink.state.co.us/cwcb/0/edoc/224692/14_System%20Conservation%20Pilot%20Program.pdf?searchid=9d26ce6d-ac0d-4bc0-b806-a13b44809b1c

[30] Colorado Basin Roundtable meeting minutes, September 23, 2024.

[31] Id. 2024 SCPP participation figures are on pdf page 3, and 2023 SCPP participation figures are on pdf pages 16-19. The 2023-2024 growth rate is 83% in number of participants; 78% in conserved consumptive use; and 93% in increased revenue, and these growth rates are assumed to continue through 2028 to construct the figures in the text.

[32] Colorado River District, “River District Steps in on System Conservation Program,” January 30,2023, https://www.coloradoriverdistrict.org/the-river-districts-role-in-system-conservation-pilot-project/

[33] Grand Valley Water Users’ Association 2015 assessment.

[34] The Grand Valley Irrigation Company has 48,000 shares to irrigate 40,000 acres, and these diverted 262,166 acre-feet annually on average since 1993 (5.5 af per ditch share). The 2015 ditch assessment was $235.

[35] USDA Ag Census, Table 1. County Summary Highlights: 2012.

[36] "USDA Census of Agriculture," 2022 Census Volume 1, Chapter 2: County Level Data, Colorado, http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_2_County_Level/Colorado/st08_2_001_001.pdf. In Colorado in 2022, in 39 of 64 counties the average farm lost money. The only two West slope counties that reported net income from farming were Montrose ($8,923 net income per farm), Summit ($2,592 per farm) Delta ($644 per farm).

[37] The graph estimates annual irrigation water consumption is 27” for agriculture and 30” for urban acres, and that 5 percent of the irrigation water is lost in leaky ditches. This consumptive use is represented in the light green and light blue bars respectively. It assumes that sprinklers are 70 percent efficient, which means 30 percent of the water needed to sprinkle fields is “push water” to get the water down the ditch. The push water is represented by the dark green bars. If all fields were sprinklered, only the water in the light and dark green and light blue bars would need to be diverted from the Colorado River. Water diverted for hydroelectric power is calculated to equal 800 cfs from November through March, and 310 cfs from April through October (the dark blue bars). The flooded and furrow-irrigated fields (90 percent of the total) are assumed to be only 30 percent efficient, so the red bars represent additional delivery savings on these fields if they were sprinklered. The orange bars represent excess diversions over the amount needed to deliver water currently consumed by the irrigated fields, both agricultural and urban.

 [BG1]Update from 2010

 [KR2]Done