By Mary Shinn and Savannah Eller

In the West, water is for fighting, but this year, for many, there might not be much to battle over.

The critical snowpack that sustains cities, farmers and ranchers is the lowest in memory. Some areas in the high country were barren at the start of the month.

Cities, including Denver and Colorado Springs, are asking residents to limit how much they water their lawns, and some farmers are planning to see irrigation end early or not come.

“This is a disaster. …. I don’t know that it could get much worse,” said Bill Long, president of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.

The district was founded to deliver water from the Western Slope to the Arkansas Valley, where crops such as cantaloupe, corn and alfalfa are grown. Long fears that by July, the Arkansas River near his home in Las Animas could be close to dry.

The depth of the drought is defined in the data: This winter’s snowpack is the worst in the history of climate recording.

At a time when snowpack should be peaking, high mountain snow is well into its spring melting period. According to a post by Colorado State Climatologist Russ Schumacher, the snow that remained on April 1 held less than 40% of the water in the previous worst year in data, which goes back to 1987.

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic estimated that this year’s snowpack was in some places a 1-in-500- to 1,000-year event, excluding the effects of climate change. Areas that have never been recorded without at least 5 inches of water in snow had none as of April 1, Schumacher wrote.

This winter never produced impressive snow, but the biggest snowpack killer was a remarkable March. The continental U.S. experienced its warmest March on record this year, and Colorado was no exception. Peter Goble, assistant state climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center, said watchers “took a more measured tone” earlier in winter.

“The unprecedented heat that we saw in late March made it much worse,” he said.

Even though the time for building snowpack might be passed, spring precipitation will be welcome, he said.

Goble said that Colorado’s mercurial weather makes long-term predictions difficult. A strong monsoon season this summer, for example, could help replenish the state’s reservoirs. Storms are hard to predict longer than a couple of weeks out, however.

“Everyone likes to think their weather is weird, but I think we have a better claim to that title than most,” he said.

With no future guarantees, the winter-that-wasn’t is causing hard decisions across the state.

Cities require cutbacks

As much of the Mountain West faces drought, many of Colorado’s largest cities have enacted water restrictions.

Colorado Springs Utilities is expecting about half the water it would receive in a normal year from the snowpack, according to the utility.

At the same time, NOAA is predicting above-normal heat across much of the U.S., so while the city’s extensive reservoir system holds three years worth of water, that supply could go faster as residents tend to outdoor landscapes.

“This year’s expected low water yield combined with early runoff and early plant growth mean a lot of uncertainty in water use,” said Jennifer Jordan, a spokeswoman for Utilities.

Utilities saw this trend during the 2012 drought when the utility went through much of its stored water to meet demand, she said.

Utilities always requires residents to limit outdoor water to three days a week as part of regular conservation efforts. If the Utilities stored water drops below 1.5 years of water supply, residents will only be allowed to water twice a week.

The state’s largest water provider, Denver Water, was in “relatively decent shape” going into a scarce summer, since reservoirs remain close to full, said Greg Fisher, the manager of demand planning and efficiency at the utility.

Even so, with runoff abysmal from the South Platte and Colorado rivers, Denver has instituted Stage 1 drought restrictions, which require residents to limit lawn watering to two designated days per week.

“It’s almost an unimaginable situation,” Fisher said.

The city’s last substantial drought in 2002 was a wake-up call, he said. Urban planners started seeking ways to conserve water, mostly through landscaping changes.

“This year is going to supplant that for sure,” he said.

Shonnie Cline, deputy director of internal and external affairs for Aurora Water, has also been thinking about past droughts recently. She said 2002 was the water provider’s original “worst-case scenario.”

“We’ll be lucky if we get half of what we got in 2002,” she said, of this year’s water.

Aurora Water has also instituted Stage 1 restrictions, hoping to reduce usage by 20%. She said the city has not had to rely heavily on public cooperation in a drought before.

“This is going to be the first year where we will very much be enforcing,” she said.

Pueblo Water is not requiring residents to cut back on outdoor watering, but the organization is monitoring water supplies closely, said Chris Woodka, a board member.

Western Slope worries

On the Western Slope where the drought is most severe, Kaleb Easter crosses the Colorado River about 20 times a day as a manager at Cunningham Orchard in Palisade. The river sustains the peach trees because the water rights that serve them are old and under Colorado’s “first in time, first in right” water laws, they receive priority when other users go without.

This is the first year in the orchard’s history when the flow could be cut off.

“It looks very likely that at some point in the summer, we will lose our water,” he said.

The timing of the cutoff is important. If the trees do not reach harvest within a week or two of their last watering, the peaches will not get a last, necessary boost. Prolonged periods without water can damage the trees, which are a multiyear investment.

“The concept of all of those problems existing because the water in the river that we see flowing past is no longer available to us is a bit of a tough pill to swallow,” he said.

Easter worries about having enough water to bring peaches to a decent harvest. Some Colorado farmers with less senior water rights or more thirsty crops will not plant anything.

Caleb Foy, a senior water resources engineer with the Colorado River District, said that the water users association in the Uncompahgre Valley near Montrose will only be doling out 50% of its allocations to shareholders. That could, he said, reasonably translate to ranchers downsizing herds or farmers only planting half of their typical crops in the valley.

Anything else would have farmers relying on rain.

“It’s a huge gamble, and certainly not one that agricultural producers would take lightly,” he said.

Arkansas Valley woes
East of Pueblo, in Crowley County on Thursday, Matt Heimerich prepped the soil in a field that he might not get to plant. The ground along the road near his farmland was powder dry, having gone without rain since late February.

When the irrigation water does come via the Colorado Canal, he expects it will flow for six to 10 days starting around April 24. It generally flows for about 45 to 60 days across the fields where he grows hay, wheat, alfalfa and other assorted forage for cattle.

The cutbacks mean he expects to till about 35 of his 250 acres of current open ground.

“This is shaping up to be the new worst-case scenario for how bad it possibly could be,” Heimerich said.

Typically, about 60,000 acre-feet of water flows from the Western Slope down the Arkansas River to help supplement the natural water supply, this year the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District estimates about a tenth of that could come over, said Woodka, who is also senior policy and issues manager for the district. An acre-foot of water is enough to cover an acre under a foot of water. One acre-foot can support three to four families for a year.

At a tenth of the expected volume, the district might not make deliveries, he said. The district’s board will vote on the issue in May.

Some farmers might end up prioritizing their highest value crops, such as cantaloupes with so little water, said Mike Bartolo, a recently retired longtime scientist at Colorado State University’s Arkansas Valley Research Center. But that exposes them to great risk, because if they lose the cantaloupes to hail they don’t have other crops, such as alfalfa, to provide income, he said.

The drought is hitting as farmers are facing high fuel and fertilizer costs, as well, he said.

“It’s a very troubling and uncertain time,” he said.

He is also worried the drought might push municipalities to “amp up their quest for water” and purchase more from agriculture, a trend that could hurt the future of the younger generation in agriculture.

“We have given up a huge chunk of our economic base,” he said.

That’s particularly true in Crowley County, where farmers sold many of the water rights they held in Twin Lakes were sold to communities including Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Pueblo West and Aurora. 

Heimerich said he is 1 of about 6 farmers remaining.

“This is a hardscrabble place to make a living,” he said.

He has seen some tough years, including the 2002 and 2012 droughts. Conditions are better than 2012 when his land went almost 24 months with no moisture, and he had to contend with blowing dirt.

If it rains, he is planning to plant millet, a drought-resistant grass, that can be fed to cattle. The dry-land crop could help keep the soils in place and the weeds at bay.

But so far, there is no rain in the forecast.

This story was updated to correct the spelling of Matt Heimerich’s name.