Tag: water rights
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Colorado River overallocation collides with Colorado snowpack conditions
Tapped: Colorado’s Front Range is at the center of one of the American West’s most complex and consequential water challenges. This series examines the interconnected systems that determine how the region secures, stores, and conserves its water — while navigating the competing demands of fast‑growing urban communities and the increasingly unpredictable mountain snowpack that underpins…
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Fountain divvies up expected water windfall
The Fountain City Council on Tuesday approved a deal that will increase the city’s capacity for new water taps for the first time in years. “This is excellent bang for our buck,” said Councilmember Gordon Rick. The new water deal increases Fountain’s share of a three-way lease on wells at the Venetucci Farm in Security-Widefield.…
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‘Turnkey’ solution: Fountain set to finalize major water contract
The city of Fountain is on the cusp of signing a 50-year agreement to pull hundreds of acre-feet in water per year from wells on the historic Venetucci Farm. “This is the cheapest water we’re going to get,” summarized Fountain Mayor Sharon Thompson at a presentation on the contract on Tuesday. The deal, if struck,…
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Cotton in CO? Southeast farmers test if crop has potential to take hold
BENT COUNTY — It’s easy to spot Caleb Wertz’s fields along the farmland east of Las Animas. About half of the Wertz family’s land is growing corn but the other half is filled with scraggly, foot-high plants dotted with soft white bulbs. Bulbs as soft as cotton. The Cotton Belt has never reached into Colorado before. But with…
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Colorado Springs Utilities gets update before final weeks of negotiations on Colorado River water rights
With less than three weeks to go before a crucial deadline in the negotiations over Colorado River water rights, a state official told the Colorado Springs Utilities Board of Directors on Wednesday to hope for a broad framework. The states at the upper and lower ends of the Colorado River have spent years negotiating how…
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Colorado Springs enters final week for Karman Line special election
Colorado Springs voters have one more week to cast their ballots in a one-off special election to say whether the city should retain the Karman Line annexation. Colorado Springs City Council voted in January to allow a flagpole annexation along Bradley Road to add 1,876 acres of land east of Colorado Springs to the city…
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Nearly finalized New Blue River agreement to provide more water for Colorado Springs
An agreement is nearly finalized that will provide more water for Colorado Springs and increase water storage on Colorado’s Western Slope. If approved by all seven subject parties, the agreement will settle about nine years of debate and allow Colorado Springs Utilities to expand its Montgomery Reservoir in Park County, between Alma and Hoosier Pass,…
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Tipping Point: A Call for Change on the Colorado
One hundred years of the Colorado River Compact — the agreement that divides 15 million acre feet of water each year among the seven states of the Colorado River basin and Mexico — has wrecked on the shoals of climate change and 22 years of drought. It doesn’t work anymore. What happens when the law…
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Tipping Point: Colorado River tribes fight for their water rights
Some 10,000 households on the vast Navajo Nation, which covers 27,000 square miles in three states, are still without running water. Native American tribes hold some of the most senior water rights in the Colorado River Basin, but history has shown that having senior water rights and having water are two different realities. The tribes,…
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Tipping Point: Colorado River basin farms stunted by megadrought
Farmers across the Colorado River Basin are facing an uncertain future in agriculture as the river’s watershed faces ongoing drought, rising irrigation costs, and conservation cutbacks. (Video by Skyler Ballard)