One important group of Colorado working men and women – farmers – has little to celebrate on this Labor Day, at least when it comes to the workplace.
Eastern Colorado farms have been hammered by drought for years. Now, about 200 former irrigators in northern Colorado have joined their dry-land compatriots in watching their crops shrivel in the relentless summer sun.
The latest turn of the screw began last May when state engineer Hal Simpson ordered the irrigators to turn off 440 pumps serving 30,000 acres in Weld, Morgan and Adams counties after farmers failed to prove they could replenish water they were taking from the South Platte River.
Simpson acted to protect holders of senior water rights, including other farmers and municipal users. The shutdown meant the affected farmers could not finish growing crops they had already invested heavily in planting and fertilizing. The embattled farmers’ one consolation was that they could expect their federal crop-insurance to replace part of the income from their lost harvests. Then, in a classic Catch-22 situation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture last month instructed crop-insurance providers to cover losses only on crops irrigated with water that the farmers were guaranteed before planting season began. That equaled about 15 percent of their historical pumping levels, a fraction of what the farmers had been counting on.
The Post urges Colorado’s congressional delegation to press the USDA for relief from this cruelly unjust decision. The farmers’ plight, after all, stems from a legal ruling in the middle of their growing season. The USDA should pay the crop insurance this year and wait until 2007 to implement the more restrictive rules.
Looking beyond this disastrous year, we see little long-term relief for Colorado farmers unless the state takes a more far-sighted attitude toward balancing agricultural needs with the growing thirst of Colorado’s burgeoning urban population. Colorado is expected to add another 2.8 million people by 2030. That forecast has prompted the Water Conservation Board to warn that nearly half a million acres of irrigated farmland could be dried up by 2030 as water is transferred to municipal use.
The 2005 legislature wisely created “water roundtables” to encourage discussions among stakeholders in the state’s seven river basins and two significant sub-basins on issues like how to compensate basins that lose water, conservation and preservation of minimum stream flows and recreational water uses. We urge the roundtables to redouble their efforts. Colorado’s next governor and the 2007 legislature should press vigorously for modernizing state water laws.
There is more at stake in this crisis than the fate of a few hundred families. Agriculture makes a vital contribution to Colorado’s economy and, by protecting open space, helps safeguard the natural amenities that draw so many of us here in the first place. Farmers and ranchers, in turn, deserve a fair share of the bounty they create for the rest of us.
