W.D. Farr, 97, a key figure in creating Colorado’s water projects and a legend in northern Colorado, died at his home in Greeley Monday afternoon.
Farr had been ill for several months.
Former Colorado State University president Al Yates had known Farr since 1990, when Yates first came to Colorado, he said.
“I admired him and thought he was a mentor to all of us – all of us who cared about the land, and cared about Colorado, and cared about water,” Yates said.
Yates viewed Farr as a friend and mentor, he said, and also described him as a “quintessential scholar.”
“I’ve combed a great number of documents over the years,” Yates said. “None were more impressive than those that were written by W.D. Farr.”
A memorial service will probably be conducted next week at the Union Colony Civic Center, son Bill told the Greeley Tribune.
Farr was president of the Greeley Water Board for 39 of its first 40 years, and some called the Greeley native “Mr. Water.”
During the Dustbowl drought of the 1930s, he worked with his dad to stir up support among Colorado farmers to pay a higher property tax in exchange for the Colorado-Big Thompson project.
The mammoth public works proposal promised a water distribution system for the Front Range. The project carries water from the head of the Colorado River across the Continental Divide and delivers it to 30 municipalities and to eastern Colorado farmers.
Farr, then about 24, reasoned that the project was an economic move – something to make the Front Range sprout.
“The day that water came through the tunnel for the first time, it was the most exciting day of my life,” Farr said in a 2000 Denver Post interview.
“I never saw adult men at that time (1949) act like they did. They threw their hats in the air and kissed and cheered. They acted like a bunch of kids. Every man who was there felt he had contributed to something.”
The Colorado-Big Thompson project led to bigger things.
In 1973, President Nixon appointed Farr to help protect and clean the nation’s water in a piecemeal 12-member commission called the Environmental Protection Agency.
That was when the word “environmentalist” was brand new.
“It wasn’t full time for me,” he said. “We just met and talked about what needed to be done.”
In his three-year appointment, Farr scolded cities such as Honolulu and New York for dumping sewage in the ocean, which would then wash up on beaches. He helped clean up the Great Lakes and fill them with fish after massive dumping by Midwest manufacturers.
Unfortunately, the EPA didn’t pay his bills.
He took a position as president of the National Cattlemen’s Association, a job that had more to do with cajoling lawmakers than cattle. His voice in U.S. Senate hearings served thousands of Western cattlemen grumbling about encroaching government regulation.
During his two years as president of the NCA, about all he did was work, he told The Post. Between trips to Washington and keeping up with the cattle business, he didn’t have much time for anything else.
“It’s not really a regret I have. You had the choice of building an empire or doing these other things. I don’t know of anyone who’s gotten to do the things I’ve done,” he said.
Farr was honored in January 1999 as the National Western Stock Show’s Citizen of the West.
He was an inaugural inductee into the Colorado Business Hall of Fame in 1991. He also was inducted into the Colorado Agriculture Hall of Fame in 1995.
His wife died in 1996. They had four children.
