Like most conflicts in eastern Colorado, this so-called Landowner Lockout is all about water. But to thousands of pheasant hunters, it soon may be about birds.
In a swelling protest against Colorado Division of Wildlife participation in a lawsuit that pits rights to surface water against irrigation wells, hundreds of farmers have joined in what amounts to a boycott of the 2008 pheasant season.
Landowners in Yuma County, center of the protest, pledged 340,000 acres to the boycott. Supporters in Kit Carson, Washington and Phillips counties have contributed lesser amounts in what has become a literal groundswell of remonstration. Wildlife managers fear the lockout will spread to other parts of pheasant country.
Another aspect of the action will be farmer refusal to participate in DOW’s popular Hunter Walk-In Program for upland game, an initiative that pays them to open thousands of acres to public access.
“It will be hunting for friends and family only,” declared Don Brown, a spokesman for the Yuma group.
At the center of the dispute is the continuing struggle between those who hold senior rights to surface water in the North Republican River Basin and farmers who drill wells to irrigate crops. A recent emphasis on biofuels from thirsty corn has served to accelerate the conflict.
A separate, yet similar, hassle is being played out on the South Republican River, where a plan to drain Bonny Reservoir to protect wells emerged as a bill in the current session of the Colorado General Assembly.
The North Republican dispute involves a decision by DOW to participate in a lawsuit filed by Pioneer and Laird Ditch Co. to prevent farmers from using wells within a stipulated distance from Chief Creek, a tributary that meets the river at the town of Wray. DOW uses Chief Creek water to bathe its Wray Hatchery.
“We feel betrayed. For years we’ve fed the birds, fed the deer, planted the trees and grasses DOW wanted,” Brown said. “Now they file this action, and, if they win, they’ll bankrupt Yuma County. There’ll be nothing left. We can’t pay for our schools and hospitals.”
Brown said a successful suit would shut down wells that irrigate 120,000 acres with an estimated value of $320 million. He also emphasized that grain watered by the wells form the principal food source for both birds and beasts; hunting almost always is best on irrigated farms.
“We want DOW to withdraw from the suit,” said Brown, who indicated the lockout might dissolve should the wildlife agency show what he termed good faith toward the farmers.
“As far as I’m concerned, it all goes away. I can’t speak for other individual farmers, but I think it’ll all go away,” he said.
For its part, DOW seems determined to protect its ability to maintain a hatchery that produces approximately 40 percent of the warmwater fish it plants in reservoirs across the state.
“Our concern is that we need to resolve the Wray Hatchery problem, where flows have been declining,” said Tom Remington, DOW director. Court rulings have determined that wells deplete groundwater, thus diminishing stream flows.
“I understand how our being involved in litigation that could have such an impact on the agricultural economy could cause this anxiety. I see why they’d be upset,” he said.
Remington, who acted as architect of the Walk-In Program at its 2001 inception, emphasized his agency is looking for a “win-win” solution to the problem.
“A lockout is going to have winners and losers; a lawsuit will have winners and losers. I’m looking for a solution that doesn’t have any losers in a big way.”
Among Remington’s answers is a DOW negotiation to use a water well owned by the Town of Wray as a source for the hatchery — provided the well is allowed to operate under the compact and, ironically, the lawsuit.
The intricacies of a controversy that will reach a flash point at a June hearing by the Colorado Ground Water Commission in Wray would require a book to explain: The vagaries of compliance with the greater Republican River Compact; conflicting stipulations about distances of wells from streams; even the ability of DOW to use its own conduits to deliver water to the hatchery.
Through all this flows a revolutionary plan to use a pipeline fed by wells outside the restricted area to deliver water to the Nebraska border. This presumably would meet the delivery requirements of the compact and allow all the farmers’ wells to keep pumping.
As Remington suggests, there indeed may be a winning plan to solve these problems in large part. Whether it comes in time to save the 2008 pheasant season remains to be seen.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
