Weld County’s commissioners on Thursday asked Colorado Attorney General John Suthers to re-examine a legal opinion issued this week and find that the governor has the authority to allow farmers to begin using well water on drought-parched fields.
Gov. John Hickenlooper and his water adviser, John Stulp, told the commissioners Tuesday that they do not have legal authority to issue an emergency order that would allow farmers to resume pumping from the aquifer below farmland in the South Platte River Basin. They argued that even temporarily restoring use of that water would violate downstream water agreements.
But in a memo to Suthers, the commissioners cite the fact that water from irrigation reservoirs has been “commandeered” to fight the High Park fire in Larimer County and argue that case law allows the state to act similarly to prevent a drought- disaster emergency.
State law would allow owners of that water to be compensated, they wrote. “The board is not asking the governor to re-determine the use of the water in contravention of the court orders. Rather, the request is to commandeer the senior water rights,” the memo said.
