Drying aquifer forcing tough choices
To meet river compact, state’s top farming region must stop irrigating 25,000 acres by 2029
For 17 years, Nate Midcap has spent his winters traveling hundreds of miles across the plains of northeastern Colorado to measure how far water levels have fallen in farmers’ wells.
In bad years, he finds the aquifer — which fuels farming in one of the state’s most important agricultural regions — has dropped more than 2 feet. In good years, it might be less than a foot.
But the water always drops.
“The static level is declining every year — it’s not coming back,” said Midcap, a groundwater manager. “We’re in a locked basin, with no recharge.”
For decades, farmers in the Republican River basin have pumped water from the underground Ogallala Aquifer to grow wheat, beans, corn, potatoes and feed for cattle and hogs. But the water is running out. Flows in the Republican River system are shrinking as the aquifer depletes, making it harder for Colorado to send enough water downstream to the east to fulfill its agreements with Kansas and Nebraska.
To meet its obligations, Colorado is legally required to stop irrigating 25,000 acres in the southern part of the basin by the end of 2029 — more than a quarter of all irrigated acreage in that area. If the mandate is not met, state water officials say they will turn off wells for all 540,000 irrigated acres in the broader swath of the state that’s in the river basin, a move that would devastate the region’s economy and way of life.
“It would implode the economies out here,” said Deb Daniel, general manager of the Republican River Conservation District.
With wells cut off, farms wouldn’t be able to grow crucial crops that feed Colorado and the wider region. The companies that sell farming supplies, such as seed, tractors and sprinklers, would lose massive amounts of business.
Less local income would mean fewer meals at local restaurants in the plains towns and trips to the movie theater or bowling alley. Tax revenue would fall, potentially impacting schools and emergency and social services.
Without irrigation, land values would drop — giving farmers less collateral for the loans they depend on to begin each season.
“What’s frightening about it is that it’s really an existential issue for those living in that region,” said Jordan Suter, a Colorado State University professor tasked with examining the economic fallout from that scenario. “With good reason. If irrigated production goes away, the area can’t really support a large population.”
Groundwater from the aquifer makes irrigated farming possible across a large part of Colorado’s Eastern Plains that spans about 7,000 square miles across eight counties — an area the size of New Jersey.
In 2022, the counties produced more than $2.6 billion of agricultural products, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s farm census.
The state has made some progress, but even if it meets the 25,000-acre goal, the aquifer’s water level is still declining.
Water — or the lack thereof — and how to conserve it comes up at every local meeting Alan Welt attends. Welt, 66, grows corn, sugar, beets, wheat and pinto beans south of Wray with his three sons.
“It’s a finite resource,” he said. “How much longer can you make it last and still have water available for the cattle and the people out here?”
The question isn’t unique to the Republican River region. Water supplies in the West and the High Plains are shrinking while the populations they feed, here and across the country, are growing.
“There are just hard decisions all over the American West right now about a precious natural resource — all the need for it and how to divide that fairly,” said Tracy Kosloff, Colorado’s acting state engineer overseeing the Division of Water Resources.
A litany of attempts to fix the problem
The tributaries of the groundwater-fed Republican River rise in the plains of northeastern Colorado and flow east through eight counties — Logan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Yuma, Lincoln, Kit Carson and Cheyenne — before crossing state lines and consolidating into the main stem.
Rain, snow and water from the Ogallala Aquifer feed the streams. Some sections of the river system in Colorado are nothing more than dry streambeds.
One of the difficulties with conserving groundwater is that, at the surface, it’s invisible, said John Tracy, director of the Colorado Water Center. People can’t see it or even visualize it: Out of sight, out of mind.
That plays out in the interstate water agreements Colorado forged with other states. The compacts focus on surface water — river water — and did not factor in how groundwater affects those flows.
Colorado officials in 1942 signed the Republican River Compact with Kansas and Nebraska and gave each state a share of the river’s water. But in ignoring the aquifer, the compact didn’t consider how depleting groundwater would affect the amount of water flowing past Colorado’s borders.
For decades, the three states debated how to account for groundwater use — including in a legal case that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A series of agreements between the states aimed to fix the problem.
Colorado in 2012 drained Bonny Reservoir to send more water downstream, leaving dead fish on what was once lakebed and eradicating a popular spot for boating and fishing. The Republican River Conservation District built a pipeline to send groundwater directly to Nebraska.
But it wasn’t enough.
In 2016, Colorado officials agreed to retire 25,000 of the approximately 90,000 acres of irrigated land along the South Fork of the Republican River to come into compliance with the compact. The South Fork area runs along Interstate 70 between Arriba and Burlington and extends northeast to the state line, east of Idalia.
If the 2029 deadline isn’t met, the state would be out of compliance with the compact. In a worst-case scenario, the state Division of Water Resources would shut off all the wells in the basin until a new agreement could be reached, said Kosloff, the state engineer.
Suter, the CSU professor, is tasked with quantifying exactly how doing so would impact the economy and the people who live there.
In short: The ramifications would be wide-reaching and difficult.
One of the questions he is trying to answer is how farmers might adapt. How many would just pick up and leave? How many would switch to dryland farming or raising cattle? Because of soil conditions, climate challenges or proximity to surface water, not all fields can be switched to dryland or grazing.
Suter questioned whether the state could pursue other options, besides the wholesale well shutdown, if it couldn’t meet the 25,000-acre requirement.
“It seems like we’d mostly be punishing ourselves,” he said. “I understand having a stick if a carrot doesn’t work, but it seems like a pretty heavy stick.”
A clause in the agreement setting the acreage retirement allows Colorado to present an alternative plan if it can’t meet that goal, Kosloff said.
“But the best thing for Colorado to do is to comply with the words of the agreement that we’ve made,” she said.
“We have no other option,” conservation manager says
It’s Daniel’s job to make those retirements happen.
Daniel, from the conservation district, grew up on a farm on the Arikaree River, a tributary of the Republican, and has lived her entire life in the river basin. In 2011, she became the general manager of the district, which is tasked with administering the programs that pay farmers to stop irrigating their land.
“We have to come in compliance with this compact,” she said. “It’s federal law; we have no other option.”
So far, the effort is ahead of schedule. The agreement between states stipulated that the district must retire at least 10,000 acres by the end of 2024. The conservation district met that goal last May and, in total, has facilitated the retirement of 12,020 acres.
While most of the 56 participants are retiring only some of their land, five retired all of their land.
Farmers retiring their acreage can participate in two primary programs that will pay them thousands of dollars per acre. They can be paid up to $4,250 an acre to change from irrigated farming to grazing or to farming without irrigation. For up to $5,250 an acre, they can revert their fields back to grasslands.
Although Daniel met the interim 10,000-acre deadline, she worries the hardest work is to come. The people most likely to retire their land likely have done so already.
Retiring acreage is a deeply personal decision, she said. It might be easier for folks who don’t have adult children interested in taking on the operation. Or for those whose wells no longer produce much water anyway.
But farmers invest decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars in their land. Walking away, or converting the land’s use, is not a simple task.
Money to pay for the retired acres comes from a $30 million bucket of American Rescue Plan Act funding portioned out to the district by the state as well as fees paid by farmers in the area.
The district expects all the federal money to be spoken for by June. It might have to ask the state for money to pay for more acreage retirements, Daniel said.
“Now we have to try and find funding to try and get to the next level,” she said.
Water is always on farmers’ minds
Farmers in the basin know the value of water, said Peggy Brown of Anchor Three Farm outside of Yuma. It’s an everyday conversation in the towns that dot the plains.
She remembers wresting herself out of bed in the middle of the night to save water. If it started raining at 1 a.m. and the sprinklers were on watering crops, she and her husband, Don, would throw on raincoats and go turn them off by hand. Even if it took all night.
Not only is water a finite resource, Don Brown said, but it is expensive to pump from the ground. It’s costly to pay for the electricity to run the sprinklers. And overwatering crops can do more harm than good, wasting fertilizer by washing it past crops’ roots.
“You don’t want to waste any of your resources,” Don Brown said. “We think about it and work on it every day.”
Like many farmers in the basin, they have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on a bevy of technology to make sure they’re using only as much water as they need. They use soil moisture monitors and center-pivot sprinklers with special nozzles. The Browns don’t run out to turn off sprinklers in the middle of rainstorms anymore.
Instead, they use an app on their phones.
The Browns also are making broader shifts to their operation to become more efficient with water. They look for crop varieties that use less water. They’ve plugged some of their water wells and instead run cattle on those parcels.
They also have increased the amount of crops they grow that survive on dryland farming, or farming without irrigation, such as wheat.
Welt, the farmer south of Wray, has done the same. His family has farmed in the area for more than 100 years.
But he’s not sure what that legacy will look like for his sons.
“I’m extremely concerned about not having water for our future generations to irrigate,” he said. “I’m worried about the next few years.”
Thousands of years to replenish aquifer
Colorado’s water-conservation efforts face a harsh reality: Even if the region retires the 25,000 acres of land, it will not replenish groundwater supplies.
Colorado’s Republican River basin is one small corner of the High Plains affected by the overpumped Ogallala Aquifer. It’s the country’s largest aquifer and makes irrigated farming possible across eight states. But since diesel-powered pumps replaced windmills after World War II, more water has been pumped out of the aquifer than allowed back in. For years, widespread and severe drought over the region reduced the amount of water recharging the aquifer, and drought conditions are expected to worsen because of climate change.
Scientists estimate it would take 6,000 years to replenish the Ogallala Aquifer.
There is no such thing as “solving” a water issue like the Republican River supplies, said Tracy, the Colorado Water Center’s director. Water can only be continuously managed.
“My guess is that at some point, in 2035 or 2040, Kansas will realize there’s not enough water coming down the river and they’ll be back at it,” Tracy said. “We’re going to continuously be in this conversation forever. Get used to it.”
As groundwater manager, it’s Nate Midcap’s job to manage the long-term use of the aquifer water. He manages a board of directors in each of four groundwater districts in northeastern Colorado, a total of 25 people. Those boards are tasked with creating policy to maintain the aquifer, or at least slow its decline.
The boards have discussed possible new policies for seven years. They have not reached consensus yet on one to implement, he said.
That may seem slow, Midcap said, but he recalled that a water attorney once told him that if you get something done correctly in Colorado groundwater policy every 30 years, you’re doing OK.
“It takes a long time to turn that boat around,” Midcap said.
In theory, he could impose across-the-board cuts to usage. But that’s not a viable option without more money for staffers to enforce the cuts or to fight any legal challenges.
It’s hard to generate the urgency needed to address the problem, Midcap said.
“There are three segments of people here: people who want to get something done to slow down the aquifer depletion, there are people who want to stick their head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist, and there are some people in the middle,” he said. “It’s divided into about a third, a third and a third.
“We’re going to need more than a third of people who want to get something done to actually get something done.”
“I’m extremely concerned about not having water for our future generations to irrigate. I’m worried about the next few years.”
— Alan Welt, 66, grows corn, sugar, beets, wheat and pinto beans south of Wray with his three sons.