YUMA COUNTY IS THRIVING
“YUMA COUNTY IS A 21ST-CENTURY COMMUNITY THAT RESPECTS PEOPLE”
The Denver Post’s listening tour stops in northeast Colorado, where residents are doing just fine.
Y U MA» Sprawling Yuma County has far more cows than people, but don’t think it’s some dusty, dying farm community. With the help of modern technology, the northeast corner of Colorado is doing just fine, residents here say.
“We’re a progressive community,” said Andrea Anderson, head of human resources at Smithfield Foods in Yuma. “We’re not a dying small town.”
It’s not Bernie Sanders-progressive. The home of Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, Yuma County overwhelmingly voted for GOP gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton in an election in which he received less than 43 percent of the statewide vote.
But Yuma has a newer hospital, a spacious community center and a pizzeria that’s arguably better than any in Denver. Outside of town, farmers keep tabs on their sprinklers via smartphone apps and run their tractors via in-cab, tablet-size screens.
“Most of the farmers out here have a college degree,” said Wray Mayor John Willard. “They are well-educated, well-traveled — they’ve seen the world. The idea that we’re a bunch of country bumpkins is nonsense.”
Two Denver Post reporters, a photographer and an editor spent
a day in and around Yuma last week, asking residents what journalists and the rest of the state should know about them. It was the first stop on The Post’s listening tour, a two-month, seven-stop undertaking to connect with Coloradans during the break between elections and legislative sessions.
“We want to be counted and respected,” said Peggy Brown, who runs a major family farm with her husband, Don. “I’ve been at meetings where people have said, ‘All those conservatives in the northeast.’ But Yuma County is a 21stcentury community that respects people.”
We met with about a dozen Yuma County residents — mostly farmers, local leaders and smallbusiness owners — about issues that impact their lives: Schools. Immigration. Oil and gas laws. And most of all the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest, which supplies the water that keeps this part of the state thriving.
Here’s what we heard:
Immigration is complicated
How to stem illegal immigration has become a hot conservative-vs.-liberal issue in the national and state Capitols. In Yuma County, where farmers and others depend on immigrants to work with and for them, immigration is a personal issue — and a practical one.
Smithfield hires some immigrants with work visas for its hogprocessing site in Yuma, but Anderson wishes there was a way to employ the many who don’t have documentation.
“There’s some great people (in Yuma County) that we would like to keep,” she said. “… I don’t know the right answer but, A, we need to stop the influx of people, and, B, we need to figure out what to do with the people who are already here.”
Almost a quarter of the county’s 10,000 residents are Latino, according to the latest census numbers, and more than half the students in Yuma School District 1 are Latino, said Duane Brown, a retired lawyer who serves on the school board.
“It’s almost cruel that they have to live under a cloud of possible deportation,” he said. “They had good reasons to come. They’re good, hardworking people.”
State government, leave us alone
This theme emerged in regard to a number of different issues, including Senate Bill 181, the new oil and gas law. Tyson Brown, Peggy’s 34-year-old son, said the law signed by Gov. Jared Polis is just another effort to downsize the industry after voters rejected an attempt to do so via Proposition 112 in November.
“I know they’re not the same thing, but the intent is the same,” he said. “If you say the goals aren’t the same thing, you’re lying to me.”
Oil and gas isn’t a major industry for the county, but attempts at government control strike a nerve. Farmers and ranchers see themselves as stewards of the land, and they fiercely defend their rights to use their resources as they see fit.
“We have to be stewards of the land,” Peggy Brown said. “That’s how we make our money. Occasionally, there are those who aren’t, but for the most part, we are.”
There’s also unease about the new red-flag law, which lets judges order someone’s guns removed if they’re believed to be a risk to themselves or others.
“The reasoning behind it is a good thought, but there’s too many ways it could go wrong,” said Dean Wingfield, a farmer and one of the few Democrats in the county. “There are people who have guns who shouldn’t have guns. I know that. But I don’t know what you do about that.”
Our water, our future
The Ogallala Aquifer is the reason the farm community has prospered, farmer Robin Wiley said. But it’s not an endless resource. The underground lake crosses several states, and Kansas has already seen much of its section dry up.
Farmers have used a combination of conservation and technology to delay that fate. The Browns, for instance, use a piece of equipment called a Dammer Diker that makes divots that catch and hold water between rows of corn or other crops to reduce runoff.
“Technology has been helping, but at some point that won’t be enough,” said Wiley, who’s also a Yuma County commissioner.
The solution “needs to come from the people,” he said. “Maybe the state needs to be the enforcing agency, but the decision needs to come from the people.”