Colorado farmland goes dry as suburbs secure water supplies

Colorado farmers still own more than 80 percent of water flowing in the state, but control is rapidly passing from them as growing suburbs move to secure supplies for the future. The scramble is intensifying as aging farmers offer their valuable water rights to thirsty cities, drying up ag land so quickly that state overseers are worried about the life span of Colorado's agricultural economy. Since 1987, Colorado farmers and ranchers have sold at least 191,000 acre-feet of water to suburbs, according to a review of water transactional data. (That's enough water to fill Chatfield Reservoir nine times— and enough to sustain 382,000 families of four for a year.) The shift has been especially abrupt north of Denver, where farmers sold water to suburbs at a rate of 2 to 5 percent of available water each year, according to the Northern Water Conservancy District. State water courts in the South Platte River Basin, which includes Denver and Weld counties, approved farm-to-urban change-of-use petitions in 41 different cases between 2002 and 2007, state records show. In the process, about 400,000 acres in Colorado dried up between 2000 and 2005, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. Long-envisioned cooperative transfers, with farmers leasing water to suburbs while retaining control, have not materialized. Instead, suburban water managers — and their agents — are venturing as far as mountain valleys 100 miles away to acquire new water supplies, sometimes backed by state government agencies...more