Ag Water: Water-lease test aims to end ‘buy and dry’ trend

A pilot project in Colorado’s Arkansas Valley seeks to break a “buy and dry” trend in which thirsty cities buy water rights from farmers desperate for cash in times of severe drought, only to permanently parch cropland, shutter farms and hurt the tax bases of agricultural towns. The three-year project would pay farmers to dry up some of their land on a rotating basis and let cities temporarily lease the unused water. “Water is the most valuable thing we have. It’s what I have to have to make a living,” said Lamar-area corn and hay producer Dale Mauch, vice president of the Lower Arkansas Valley Super Ditch Co., which is working on the project. “The Front Range is going to keep growing. We have to either come up with a way to work with them or sell out and quit,” Mauch said at a meeting last week in Rocky Ford to discuss the idea. Proponents aim to sign contracts with about 10 farmers by October for the first year of the project. Each farmer would fallow about 33 acres in 2012 to divert a total 500 acre-feet of water – enough for about 1,000 households – to Pueblo Reservoir...more