While water may cover 71% of the Earth’s surface, it’s frequently been in short supply in Colorado and across the West. As the climate changes and the Colorado River Basin sees dry days ahead, negotiators from the states that share its water and the Native Americans who have used it for centuries are hard at work to create a sustainable framework for the basin’s future.
As the negotiators try to close the distance between the many competing demands for one of the most precious resources in the West, representatives from some of the basin’s largest water users, agriculture, ranching and municipalities, met at the 2024 Getches-Wilkinson Center and the Water & Tribes Initiative’s Conference on the Colorado River to discuss the measures they’ve been taking to reduce water use.
According to recent research that tracked water usage from 2000 to 2019, 52% of the basin’s water is consumed by agriculture, with 32% of the water going to cattle feed and 20% going to wheat, cotton and other crops. The remaining 48% is split by households, cities and industry at 18%; reservoir evaporation at 11%; and riparian, wetland and natural vegetation at 19%.
Thirsty Cows
The water that goes to cattle feed is the largest draw on water in the Colorado River Basin. Jim Howell, CEO of Grasslands, a ranching company that focuses on regenerating landscapes, told the conference about how beef production can be a compatible land use in the upper basin.
A crucial component of that beef production, according to Howell, is irrigated pastures in the basin. Howell said that when he was at the conference in 2023, he heard people asking why feed livestock were being grown in the basin, rather than water being used to grow feed that people can directly consume.
“It’s not that simple,” said Howell. “That’s a simplistic, fairly linear perspective from my point of view, because it doesn’t take into account the 95% of the land area that we can only raise beef cattle on.”
While the cows eat different types of grasses and plants throughout the year, Howell described the irrigated pastures as crucial to the year-round ranching enterprise. In addition to providing feed for crops, Howell noted that it provides a habitat for pollinators, insects, birds and mammals and keeps the soil covered throughout the year.
“Far more habitat than any kind of human crop that we could directly eat,” said Howell. “That’s frequently overlooked when we talk about perennial pastures. It provides habitat for lots of stuff and it keeps the soil covered.”
In addition to those benefits, Howell said that ranching provides benefits to the grasses and plants of the plains and highlands as well, as the rangelands the cattle graze on need them as well.
“[Rangelands] need a herbivore of some sort to cycle that biomass, because long-term resting in these environments is not natural, and it leads to long-term degradation,” said Howell.
But growing the grass and creating the habitat for cattle to flourish presents challenges to ranchers.
“It’s expensive to grow a garden in the desert… Any time you fight nature, it’s expensive, and diverting water and spreading it out in the desert is fighting nature,” said Howell.
Howell said his company is currently working to find a way to add more value to its water. He noted there was already a significant amount of irrigation infrastructure in the ground, including some subsidized through the Bureau of Reclamation.
An experiment was also run last year on curtailment, with irrigation stopped at various parts of the year to understand the impact it would have on annual productivity.
“I think we can reduce the amount of water that we use. It’s going to impact our production, no question,” said Howell. “But with this perennial pasture, we can still keep the ground covered even in the curtailed pasture… it’s still protecting the soil, nothing’s blowing away, and we’re building soil organic matter with these perennial pastures.”
“And if we can get compensated for this conserved consumptive use at an adequate level, we would totally be incentivized to do this,” added Howell. “And I think this could be a major part of the solution to the problems we’re talking about here.”
Growing Crops in the Desert
Just beating out water usage by households, cities and industry in the basin is water usage for the growth of wheat, cotton and other crops. Will Thelander, an Arizona farmer, told the conference his family has grown cotton, corn, alfalfa, wheat, barley and essentially any other crop where there’s an economic incentive and that they can move water to.
Thelander manages around 7,000 acres in Pinal County, Arizona, and he said that he and other farmers around him are doing everything they can to save as much water as possible.
“We don’t like wasting water,” said Thelander. “We’re all in this together.”
In addition to working on new engineering systems, Thelander is working on growing guayule with Bridgestone, a crop native to the area that Bridgestone expects to become a new source of rubber.
Thelander described guayule as a promising crop for the southwestern environment for a number of reasons. It provides natural habitat to bees, requires less water than many of the other crops grown in the desert and since it’s a perennial crop, it doesn’t require frequent tillage, leading to less soil disturbance.
Building out new irrigation systems and contemplating different crops boil down to a fundamental point for Thelander: saving more water.
“We’re always trying to save as much water as we can,” said Thelander. “We do everything we can, and when everyone’s making big decisions on where the water’s flowing, know that we’re doing everything we can to save water.”
Thelander echoed Howell’s call for incentives to help farmers shift to crops that use less water.
“Help us financially to be able to make that possible, where we still stay in business,” said Thelander.
Keeping the Shower On
The third largest use of water is something the majority of Coloradans participate in on a daily basis. Most Coloradans probably aren’t using water for industrial use directly, but they are filling water bottles, running the dishwasher, taking showers or using water for a myriad of activities.
While there are ways for individuals to conserve water, Liesel Hans, the director of programs at the Alliance for Water Efficiency, thinks it’s important to embrace an abundance mindset when it comes to water conservation.
“In the Colorado River Basin, it can be very easy to get consumed by the scarcity mindset,” said Hans. “And it is very true that we won’t ever have enough water, probably won’t ever have enough certainty, but there’s always an abundance of paths forward.”
In 2022, cities and municipalities across the upper and lower basins came together to put together a memorandum of understanding on water conservation.
“This document really underscores and highlights the importance of water conservation over the past few decades,” said Hans. “And they’ve really made great progress in highlighting that this sector in particular is really collaborative and sharing across the basins in terms of what’s working well and how to do better.”
Hans pointed to the example of Fort Collins, where she worked leading the city’s water conservation team and their initiatives for several years. She described how from 2000 to 2023, despite population and economic growth, the city brought down its water consumption from 9 billion gallons a year to 6 billion gallons a year.
The trend is in the right direction, but Hans noted that the problem comes when data like this isn’t believed, and that there are a number of wrong water demand forecasts across the Colorado River Basin.
“The problem is that when we overproject, we can sometimes over invest,” said Hans. “AWE has supported a number of studies over the years that have shown with sustained demand reductions, you can help delay, defer, downsize or outright avoid various very big capital costs.”
Outside of the various successes and challenges highlighted in the 2022 MOU, there were five areas of commitment: Expanding water conservation programs, reducing non-functional turf grass by 30%, increasing water reuse and recycling where it’s feasible, implementing best practices and sharing lessons learned and collaboration with other users.
To do this work and to follow the best practice for water conservation across the West, Hans said people needed to break out of the “hydro-illogical cycle,” where people panic in dry years and forget about water conservation in wet years.
“In order to do this work well, it has to be consistently supported, consistently funded and a consistent message to our community,” said Hans. “And conservation, as well as really smart demand management strategies have, time and time again, proven to be very cost-effective strategies in the long run for communities.”
Legal Remedies
Over the past few years, Colorado legislators have worked to strengthen the state’s water footing. But some efforts were more successful than others.
In 2020, Rep. Jeni James Arndt sponsored House Bill 20-1172, which would’ve protected the nonuse of a portion of a water right if that nonuse had come from water efficiency projects or methods that resulted in a reduction of the water diverted for the decreed beneficial use. The bill was postponed indefinitely.
According to the Colorado Legislative Council Staff’s summary of legislation, another bill in that same session, HB20-1327, would have prohibited state agencies from diverting water from the Rio Grande River Basin, unless the agency could demonstrate it wouldn’t cause certain adverse effects. That bill was also postponed indefinitely.
But in 2022, the Colorado General Assembly found more success on the water front. HB22-1092, a bipartisan effort, allows irrigation boards to borrow money, which they in turn can use to make loans to landowners for improvements to water conservation, water efficiencies or landowner delivery or drainage systems on their property.
The legislature also appropriated money on the municipality side with HB22-1151, allocating $2 million to the turf replacement fund. The measure intends to incentivize water-wise landscaping and the use of plants with lower water needs.
The next two sessions included additional laws related to landscaping in the state. Senate Bill 23-178 made it easier for residents in a unit owners’ association to plant and maintain water-wise landscaping on their property. The assembly then went further this year for local governments with SB24-005, which prohibits local governments from allowing the installation, planting or placement of nonfunctional turf, artificial turf or invasive plant species on a number of properties.
But the biggest bill related to water law came with SB24-197, which will implement the proposals of the Colorado River Drought Task Force. The act will allow owners of decreed storage water rights to loan water to the Colorado water conservation board under certain conditions. It also makes changes to how conditional water rights held by utilities can be used and requires the water conservation board to establish an agricultural water protection program in each water division.
In addition to legislative action, Colorado voters will have a say in how state revenue is spent in relation to water conservation. HB24-1436 will allow the state to transfer all the tax revenue generated from sports betting above $29 million to the water plan implementation cash fund.