Visualizing water inequality--from space
Plus: Housing crisis creates labor crisis; other news from around the West
You know that water inequality—and drought—have gotten out of hand when you can see them from space. And this year, satellite imagery that highlights vegetation tells a harrowing story of fallowed fields a stone’s throw from emerald-green ones, of empty ditches next to ones with at least some water in them. And it shows how, during dry years, the abyss between the water-rich and the water-poor widens, a phenomenon most apparent this year in Montezuma County, Colorado.
Exhibit one includes two views of a section of Montezuma County in the far Southwestern corner of the state, one from July 2019 (top) and the other from a few days ago.
The Montezuma Valley north of Cortez looks about the same in both images—a big swath of red, which is an indicator of leafy vegetation (piñon, juniper, and sage don’t seem to register). But the area northwest of there, heading towards Dove Creek, is clearly a lot drier now than it was two years ago. Meanwhile, McPhee Reservoir has not only shrunk considerably—by about 10 billion gallons—but its shape also changed dramatically as a result.
So what gives? Seniority, that’s what.
Western water law is based on a simple foundation: First in time, first in court, first in right. Which is to say, whoever files for a portion of the water in a stream first gets priority. When the stream starts shrinking, the junior water rights holders must shut off their ditches so that the senior rights holders can continue to get their share of water.
That’s what happened in Montezuma County. When the flow of the area’s main source of water—the Dolores River—waned after a string of dry winters, and McPhee Reservoir began shrinking, it became clear that there wouldn’t be enough water to go around to all the users.
The river, itself—and the fish and other aquatic life that depend on it—were the first to get cut off, as the McPhee Dam operators decreased downstream releases to about 10 cubic feet per second or less, a mere trickle that does not make it as far as Slickrock, where the riverbed is dry. Next to go were the Towoac Canal (which I’ll get to in a moment) and the Dove Creek Canal, which carries water from McPhee west to the town of Dove Creek. The canal serves Dolores Water Conservation District irrigators from Yellowjacket up to Dove Creek and provides drinking water to the town. During the first part of the irrigating season, flows in the Dove Creek Canal hovered between 50 to 75 percent below normal. Then, in early July, they stopped altogether.
The meagre flows in the Dove Creek Canal are manifested in the image above. In 2019, the fields west of McPhee Reservoir were mostly bright red—which is to say the alfalfa, corn, sunflowers and other crops were well-watered and healthy. In 2021, however, many of those same fields show no vegetation at all, indicating that they were fallowed or simply shriveled up due to lack of water. The few fields that did get a little water produced far less. Some Montezuma County alfalfa farmers told the Cortez Journal they expected a 95% decrease in yield this year—which amounts to an equivalent decrease in revenue, more or less (with some help from rising hay prices—up to $300/ton—resulting from scarcity).
Even worse off are the irrigators on the Towaoc Canal, most significantly the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s extensive agricultural operations located south of Ute Mountain. Most years, the canal’s flow ranges from 60 to 70 cfs throughout the summer, enough water for multiple alfalfa cuttings and a strong corn crop to feed the operation’s mill. This year flows ranged from 10 to 20 cfs until June, when they plummeted to the single digits, forcing the operation to fallow most of its fields. The results are apparent below.
Now, keeping that image in your brain, go back up to the first image and notice all the red north of Cortez. The Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company was able to keep its ditches about half full this summer, and have yet to be cut off entirely, which should allow them to get more than one cutting of hay and a relatively decent yield from their other crops, assuming the grasshopper plague (of Biblical proportions, I’ve been told) doesn’t devour them. They got more water than other users because they have the most senior rights on the Dolores River, having filed for them back in 1885, a century before construction of McPhee Dam was completed.
If you’re having trouble wrapping your mind around the concept of the Ute Tribe’s farms getting cut off from water before the Montezuma Valley irrigators, you’re not alone. The Ute people were here, relying on the water in the Dolores River, for centuries prior to the arrival of the white settlers who built a tunnel from the Dolores River to a network of canals in the Montezuma Valley. And under the Winters Doctrine, the tribe is entitled to all of the water they need and then some, with an appropriation date of 1868, meaning the tribe should get all the water.
But when negotiating to get their water delivered to them, the Ute Tribe made some concessions. They didn’t give up their 1868 priority date, but they did accept a later priority date for the delivery of that water—at least that’s how I understand this language from the Colorado Ute Indian Water Rights Settlement of 1986:
(Dear Land Desk water expert readers: Please feel free to correct my understanding of Dolores River water rights or to further elucidate the issue in the comments section or via email to me.)
To be sure, all farmers are having a tougher time of it this year, even the ones whose ditches are running full. If they aren’t suffering from lack of water, they’re dealing with grasshoppers, which are more prevalent this year due to the lack of precipitation and the relatively warm winter. If they’re lucky enough to be outside the grasshopper zone, then they’re grappling with heat, which damages the health of crops and the people who tend to them. And if they’re wannabe farmers trying to help supply the burgeoning, pandemic-induced demand for local produce, they’re running into skyrocketing land prices. And guess which land is most expensive and most out of reach of folks on a farmer income? The land with the good water.
And so, wealth inequality leads to water inequality—and round and round we go.
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The National Low Income Housing Coalition just released its annual report on the nation’s housing crisis, titled Out of Reach 2021. Its authors concluded, as you might have guessed, that housing is pretty much out of reach of working class folks nearly everywhere. In most Western states, one would have to make at least $20 per hour to afford even the most modest rental. And let me tell you: service jobs in most of those states don’t pay that much. Here’s another way of looking at the crisis:
It doesn’t look good for those who make minimum wage, and based on my observations, the map doesn’t do the problem justice. Note that it is based on paying “fair market rent.” But in a lot of Western small and mid-sized towns, the going rent is anything but fair because the pool of habitable rentals is so small that landlords can jack up the price as high as they want and still get renters. This is especially true in “desirable” places near public lands and recreational opportunities, like Telluride, Durango, Bend, Moab, Truckee, Flagstaff, and so on, places where housing prices have gone berserk.
It was only a matter of time before all of this desirability came back and bit these towns in the ass, as businesses, schools, police departments, and other employers found themselves unable to find employees. The biting has begun and it really hurts.
In Moab, the affordable housing shortage has become “the essential workers housing crisis,” reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Their police department, which has been strained by the excess numbers of tourists over the past year, begged the community to help out with housing new hires. That same article says that Monticello—an hour south of Moab—is now having its own housing shortage thanks to Moab overflow. Up in Montana, the economy has recovered from the pandemic, housing prices have gone crazy, and businesses can’t find workers because workers can’t find affordable housing.
A loyal Land Desk reader told me that on a recent trip around the San Juan Mountains, he was “blown away by just how bad the service worker shortage has become.” A number of restaurants in mountain tourist towns were closed during prime hours of the prime season and that would be customers faced 90-minute waits at the places that were open.
For the most part, the town and county governments and community leaders in these places are just throwing up their hands in frustration and helplessness. Some are trying to build affordable housing, but it’s usually a matter of a few units here and a few there, when what they really need are hundreds of new places. Others are slowly amending zoning laws to allow for more accessory dwelling units, which can help, as long as rules requiring the ADUs to be long-term rentals.
Vail, Colorado, where the ship may have already sailed, is trying an innovative approach. The city will pay homeowners to deed restrict their property, guaranteeing that the property will be occupied as a primary residence for people working at least 30 hours per week in Eagle County, be it the owner or a renter. Since the restrictions do not put a cap on rental rates or on appreciation of value, it’s not going to make housing more affordable, per se. But it could have that effect if enough people sign up, because those houses can’t be sold to part-time residents or converted into short-term rentals.
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Several months ago the Land Desk reported on a scuffle over a proposal to build a massive solar facility on Mormon Mesa in southern Nevada. The opposition to the plan to blanket the desert with thousands of acres of photovoltaic panels was a motley mix of desert lovers, skydivers, ATV-riders, and even art aficionados. Yes, you read that last part right: The installation would be a stone’s throw away from Michael Heizer’s iconic land art, Double Negative.
Well, Arevia Power, the wannabe developers, withdrew their application for the project.
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Also:
Tracy Stone-Manning, President Joe Biden’s nominee to helm the Bureau of Land Management, will get a vote from the full Senate soon. Republicans have pushed back against her confirmation based on a 1989 letter she wrote defending people who had spiked trees in order to discourage loggers from cutting down the forest.
And, during a visit to Colorado, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said her department’s review of the federal oil and gas leasing program would be released “very, very soon.” We await with bated breath!
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Great article - great research! Some months ago you wrote an article on the huge foreign owned alfalfa fields in Arizona - I wonder how they are doing during this drought?
Wow! As always you are providing a teaching moment! That is, if we LISTEN - the water issue is terrifying - the idea that them that has - get - is made ever more clear every day. Rockets to space, etc. Just the thought of the expense of THOSE projects & what that money could have done where its actually needed really ticks me off. The housing for "service" people which would benefit the wonderful humans that are being "serviced" - sorry, just having trouble getting my head around the absolute selfishness in all these issues. I know, nothing new. Thanks for making it clear!