The sun has yet to rise as William Fales climbs out of bed and into his trusty cowboy boots. Stepping out his front door, he views a landscape once lush with alfalfa fed by a roaring Crystal River. But now this ranch has been replaced by a barren wasteland, so eerily quiet he might have thought he had just stepped off Apollo 11. In the face of drought conditions, Fales heads to his irrigation headgates and turns them off.
Despite this land needing every drop of moisture it can get, the owners of Cold Mountain Ranch here in Pitkin County have joined an experiment meant to stave off the troubles of a warming, drying climate as long as possible. Fales is willing to share some of his water as part of a bigger cause, keeping the river alive and preserving the land he has put his blood sweat and tears in for many years.
“How many acres of land do you have and how many head of cattle? Those are questions that some cattlemen don’t like,” Fales says. “It's like asking how many dollars you have in your bank account.”
Increasingly, these two questions are becoming more tantalizing as ranchers across the Mountain West are being forced to scale down and sometimes halt operation altogether due to water shortages.
Fales has irrigated the pastures of Cold Mountain Ranch with water from the Crystal River coming up on 50 years. This vital stream, which flows 35 miles from its headwaters in the Elk Mountains to the Roaring Fork River, represents one of many rivers in which today, if we are not careful, will run dry. The Ranch is one of only a few remaining operating ranches in Pitkin County and is telling of a larger story in which the known and accustomed landscape of roaming cattle on vast prairie lands of Colorado becomes something of a fable.
Water has always been a fraught issue in the West, yet if the 49ers could have predicted a world desecrated by drought and climate change maybe it would have been the Water Rush instead. The ever-growing concern as the Colorado River Compact of 1922 reached its 100 year anniversary in November is that the Colorado River is at its crisis point.
Widely considered the great American humorist, Mark Twain, once quipped, “Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting.”
Way back when, 100 years ago, it was realized that there was this important but limited water supply in terms of the Colorado River and its tributaries. The 1922 compact was their attempt at dividing up the flow of the Colorado River among the seven basin states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. It was a recognition that there had to be some type of system in place in order to allocate the water of the river among these competing states and interests.
“Aside from some stretches it is thought of as a plumbing system, that it is just a conduit to get water from upstream in the upper basin down to all these people that need the water,” says Mitch Tobin, director of the Water Desk, a journalism initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism that focuses on Western water issues and the Colorado River Basin.
Whiskey is for drinking.
— Mark Twain
Water is for fighting.
While Tobin refers to the Colorado River as a plumbing system, Janie VanWinkle, a fourth generation cattle rancher in Grand Junction, puts it in terms of banking, “water banking.” The river is a bank with reserves and those reserves are running out because of poor budgeting. VanWinkle believes while the compact has served her and cattle ranchers alike well, everyone is going to have to practice a bit of budgeting and that the “pain” as she puts it, needs to be shared. She believes the lower basin states are taking a considerable amount of water that isn’t theirs to take as per the compact.
“The allocation I think was fair when it was made and I think it is still fair but the department of interior has to be a part of this solution and they have to encourage lower basin states to find ways to reduce the amount of water they have been taking. That is what has created the deficit in Lake Mead and Lake Powell is that additional water that has been going to those lower basin states and we need to fix that because the bank is just about dry,” says VanWinkle.
Janie VanWinkle alongside her husband, Howard, have owned and run VanWinkle Ranch, LLC, located outside of Fruita, Colo. in Mesa County for the last 40 years. They lease three different plots of land from the government across the county in which they use to disperse their 550 head of cattle. Janie, former president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, has been an outspoken advocate for the beef industry for countless years.
“When we talk about cattle ranching we think of these large landscapes and thousands of cattle and the reality is that the majority of beef produced in the United States is in herds of less than 40 head. In our case we would be considered a medium to large ranch in western Colorado, a family ranch, as most of them are, whether they are large or small it's a family that's operating them and that's managing those resources and those cattle,” says Janie.
One hundred years later, the world we live in today is drastically different, yet the compact is still enforced. As we face record droughts the compact has had to undergo reevaluation and renegotiation and the traditional ways in which we deal with water have come into contention with environmental concerns and priorities. Ranchers within these basin states stand on the front lines as many hold something that has become extremely valuable in our society, senior water rights.
Someone who holds senior water rights has had the official rights to a water supply the longest, and is to be the last to be cut off from their water supply during water shortages. This often comes into contention with environmental priorities because even when the water held by someone with junior, or more recently obtained water rights may have a more beneficial use for the water, like conservation, it is those with the senior water rights that still hold precedence.
“There's a bedrock principle in Western water rights that you either use it or you lose it, so if you've been irrigating a pasture for decades and decades and you have a very old senior water right, if you stop irrigating the water, then you lose that water right, so there is an incentive for people to keep using water in order to maintain their water right,” says Tobin.
While this standing principle often is an obstacle to gaining ranchers cooperation, there are some ranchers like Fales that are willing and have given up their water rights, say on a temporary basis, on a voluntary basis, and if they are being paid not to irrigate it. Fales represents the sector of ranchers that are working in conjunction with water conservationists to modify the traditional ways we manage water, in order to allow ranchers to help with the conservation effort without losing their water rights.
Fales recently entered into a six-year agreement with the Colorado Water Trust to voluntarily re-time his irrigation practices to leave water in the Crystal River during the late summer and early fall. As part of the deal he will be paid a $5,000 signing bonus and $250 a day up to 20 days, for each cubic foot per second (cfs) he doesn’t divert.
This is a funny valley. A lot of billionaires and that's billion with a b have moved in
— Nancy says
“And some of them are worried that if they don't maximize their diversions, they might put their water rights in jeopardy. Maybe we're foolish but we think our water rights are protected even in this deal. I think we're protected, I hope we're protected because without our water this ranch is nothing. I'd rather start to find a solution than have a solution imposed upon us. And so we made a deal with the water trust and they were really accommodating,” says Fales.
By Fales agreeing to reduce the diversions from the Helms Ditch it could result in an added 6 cfs in the river. That equates to around 44 gallons of water per second or 3,877,896 gallons of water per 24 hours. To give some perspective, the average household uses around 300 gallons of water a day and the amount of water diverted in a 24 hour period would fill around five Olympic sized swimming pools. The months of August and September often see streamflows dip below 40 cfs and therefore anytime the streamflows are this low during months and through October the agreement will be enforced. If the streamflow rises above 55 cfs in these months the agreement will be lifted.
In 2012, the Crystal River was listed by American Rivers as the eighth most endangered river in the country. In large part this is due to diversions off the river and climate change. William Fales and his wife Marj Perry entered this agreement with the Colorado Water Trust as a means to add water flow to a river that desperately needs it and that they have relied on for many generations.
This is not the first time this agreement has been made. In 2018, a similar agreement was formed between the two parties. It was a three year pilot agreement that ended in 2020. The project, however, was not able to run due to certain circumstances over the three years. In 2018, the river was so low that there was not enough water available to divert that would result in any significant benefit. In 2019, the river was high enough that it did not trigger the agreement into effect. In 2020, Cold Mountain Ranch needed all the water they could get in order to sustain their business.
While the previous agreement was unable to show the full effects of such an agreement, it did show the collaborative nature of the partnership Colorado Water Trust hopes to have with ranchers. Colorado Water Trust states, “Our past agreement shows other ranchers on the Crystal River that when we say our solutions are voluntary and are NOT designed to harm their operations, we mean it.”
Heading into this new agreement, Colorado Water Trust and Cold Mountain Ranch, learning from the misfalls of the previous agreement tried to better account for drier years, the changing climate, and the economic needs of the ranch.
Fales says: “It's going to be a little bit of an ongoing learning experience because a lot of our late fall irrigation pays off next spring. So really I can't judge the full effect until next summer.”
Through this agreement, the Colorado Water Trust and Cold Mountain Ranch hope to show the larger Colorado community that agriculture and conservation aren't mutually exclusive and working together does not mean a zero sum game.
“Ranching is one of those professions that is hard to change and it is partly because of a conversation along the lines of oh well my grandpa did it that way and then my dad did it that way and so we're just not gonna change,” says Nancy Oswald, owner of Oswald Cattle Company.
Nancy and her husband Steve run a cattle ranch in the north end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in south central Colorado. They too have had to find ways to stay afloat while preserving the land. Their ranch is part of a conservation easement, meaning they are a part of a voluntary agreement with a nonprofit land trust or government agency that limits certain uses of their land in order to protect its conservation values. In this agreement their ranch stays their ranch, and the process is driven by their wishes, with the ultimate goal of protecting open space, water, and wildlife habitat perpetually. The Oswalds have done everything from leasing another place and getting their cattle off the pasture so they don't get overgrazed to selling down their herd size so that they're not overgrazing.
The Oswalds, Vanwinkles, and the Fales’ ranches are all part of conservation easements. A representation of the trend towards such, with over three thousand conservation easements around Colorado having successfully protected farms, ranchlands, scenic and historic areas, wildlife habitat, and unique natural areas.
The VanWinkles in a joint effort with the Department of Agriculture worked with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to put in a new irrigation system that has allowed them to produce more feed for their cattle with one third less water, which is a “win win” in their minds. In addition, while they have a federal grazing permit from the forest service, they have in the last two years cut their grazing use more than 20% through the destocking, or in more simple terms, the herd thinning process in order to support the conservation effort.
“And so what does that mean for us? Because remember in order to be sustainable we have to be economically sustainable but if we take 20% right off the top line, it trickles down here because we still have the same amount of overhead, so destocking is definitely something we see a lot of producers doing,” says Janie.
Nancy however has some concern for this movement towards ranchers leasing or in some cases giving up their water rights, So our belief is that the moisture should go into the soil and stay in the soil because that's the best place to hold it.”
Ranchers are selling their places and selling their water and it's all going down to the urban areas.
— Nancy says
This hits the nail on the head of what Tobin sees as the core tensions in this issue, “Generally there are some people that are interested in creative innovative ways to make the system more flexible and there has been efforts to do that but there is also a lot of resistance and a lot of concern that at the end of the day, a place like Denver or Phoenix is going to come for the farmers water because they have way more political power and way more people.”
Nancy voices this concern herself. “Rural people, were outvoted from the get go, just because of numbers, the front range holds the voting power, in terms of the big picture if some big issue comes up that might lean towards ranching, there's a big disconnect in understanding between the urban folk and say ranchers or rural people. So if that doesn't change, the landscape will deteriorate and go backwards and there won't be as many open spaces, and we've seen it already happen.”
Janie, being a strong voice in the beef industry has seen the lack of representation of her people first hand. While she describes this is partly due to the fact that most ranchers are in the industry partly due to their hermit and introvert qualities and don’t like coming to the table, she is adamant that producers must be at the table when discussing issues like the water crisis and the compact.
“The overarching issue is policy makers and voters not understanding the impacts and sometimes unintended consequences but sometimes intended consequences of decisions that are being made without regard and without input from producers,” says Janie.
Fales says that in Colorado legislature even if you are underrepresented you can go make your case and most legislatures will listen to you and make better informed decisions based upon that but he says, “The problem with a ballot initiative is that proponents of one idea or another come up with their wishlist and they don't talk to anybody else about how could we make this better, how could we achieve our goals without putting such a penalty on you it's just a little kids wishlist with little information for the average voter.”
A few years back in 2015 to 2018 a pilot “buy and dry” or lease-fallowing program was started up in the Grand Valley called System Conservation Pilot Program. The project was designed partly as a test of how paying farmers to voluntarily and temporarily fallow land might actually look in practice. Essentially, producers were paid not to farm with money coming from the lower basin to see how that would work and what impact it would have.
The amount of water that was sent downstream was minimal. The impact on the farmland was significant. Because if you don’t farm it for a year or two then there's a lot of work that has to be done to get it back in condition to farm.
— Janie says
In Janie’s eyes that program was unsuccessful and an example of how producers’ inputs need to be heard and valued when making decisions like these. She says she doesn’t have one good solution to dealing with demand management but feels that everyone should be doing their share and making sacrifices. “I always say the most common ground is that upon which we are standing.”
“It's hard ranching, running an agricultural operation in a community that has less and less of an understanding of agriculture. Especially with our governor who doesn't seem to like agriculture and with some uniformed people voting on issues that affect us, we are afraid that will drive out the remaining ranches that are here,” says Fales.
In talking about water, oftentimes negativity from the urban communities is felt on the part of ranchers, whether imagined or not. A general need for defensiveness is thus felt in the ranching communities.
“Approximately 80% of the water from the Colorado River goes to agricultural use and that seems horrible because we are only 2% of the population, however we are feeding the other 98% of the population. So it's one thing to have water but we need food too. And I think we've lost sight of the fact that agriculture is food production. I frequently use the term food production versus agriculture because I think that helps connect what's on the center of the plate to the landscape and I think that's really important,” says Janie.
Nancy feels a sense of defensiveness when it comes to the industry she is in because of some of the negative stuff she has read about in the media. “Cattle are not your enemy, there's a lot of other things out there that are doing more damage than cattle and if ranches are managed well cattle can actually help with the water cycle, help with the soil nutrition. In many many places we went through the cow fart thing, we got diminished. From our perspective we sense there's a real negativity towards cattle.”
How many acres of land do you have and how many head of cattle? Those are questions that some cattlemen don’t like. It's like asking how many dollars you have in your bank account.
— William Fales
When one thinks about Colorado often the picture imagined in their head is one of rolling prairie lands with huge buffalo and cattle roaming free range. Climate change is notorious for completely changing what we know of landscapes. Like the image of a starving polar bear standing on the last floating iceberg in the Antarctic, a similar image of the last lone emaciated cattle standing on a barren field might be on the horizon.
“We have lost a significant amount of ranches in western Colorado for a lot of reasons. I call them legacy ranches and they are ranches that have been in the family for three four five generations. I can tell you one that just sold recently in Western Colorado for a number of reasons. The drought played a part in it but so did our larger community,” says Janie.
As we continue to lose legacy ranches across Colorado and the country, Janie’s heart is heavy. She explains that most of the land from these old ranches is being sold to out of state interests, mostly hunting interests, that don't put livestock on the land, and to people who only come out for a couple of weeks every year to spend time on the land but not to truly take care of it as she sees it.
“And more importantly, they're not a part of our economy here. Every cow that you see standing in Mesa county and these are statistics from CSU extension, every cow you see standing in Mesa county contributes 6-800 dollars to our economy here annually and that's not just the year she comes on vacation. It's every single year that cow is contributing and so as we lose these large legacy ranches we're losing people who are caretakers of the landscape, we're losing economic benefits that the ranches bring, we're losing a lot of pieces to the puzzle that make Colorado Colorado,” says Janie.
William Fales walks out his front door, he walks with a slight limp, a symptom of the toll of age and a lifetime of working the land. He looks over his ranch, a land he, his wife, and his daughters all work, sunup to sun down, in an effort to preserve and sustain the land and their livelihoods. 150 head of cattle roam the pastures. Where once they stood stark against the green alfalfa, now they camouflage into the surrounding dirt. There used to be 200 cattle until the drought forced it down to 150. As he winces with the pain in his leg, soon 120 head will be the reality, a combination of the unforgiving nature of the job on the body and unforgiving nature of nature when its resources have been exploited to the max.
“I used to be able to feel pretty smug out here with my shovel irrigating my alfalfa and other hay but when someone in an urban area turns on their water to brush their teeth and nothing comes out of the tap the law will change. You know, talk about underrepresentation. When agriculture is two percent of the population and a smaller percent of that owns water, our heads are going to be on the chopping block, we will lose our water and that is terrifying,” says Fales.
We all need to be at the table and sometimes the food production side doesn't get to the table because number one we are busy producing food, and number two part of the reason we live this lifestyle is because we don't like to come to the table except to eat.
— Janie VanWinkle