Headwaters Fall 2020: Forever Entrusted

FOREVER ENTRUSTED How conserved private land benefits water

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Pulse Are Colorado’s Rules Strong Enough to Halt Water Profiteering With water demand and prices soaring, a work group explores ways to quell water speculation.

10 These Hay Fields May Know How to Save the Colorado River Nine ranch families near Kremmling have set aside their doubts to see if hypothetical water-saving methodologies work in their fields.

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Inside DIRECTOR’S NOTE

4 WHAT WE’RE DOING

WEco's upcoming events, reporting and more.

Contents | Fall 2020 THE LAND AND WATER TRUSTS ISSUE As land trusts conserve private land, they’re also protecting water rights—forever. While there are myriad benefits to conservation, Colorado’s land and water trusts go beyond the obvious as they find solutions to tackle some of the state’s biggest water challenges, from agricultural dry-up to diminished streamflows and to aquifer sustainability and beyond. The catch: Private land and water is increasingly ripe for conservation as development risk mounts. Can the promise of conservation compete against the paycheck from selling a property or water right? And can land and water trusts protect Colorado’s valuable water rights and vast ag lands before they’re lost?

5 FROM THE EDITOR

F E AT U R E

6 2020 PRESIDENT'S RECEPTION

7 AROUND THE STATE

Water news from across Colorado.

12 THANK YOU & MEMBER’S CORNER

Celebrate the impact of WEco’s members.

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Private Land for Public Good

Partnerships between landowners and land trusts to conserve private land and water rights create benefits for cities, recreationists, wildlife, ecosystems and economies—all partners, and all Coloradans.

By Jason Plautz

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Making Dollars and Sense of Conservation Easements Is appraisal hindering conservation in Colorado or providing necessary accountability? Could a new valuation method better account for the diverse benefits of conservation?

By Sharon Udasin

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Flexibility in Perpetuity

The conservation community gets creative by building more flexibility into easements— without undermining the permanence that gives them their strength.

By Kelly Bastone

Above: Conservation easements along and near the San Luis People’s Ditch keep water rights on lands that support the rich heritage and ecology of the southern San Luis Valley, thanks to Colorado Open Lands’ Acequia Protection Initiative. Courtesy Colorado Open Lands On the cover: East of Pueblo, some of the agricultural lands and associated water rights from the Bessemer Ditch have been sold to the City of Pueblo, but others have been protected with conservation easements held by the Palmer Land Trust. The land trust is working to move some of those protected water rights so that the most productive land can stay in production. Photo by Russ Schnitzer

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Jayla Poppleton Executive Director

Lisa Darling President

Jennie Geurts Director of Operations Sami Miller Membership and Engagement Officer

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ver the years, I have had the privilege of working extensively with Justice Greg Hobbs, who since 2002 has served as Water Education Colorado’s Publications Chair. He has always been willing to take the time to explain the nuances of our unique water law system. Among the lessons that stand out: his admiration of Colorado water law’s flexibility and adaptability to reflect our state’s changing values.

One example is allocating water rights for use in a stream, with no diversion necessary. It’s hard to imagine that such water for environmental needs was at one time not considered among Colorado’s legal “beneficial” uses.

Ongoing adaptation has resulted in new tools for use by the Colorado Water Trust and Colorado Water Conservation Board to protect and restore streamflows to diminishing rivers and streams, as you’ll read about in this issue. It is also enabling land trusts to improve the prospects for conservation easements in protecting agricultural water rights through new incentives that boost financial returns for easement donors.

One thing you may find surprising: Some conserved parcels of land are now selling for above-market value, despite holding no possibility of development. Why? Because what we think of as traditional market “value” is in some places beginning to reflect the underlying value of conserved land’s other irreplaceable benefits—an amazing transition.

Adaptability has also been key to WEco’s ability to persist, and even thrive, over the past eight months of the pandemic. We graduated our sixth annual Water Fluency class, convened our 2020 Water Leaders for both virtual and socially distanced inperson sessions, and advanced the Statewide Water Education Action Plan through recruiting its first official task force and numerous endorsers.

We spent months working with the Colorado Watershed Assembly and Colorado Riparian Association to shift this year’s Sustaining Colorado Watersheds Conference to a virtual format, and 255 of you turned out last month to participate. We’ve received positive feedback including: “I’ve been to many virtual conferences this year, and this was the first one that left me feeling invigorated and engaged.”

Similarly, the 2020 President’s Reception, thanks to your support, was our highestgrossing fundraiser to date, despite being held virtually. We heard from John Stulp, who received this year’s Diane Hoppe Leadership Award: “Thank you so much for a delightful evening and lifetime memories.” As we work to keep our community connected now more than ever, seeing so many of you show up to celebrate WEco’s work and the achievements of both John and Emerging Leader Award recipient Paul Bruchez was a powerful “Mission accomplished!” moment for our staff and board.

Thank you for continually investing in WEco to help inform our community members and decision makers in this age of adaptation. Together, we will keep equipping creative solution-finders, young and old, to understand the frameworks that exist today, so they can build on them for tomorrow.

—Executive Director—

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STAFF

Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. Vice President Gregg Ten Eyck Secretary Alan Matlosz Treasurer

Stephanie Scott Leadership Programs Manager

Eric Hecox Past President

Scott Williamson Education Programs Manager

Nick Colglazier

Jerd Smith Fresh Water News Editor Caitlin Coleman Headwaters Editor & Communications Specialist Charles Chamberlin Headwaters Graphic Designer

Perry Cabot Sen. Kerry Donovan Paul Fanning Jorge Figueroa Matt Heimerich Greg Johnson Julie Kallenberger David LaFrance Dan Luecke Kevin McBride Amy Moyer Lauren Ris Rep. Dylan Roberts Travis Robinson Laura Spann Chris Treese Brian Werner

THE MISSION of Water Education Colorado is to ensure Coloradans are informed on water issues and equipped to make decisions that guide our state to a sustainable water future. WEco is a non-advocacy organization committed to providing educational opportunities that consider diverse perspectives and facilitate dialogue in order to advance the conversation about water.

HEADWATERS magazine is published three times each year by Water Education Colorado. Its goals are to raise awareness of current water issues, and to provide opportunities for engagement and further learning.

THANK YOU to all who assisted in the development of this issue. Headwaters’ reputation for balance and accuracy in reporting is achieved through rigorous consultation with experts and an extensive peer review process, helping to make it Colorado’s leading publication on water. © Copyright 2020 by the Colorado Foundation for Water

Education DBA Water Education Colorado. ISSN: 1546-0584

What we’re doing A conversation with…

MATT HEIMERICH TIME ON THE WECO BOARD: Since January 2020 HOME: Olney Springs, Crowley County

Matt Heimerich works as senior advisor on the Lower Arkansas Valley for Palmer Land Trust and has been on the board of Water Education Colorado for less than a year. As a farmer, former county commissioner, and land trust employee in Crowley County, Matt has long been confronting the effects of large-scale agricultural dry-ups. His work today aims to facilitate creative and financially rewarding options for landowners who wish to keep their water rights on the farm perpetually. We spoke with Matt to learn more.

Tell us about your job and the challenges that you work to address?

The question is how can we sustain highly important and high-producing soils with good water rights, knowing that cities are only going to continue to grow? It is no big secret that cities will continue expanding. My role, when I first joined Palmer Land Trust, was to help

this effort that was in its infancy. Palmer was looking for a local person to talk to farmers and ranchers about using conservation easements as a way to tie their water rights to their land for their families and future generations ... My role was really to go out and meet people, talk about these concepts, tell farmers that there are other people out there who think that growing food is important and that they want to see that preserved.

Why does this work matter?

Colorado is only going to continue to grow.

It is a great place to live, diverse economy, incredibly rich resource base, centrally located, but the one thing that is limiting is how we as Coloradans decide to use our water … We want to preserve the mechanism of private property for its positive features, but as citizens of the state, we understand and appreciate that there are farms that need water, ecologies that need water, and recreational activities that need water. What we want is to balance all these different

uses. Without a proper balance of water use, we don’t get any of these things. As a headwaters state, we have obligations to everyone downstream. We have to exist in a complex world and be very contemplative about how this resource is being used and what it means for the future.

By Jacob Tucker Read more of the interview on the blog at watereducationcolorado.org.

Water Fluency Grads 2020 Even during a global pandemic, this engaged class came thirsty for water knowledge and that thirst was quenched as we proudly delivered one of the most comprehensive Water Fluency Programs to date. Even with the shift to virtual, the class did not disappoint and we were able to include seven additional experts that rounded out the content with valuable lessons. The class of 35 graduated in September after four months of learning.

Thank you to 2020 Water Fluency Title Sponsors CoBank, Colorado Water Conservation Board, Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority and Special District Association of Colorado for making this experience possible.

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What we’re doing Moving the Statewide Water Education Action Plan Forward

Implementation of the Statewide Water Education Action Plan (SWEAP) has kicked into gear thanks to support from organizations and individuals around the state.

• Endorsement: More than 30 entities, from large water utilities to community-based environmental education organizations, have affirmed the value of the SWEAP vision and framework and the importance of achieving its outcomes by providing their endorsement.

• WEN is now FREE: To further enable broad participation in SWEAP and better support educators with resources and collaborations, WEco has revised the structure of the Water Educator Network (WEN). Any interested educator or outreach professional can now become a WEN affiliate with no fee required.

• First SWEAP task force: The first SWEAP task force is underway! This group of educators is working to identify opportunities to connect SWEAP strategies with Colorado’s academic standards to advance water education in schools.

• Measuring success: As WEco works to establish baselines for SWEAP metrics, partners across the state are already using SWEAP as they plan programs, write grant requests, and measure the reach and effectiveness of their programming.

Learn more about SWEAP, sign up for updates, and get involved at coloradowateredplan.org.

2021 Water Leaders Program Applications Open in December The 2021 Water Leaders Program will go on!

While the 2020 program has experienced some delays, WEco has convened the class for a combination of virtual and small-group, in-person sessions. For 2021, we will be recruiting an adaptable class that is ready to use this unique moment in time to catapult their leadership skills to the next level. Applications for 2021 will open in December.

Add your name to the notification list to receive program updates and announcements by visiting watereducationcolorado.org/programs-events/ water-leaders.

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FROM THE EDITOR

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lot of land conservation in Colorado—and the projects we explore in this issue—focuses on protecting working lands. It makes sense. More than 80 percent of Colorado’s private lands are owned by farming and ranching families. As for water, not only are Colorado’s agricultural water rights often the oldest and most valuable, but ag accounts for more than 80 percent of the state’s consumptive use and more than 86 percent of surface water diversions. There’s a lot of valuable land and water in ag.

Through state surveys, we know that Coloradans appreciate ag lands, not least for local food production and food security, but also for the ancillary benefits they provide such as open spaces and wildlife habitat. But they’re at risk.

The 2019 Technical Update to the Colorado Water Plan estimates that by 2050, 153,500 irrigated acres will be taken out of production due to urbanization statewide— that’s 5 percent of our irrigated ag land. In addition, planned water transfers will likely result in a loss of around 76,000 agricultural acres in the South Platte and Arkansas river basins alone. The number could be higher. In 2015, the water plan found that Colorado could lose up to 700,000 irrigated acres if buy and dry, where municipalities purchase water rights off of ag lands, is used exclusively to meet future municipal needs.

“That’s still possible,” says Alex Funk, the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s (CWCB) agricultural water resources specialist. “We know what’s lost if we go down the status-quo path of traditional, permanent acquisitions of ag water rights to fuel development. Is that the sort of Colorado that people want in the future?”

In “Public Land for Private Good” (page 14) and “Flexibility in Perpetuity” (page 27) we look at land trusts who are protecting and maximizing water resources on conserved lands. But, says Funk, there’s room for the land conservation community to recognize water development as a primary driver behind land loss—particularly loss of productive lands—in Colorado.

Ultimately, the choice to sell ag land and water is in the hands of producers, but, as we explore in “Making Dollars and Sense of Conservation Easements” (page 22) finances can make or break a conservation easement. When a landowner donates an easement, they don’t typically cash out with as much money as they would if they sold their land and water rights. Some funding is available to help landowners keep their assets—through programs like the CWCB’s ATM (alternative transfer method) Grants, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART Water Marketing Grants, even private financing. Funding might start flowing if more land trusts work on ATMs. “It’s going to take some creative combining of resources to really scale this up to any effective level,” Funk says. Until more funding is available, ATMs and payments for ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, coupled with conservation easements, are helping make conservation more financially viable. Whatever the future holds, conservation will surely play a role, maybe a larger role, in protecting ag water and land.

—Editor—

Community Support Makes 2020 President’s Reception a Success This year’s reception took on a virtual format that allowed Water Education Colorado to maintain some of our cherished traditions for the event. Thanks to incredible community support, we exceeded goals for attendance, donations, sponsorships and auction bids. The virtual format allowed us to provide a live event experience for all guests and we were honored to recognize John Stulp with the Diane Hoppe Leadership Award and Paul Bruchez with the Emerging Leader Award. The awards were presented virtually as the culmination of the evening’s festivities. Thank you to our wonderfully supportive community for making this event a meaningful opportunity to connect and support our mission!

Thank You To Our 2020 Tidal, Peak And Torrent Sponsors For Their Generous Support

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2020 Diane Hoppe Leadership Award

John Stulp

Water Ambassador

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BY G R E G H O B B S

hen newly elected Governor John Hickenlooper proclaimed 2012 the “Year of Water” he named John Stulp as his Water Policy Advisor. He chose very well. John, a dryland wheat farmer and cow-calf rancher from southeastern Colorado, had served as Colorado’s Commissioner of Agriculture during Bill Ritter’s governorship. Also a former Prowers County Commissioner, State Board of Land Commissioner, State Wildlife Commissioner, and member of the State Board of Agriculture, John’s reputation for patient consensus-building was already known and trusted throughout Colorado.

With John serving as director of the Interbasin Compact Committee, Colorado embarked on formulating its water plan.

Nine basin roundtables functioned in tandem with the Water Conservation Board and its staff to identify Colorado’s water supply, conservation, and environmental

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flow needs to serve a near-doubling of the state’s population in the next 50 years.

John traveled extensively across the state meeting with the roundtables as the plan, adopted in November of 2015, was being developed; thereafter, he tirelessly set forth speaking with Coloradans about its

importance and its capacity to be adjusted through ongoing dialogue and experience.

“The Governor said to me, you know the value of water, so go out and help them talk with each other.” John has an unmistakable feel for Colorado that very many Coloradans can relate to. His favorite vista is the one he sees from the hill above his family’s farm seven miles southeast of Lamar. “I can see a huge expanse on clear nights,” which he describes as “spiritually enriching.” “We’re not here by accident, we are a very creative species, each of us is uniquely and individually made.”

He sees the water plan process as an ongoing work in continued progress.

Urban water conservation to reduce demand will be a necessity. Agricultural land conservation practices will incorporate no-till care of the soil and rotational fallowing capable of sustaining food production with up to 30 percent less water. Water-sharing arrangements between cities and senior agricultural water rights owners should be encouraged in ways that keep family farms and ranches productive. Additional water storage will be needed to take advantage of good water years as they occur. Modifying dams and diversion structures to accommodate fish and wildlife and instream flow is also an important goal to accomplish. John is fond of describing a sturdy “four-legged stool” when he talks about the characteristic features of the Colorado Water Plan.

John and Jane’s five children and 13 grandchildren are rightfully proud of their parents. John’s degree as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State University produced a couple of years of practice for him in this field, whereas his lifetime has focused on cultivating land and water leadership and education benefitting Colorado. Jane is copartner and bookkeeper of the family’s agricultural operations. Her art education teaching profession has also served many other families well. H

2020 Emerging LeaderAward

Paul Bruchez

Grand Partnerships

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BY G R E G H O B B S

hen we work in partnerships I’ve yet to see a day you don’t find solutions.” Paul Bruchez, Grand County cattle rancher and fly-fishing operator, serves as project manager for a 12-mile restoration project on the Colorado River involving 12 landowners. His ancestors were Eastern Slope corn, wheat, alfalfa and grass hay farmers in the early 1900s on 240 acres of land that is now located within the urbanized area of Westminster. His parents, Art and Roberta Bruchez, moved their three sons to Grand County two decades ago. Grand County is the epicenter of major historical events in Colorado water history.

Denver and Northern Water transbasin diversion projects through the Moffat and Adams tunnels heavily stressed Grand County headwaters streams, while greatly benefiting Eastern Slope farms and cities. The 2005 Water for the 21st

Century Act, sponsored by House Speaker Russ George of the Colorado General Assembly, permanently put in place nine basin roundtables and the Interbasin Compact Committee. This process for Colorado water planning has brought

forth many new voices, like Paul’s.

Just after he received his 2003 degree in Business Administration from the University of Denver, Paul’s family acquired two miles of mainstem Colorado River bottomland property between the towns of Granby and Kremmling. They also lease ranchland and water rights from Denver on the Williams Fork River, a significant tributary to the Fraser River above its confluence with the Colorado River.

Together the family works nearly 6,000 acres of land. This places Paul and his brother Doug, who co-manages the land and water rights, squarely within the working wheelhouse of Grand County’s agricultural and recreational economy.

Paul is an agricultural representative of the Colorado River Basin Roundtable and a member of the Interbasin Compact Committee. He also chairs Grand County’s Open Lands, Rivers and Trails Advisory Committee and is a member of the Colorado Water Trust Board. Extensive interpersonal partnership building among local agriculture, local government, water providers, and conservation groups led to the Colorado River Headwaters Project. Its collaborative purpose, Paul explains, is to “sustain agriculture and the environmental health of the river.” Paul’s family participates in a conservation easement that protects Sage Grouse and a critical elk migration habitat across the Colorado River.

Paul and his wife, Molly, have the joy of daughter Madeline and new son James with whom to share the family’s East Slope/ West Slope water heritage, over a century and a quarter’s worth! H

Thank you also to our 2020 Cascade and Ripple Level Reception Sponsors Applegate Group

Central Colorado Water Conservancy District

Kogovsek and Associates

Southwestern Water Conservation District

Aurora Water

City of Thornton

Rio Grande Water Conservation District

Special District Association of Colorado

Board of Water Works of Pueblo

Colorado River District

South Metro Water Supply Authority

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Pulse

In Colorado’s Grand Valley, a Manhattan-based hedge fund has purchased a handful of farms over the past few years. Ag producers are leasing those farms and their water for now, but Coloradans worry these deals and others like them could be long-term plays to profit from water rights to the detriment of Colorado water users.

Are Colorado’s Rules Strong Enough to Halt Water Profiteering?

A new group aims to find out

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By Sarah Kuta olorado’s anti-speculation water laws are considered some of the toughest in the West. Still, state lawmakers worry those laws may not go far enough.

That’s why an 18-member work group is exploring ways to strengthen the rules.

Recommendations for proposed changes are due by August 2021.

“In my mind, I think speculation is going on,” says Sen. Don Coram, a Republican who represents several Western Colorado counties and who co-sponsored SB20-048, which directed Colorado’s Department of Natural

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Resources to form the work group. “There are situations that are just not meeting the smell test for me. We need to look under the tent and see what’s going on.”

With water demand and prices soaring, lawmakers worry about loopholes in Colorado’s anti-speculation laws, pointing to recent investment group purchases of farmland and their senior water rights on the West Slope and in the San Luis Valley. So far, the investors are using the water for irrigation, a legally beneficial use, but lawmakers worry they’re making a speculative play, banking on a massive increase in the value of those rights with the intention to

profit from them in the future. Irrigation may just be an interim placeholder that’s part of a larger investment strategy.

So, how will the work group’s members make recommendations for improvement?

They’ll likely start with a thorough history lesson and a deep dive into existing antispeculation law, says Kevin Rein, Colorado’s state engineer. Rein leads the group alongside Scott Steinbrecher, a Colorado assistant deputy attorney general. Other participants include water engineers, attorneys, members of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, farmers and ranchers, representatives of environmental nonprofits, and water managers. Given the diversity of group members and knowledge, the group is well-poised to tackle the challenge at hand, Rein says.

But some work group members are already contemplating how changes to Colorado water law could hurt landowners.

Joe Frank, general manager of the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District in northeastern Colorado, plans to participate in the work group with an open mind but has questions: How will the changes impact an irrigator’s ability to sell their water and land?

Will the value of their land or water suffer because of these changes?

“There’s this tension here, especially in our basin, but also statewide, of a high demand for water, which inflates the value of it—it’s hard to blame farmers for wanting to sell their water because of all different kinds of circumstances,” Frank says. “We would prefer them to keep their water and stay in agriculture because that’s the economic base for our area. But you can’t just go say, ‘We’re going to put a stop to it.’ Now you’re impacting somebody’s property rights.”

Frank said he also has some questions about the constitutionality of any changes the group may propose.

“I do have some reservations about whether this will actually solve a problem without causing another one,” he says.

“You don’t want to cause unintended consequences here.” H Sarah Kuta, a Nebraska native and graduate of Northwestern University, is a freelance writer based in Longmont, Colo.

Donna Boley via Flickr

These Hay Fields May Know How to Save the Colorado River

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By Jerd Smith rand County rancher Paul Bruchez stands in a field near Kremmling, twirling a tuft of hay between his fingertips, seeing how quickly it disintegrates after a summer without water.

The plant, known as timothy, is native to Colorado and feeds thousands of cattle here in the upper Colorado River Basin.

This hay species and others are being closely watched this year as part of a far-reaching $1 million science experiment designed to see if ranchers can take water off of hay fields and measure how much was removed, how much evaporated, and how much was used by plants. They also need to know how this reduced irrigation affects the hay’s nutritional value.

If certain hay species retain

more nutrients than others while on low-water diets, then ranchers know their cattle will continue to eat well as they evaluate whether their ranches can operate on less H20—not all the time, but perhaps every two to three years.

“We’ve spent centuries learning how to irrigate these lands,” Bruchez says. “Now we’re learning what it’s like not to irrigate them.”

Any water saved could be left in the Colorado River, allowing it to become more sustainable in the face of aridification.

Agriculture uses some 80 percent of the water in the seven-state Colorado River Basin, with hay meadows among the basin’s largest water users.

Last year, a historic Colorado River agreement, the Drought Contingency Plan, authorized a

new drought pool in Lake Powell.

Now Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, the four upper basin states, are studying whether they can or should save enough water to fill that drought pool. The pool, authorized at 500,000 acre-feet, is intended as further insurance that the upper basin won’t be forced to involuntarily reduce water use under the terms of the Colorado River Compact. Colorado expects it would need to provide roughly half the water for the drought pool, and, led by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, is working out difficult questions about how that water could be saved and ushered downstream to Lake Powell under a possible voluntary program known as demand management.

This project could begin to

provide some answers. Similar experiments on five or 10 acres have been done, but this one, by comparison, is vast in scale, involving 1,200 acres, nine ranch families, a team of researchers across Colorado, Utah and Nevada, and the backing of powerful water groups, farm interests, and environmentalists.

The three-year project is funded by the state and several environmental groups.

“We’ve never had a project this large in the state of Colorado,” says Perry Cabot, a Colorado State University researcher who is the lead scientist on the project (and serves on the Water Education Colorado Board of Trustees).

The data collected will help ranchers see if they can afford to participate in conservation efforts, based on compensation offered, and will allow researchers to better understand what works on the ground. It will also provide insight into any political problems that will have to be solved, as well as how much money could be needed to make large-scale conservation on the Colorado River feasible.

Cabot and his team have number crunching to do, but early estimates indicate that the ranchers may have saved 1,5002,500 acre-feet of water this year.

If this process can be replicated, scientists and ranchers could begin to see how long it might take to fill the 500,000 acre-foot drought pool at Lake Powell. H •

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A complete version of this story originally appeared in Fresh Water News, an initiative of Water Education Colorado. Read Fresh Water News online at watereducationcolorado.org.

Research technician and Grand County rancher Wendy Thompson collects hay samples as part of a far-reaching experiment to see if ranchers can fallow hay meadows and conserve more water for the Colorado River.

Courtesy This American Land, by Dave Timko

Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News.

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Around the state | BY JERD SMITH

Water Year 2020 Oct. 1, 2019–Sept. 30, 2020

The 12th warmest water year on record Third driest water year on record The current drought ranks among the worst in the last 20 years. La Niña conditions currently exist and have a 70–80% probability of persisting through early winter.

Drought conditions will likely continue and could worsen over the next three months.

—From the Oct. 13, 2020 Western Water Assessment Intermountain West Climate Dashboard

ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN More than 60 years after John F. Kennedy signed the federal legislation authorizing construction of the Arkansas Valley Conduit as part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, construction began in October. Construction may take another 10 years or more, but the pipeline will eventually deliver clean water from Pueblo Reservoir to 50,000 people in 40 communities in southeastern Colorado.

Their groundwater has been polluted over the years with a number of contaminants including selenium.

COLORADO RIVER BASIN The Colorado River District, along with several farm and environmental partners, released a study in September indicating West Slope ranchers would need roughly $120 million in payments in order to participate in any large-scale conservation program designed to set aside water in Lake Powell for drought insurance. As the state studies the concept of large-scale demand management to put water in a Powell drought pool, ranchers are asking for more precise information about how it would impact their communities and how much they would be paid before they could

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make decisions about whether to participate.

These were among the questions the study sought to answer.

GUNNISON RIVER BASIN The Bureau of Land Management has purchased a major parcel of land along the Gunnison River in the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area. The $380,000 purchase of a 134-acre parcel from the Western Rivers Conservancy was funded by the BLM through the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund. Public access to the land, which isn’t accessible by road, is designed to provide more opportunities for boaters, hikers and campers, according to the Grand Junction Sentinel.

NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN

diversion structures in the North Platte lacked measuring devices as of late July.

RIO GRANDE RIVER BASIN State Engineer Kevin Rein has warned irrigators that he might move sooner to shut down wells if efforts to restore San Luis Valley aquifers don’t demonstrate increased aquifer sustainability. The state had set a deadline of 2031 to make a decision on whether wells would need to be shuttered in order to ensure the Rio Grande can deliver enough water downstream to New Mexico and Texas, as required by law. But Rein said in July that the ongoing drought and failure to bring aquifer levels up consistently may force him to act sooner rather than later.

SAN JUAN/DOLORES RIVER BASIN Colorado’s southwestern corner continues to be hit hard by the hot, dry weather.

Its reservoirs stood at just 59 percent of average as of Sept. 30, far below last year’s levels, when they stood at 110 percent of average. The region’s storage levels are the lowest in the state, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN Fort Collins, heavily impacted by the dry summer and the Cameron Peak wildfire, as well as construction on its water system, has imposed fall lawn watering restrictions likely through the end of November, in order to ensure its supplies last. The restrictions could be lifted sooner or could last longer depending on how much moisture the area receives this fall.

YAMPA/WHITE/GREEN RIVER BASIN Efforts to install measuring devices continue in northwestern Colorado. Erin Light, the top water regulator in the region, whose oversight includes the Yampa, North Platte, White and Green river basins, estimates that roughly 60 percent of diversion structures in the region lack measuring devices and are therefore out of compliance with state law. According to Light, 34 percent or 190

Water officials have found high amounts of lead in drinking water in some Steamboat Springs homes. Mt. Werner Water and Sanitation District, which distributes water to the town and resort, said its water is lead-free, but that lead was found at the taps of some homes built between 1981 and 1987 and that it likely comes from old service lines.

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Private Land for Public Good

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you want to see the beaver lodge?” asks Mark Beardsley excitedly as his boot plunges into the soft mud.

Beardsley, a principal with the engineering firm EcoMetrics and co-founder of the Riparian Reconnect project, trudges through knee-deep water.

A mere decade ago, this private ranchland was dry and dusty, with just a narrow stream easily traversed on foot. Now, water flows wildly through a mess of willows and plants that require waders to navigate.

Two beaver dams help the water pool and spill haphazardly. The goal, Beardsley says, is to return to “stage zero,” or what he calls the “blue ribbons” that would have snaked over the land before ranches and mines took over. Instead of straight, narrow ditches, Beardsley wants to “let nature do its thing.”

Riparian Reconnect’s infusion of nature to this South Park ranch in central Colorado is thanks to a partnership with Colorado Open Lands. Colorado Open Lands—one of many land trusts working across the West— works with private landowners to craft agreements known as conservation easements, forever protecting their land from private development.

Sometimes that means

land becomes open space or a recreation area, other times it stays a working farm or ranch.

The constant is conservation: The land will stay as it is, even past any future point of sale to a new owner.

Increasingly, land trusts like Colorado Open Lands are turning their attention to more than just the land and are working with landowners around their water assets to

BY JASON PLAUTZ

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improve riparian systems and meet multiple water needs.

Some landowners may feel comfortable protecting their land with a conservation easement but want to leave their water rights unencumbered— maintaining or exercising the option to sell the water at some future date and sever it from the land. Now in an era of shortages, land trusts are facilitating conversations about how that water can best sustain conserved land by keeping Colorado’s streams flowing or supporting farms and ranches, while also, in some cases, supplying booming municipalities or wetting dry downstream riverbeds.

“We say you can’t protect land without the water,” says Cheryl Cufre, director of land stewardship for Colorado Open Lands.

The Riparian Reconnect project crosses from private to public land with the goal of reviving Tarryall Creek back to rushing headwaters that soak the soil, store sediments, and create a robust water table.

Through careful planting and stream management, not to mention some help from the beavers, Beardsley and his partners, Gillilan Associates, Inc. and Johnson Environmental, are holistically reviving riparian areas. The key

is that the conserved parcels of land be linked so the water can flow freely. “The postage stamp approach just doesn’t work,” he says. That means that open space run by the state, like the nearby Cline Ranch State Wildlife Area, can link directly with private lands like this to create an ecosystem that looks like something out of the past, before the first ranch was developed here.

“You can’t get this kind of complexity in your backyard,” Beardsley says.

Through the Riparian Reconnect project, Colorado Open Lands, partners, and landowners are restoring about 170 acres of conserved wetlands in the South Platte headwaters. Jessica Doran with EcoMetrics, the firm leading the restoration work, weaves willows to build a structure that mimics the function of a beaver dam to sustain natural wetland processes.

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THE VALUE OF PRIVATE LAND ationally, more than 1,500 land trusts have conserved some 56 million acres of private land, an amount roughly the size of Iowa, covering everything from Montana’s grasslands to Washington’s Klickitat River Canyon.

The land all remains owned by property owners who have agreed to partner with land trusts to essentially set terms for how the land will be used in the future. Landowners can get federal tax deductions and, in

Courtesy EcoMetrics, by Dave Sutherland

some states, including Colorado, tax credits as incentives to conserve their land. But they also get certainty that the land will be managed to meet their conservation objectives—for recreation and open space, farming or ranching, biodiversity or habitat restoration, or some other goal—in perpetuity.

Conservation is especially important across the West, even where public land abounds, says Amanda Hill, Southwest and California program manager for the national Land Trust Alliance.

“As the West was developed, the public lands may not have been as desirable for living, while the private lands are along stream banks and river banks that make it some of the most productive land,” Hill says. “Focusing on only conserving public lands, you’d miss the benefits of these other, potentially higher-value lands.”

In Colorado and across the West, much of the sprawling private land with valuable water rights is farm and ranchland.

According to a 2020 report

from the American Farmland Trust, between 2011 and 2016, 11 million acres of farmland and ranchland across the country were converted to developed land. “[When farmland is sold] new owners don’t always share the same agriculture interest.

Farms are being bought up as investments and it’s not like there’s more land being built,” says Chuck Hanagan, whose produce farm near Swink, Colo., is partially under a conservation easement.

“Losing that [farmland] changes

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the community forever.”

Conservation easements can protect such agriculturally focused communities.

Colorado's three largest land trusts—Colorado Open Lands, Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, and The Nature Conservancy—each oversee some 500,000 acres.

Statewide, it’s estimated that 2.2 million acres of private land are protected, either directly under a land trust or through other government work facilitated by one, according to the nonprofit Keep It Colorado.

Keep It Colorado is a coalition of land trusts, government agencies and private groups helping advance policy and public outreach on land preservation. Melissa Daruna, the group’s executive director, says their work has helped broaden the tent of what conservation looks like.

“With any conservation, there are benefits to the public like clean water, clean air and scenic views,” she says.

“But where land trusts have really evolved is serving as a convening force to tackle multiple challenges.”

Increasingly, that’s meant focusing on water. In a 2015 survey by the Land Trust Alliance, 83 percent of conservation organizations nationwide said water quality and wetlands were a priority in their work, the second biggest priority behind “important natural areas or wildlife habitats.”

But with Colorado facing water shortages fueled by urbanization, agricultural needs and the demands of interstate compacts, the water on that private land is increasingly in demand. As large ranches and farms pass down to younger generations, new owners may be willing to wall off the land to development and subdivision

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by putting it in a conservation easement, but might not want to forfeit their ability to sell a water right that grows more valuable as nearby cities become more desperate for water.

That’s led to a discussion about how to both serve growing cities and the farmers, recreationists and birdwatchers who want to keep water irrigating farms or flowing through streams.

“It takes a cultural shift around the way water rights are viewed,” says Daruna. “It takes a landowner saying ‘I’m willing to do this’ and neighbors who will partner, and a creative way of thinking.”

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THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX he Palmer Land Trust holds conservation easements protecting more than 135,000 acres of working farms, ranches, scenic corridors, and public recreation spaces across southeastern Colorado,

from Pikes Peak to the Lower Arkansas Valley.

But when it comes to water, the 43-year-old trust is guided by an example from the relatively tiny Crowley County just east of Pueblo. There, between the 1950s and 1980s, farmers gradually sold off some 80,000 acre-feet of water rights to the growing cities along the Front Range. As a result, only about 7 percent of the previously farmed land is now irrigated. The ditches and canals that once watered the tomato and corn fields dried, and without irrigated agriculture and the other business that it brings such as tractors, tools and workers, the county has watched its population decline and businesses struggle to stay afloat.

In years since, while farmers and ranchers may be tempted to sell their water rights to Front Range cities, Palmer Land Trust conservation director Ed

The Slate River near Crested Butte has become so popular among stand up paddleboarders that the Crested Butte Land Trust has worked with the community to reduce impacts to the heavily trafficked river. One result is a voluntary no-float period that lasts through July 15 each year with the goal of protecting a great blue heron rookery during its critical nesting period.

Roberson urges people to be “mindful to not do what they did in Crowley County” and give up water without a plan.

That was the thought on Jim Hanratty’s mind when he agreed to put about 200 acres of his 600-acre farm under a conservation easement held by the Palmer Land Trust, as well as 185 shares of the Bessemer Ditch Company. Hanratty wanted to make sure the land would have water—he draws it from a number of sources, including the Bessemer Ditch—for any future agricultural use. So he protected it, perpetually, under the conservation easement.

“We’ve seen the effects in this area of losing the water, and farming just doesn't look possible when the water is taken off,” Hanratty says.

But a water transfer happened again in 2009, when 78 Bessemer Ditch shareholders sold their water rights to the Pueblo Board of Water Works, which is leasing it back to the farms through 2029. That purchase offers security for Pueblo, which will have water reserves in the future, and, for the time being, keeps nearby farms producing pumpkins, onions, melons and the famous Pueblo chile.

“Down there right now it’s business as usual, the same as it’s ever been,” Roberson says.

The farmers who sold their water continue to irrigate by leasing it back from Pueblo Water. But in 2029, Pueblo Water could start drying up that land—about onethird of the property irrigated by the Bessemer Ditch.

That’s where the Palmer Land Trust comes in. For the past five years, Palmer has been studying and working with the community and Pueblo Water to mitigate the potential impacts of that sale by optimizing water use along the Bessemer Ditch. The issue, according to Roberson, isn’t that Pueblo Water purchased that water.

Courtesy Wheelies and Waves Adventure Co.

Ed Roberson, conservation director with the Palmer Land Trust, and farmer Jim Hanratty walk alongside the Bessemer Ditch near Pueblo, Colorado. Here, Hanratty has protected 200 acres of his 600-acre farm and 185 ditch shares under a conservation easement held by the Palmer Land Trust.

“The biggest problem with this whole thing is that the vast majority of the land whose water was sold is also the most productive farmland,” Roberson says. He knows this because Palmer Land Trust conducted a landscape-scale analysis, viewing the area from a 10,000foot level to assess productivity.

If Pueblo Water dries up that productive land, the region’s economy could decline by much more than a third, Roberson says. The Palmer Land Trust has commissioned a study to more accurately quantify the projected economic impact.

To lessen the impact, the Palmer Land Trust and Pueblo Water have collaborated and legally added a provision to Pueblo’s water right decree that allows the land trust to move water from one parcel of lessproductive farmland to a more productive parcel. “We’re saying, ‘Okay, one-third of this land is going to be dried up. How do we

Russ Schnitzer

dry it up in a way that conserves land in the best and most effective way?’” Roberson says.

After the water is moved, the prime farmland and water are being protected with a conservation easement to “keep it as is: irrigated farmland forever,” Roberson says. Pueblo can still divert its water, it will just be drying up less productive farmland.

‘IT’S NOT A COMPETITION, IT’S AN ECOSYSTEM’ or land trusts, conservation is the name of the game.

And conserved farmland and ranchland is most valuable to the public and to landowners when accompanied by robust water resources.

Keeping water flowing and, at the same time, enhancing natural resource management under operative agreements written into conservation easements, can have additive benefits like preserved scenic

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views, more nutrients in the soil, flood mitigation, and more opportunities for wildlife.

Many of the lakes, rivers and streams on privately conserved property in Colorado, for example, have become migration spots for geese, ducks and other migratory birds. That’s important because, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, riparian and wetland habitat comprise less than 3 percent of the state’s land base but support more than 75 percent of all wildlife. But preserving them requires the kind of expertise, as well as the connections, that land trusts provide.

The Crested Butte Land Trust is a good example, using its assets around the Slate River for a number of restoration projects. In 2015, the trust removed an artificial berm along the river that was choking off its natural flow, resulting in new wildlife and plant growth.

Meanwhile, Colorado Open

Lands’ Riparian Reconnect project has a goal of restoring 170 acres of wetlands across the South Platte River and its tributaries. (The project is now expanding across the state.) To revitalize the riparian areas, the partners needed to link conserved parcels owned by different individuals and entities. The landowners also had to be on board, where possible offering a financial contribution and day-to-day maintenance.

“There’s no point in identifying an area that merits restoration if you don’t have a landowner with that same vision,” says Cufre. “We know our landowners are interested in this kind of work because of the conservation easement, and we’re careful to maintain consistency with the land use management goals. Ultimately, it’s their responsibility to be stewarding the land.”

It can sometimes seem like

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In the San Luis Valley, Elena Miller-terKuile and her father have protected their Cactus Hill sheep farm with a conservation easement held by the Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust. Under the terms of the easement, they’re able to lease some of their water rights to the City of Alamosa.

conservation is at odds with serving municipalities, but Riparian Reconnect's Beardsley says that even cities should view their work as a benefit instead of a missed opportunity for more water storage.

“These habitats don’t take away the water, they provide benefits on the way to other uses. It’s not a competition, it’s an ecosystem,” says Beardsley.

Often, the benefits run both ways. Rules crafted in 2015 to restore the vast aquifer system below the San Luis Valley left the City of Alamosa scrambling; the easiest way it could meet the requirements was to put water back in the Alamosa River to offset some of the well water it took from the aquifer. The generations-old Cactus Hill Farm in nearby La Jara had the most senior water right on the river, and the owners needed

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cash, setting up the possibility of a buy-and-dry arrangement.

At the same time, Elena Miller-terKuile and her father, who run the sheep farm together, were talking to the Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust (RiGHT) about the possibility of a conservation easement.

The three parties worked out a creative arrangement to keep water on the farm and meet Alamosa’s needs. Through an alternative transfer method, or ATM, Cactus Hill will keep its water rights and Alamosa will lease 5 to 10 percent of the farm’s water, up to 36 acre-feet per year, allowing the city to meet its restoration needs, perpetually.

For the farm, the agreement does mean less water and fallowing parcels of land, but what water they do have can go farther. The original water

rights require it to be used for crops or livestock, but now some water will fill recharge ponds on the farm to replace missing return flows. MillerterKuile says that will help revitalize groundwater, improve soil health, and improve the effectiveness of flood irrigation across the entire property.

“This gave us a chance to do something for the whole ecosystem,” she says. “Your trees and grassland work differently than crops and benefit from groundwater. Even on a micro scale, we can see how this benefits the farm overall … even with less water.”

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BROADENING THE TENT s the state prepares for a future defined by water shortages, land trusts are positioning themselves as valuable partners. The Colorado

Water Plan, the state's longrange roadmap for meeting future water needs, identifies conservation easements and the ATMs they can facilitate as key to protecting agriculture and serving municipalities. “[Buy and dry] is still the trend. Despite our best efforts to incentivize ATMs, we could still see a lot of loss [of land and water rights] in rural communities,” says Alex Funk, an agricultural water resources specialist with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the state agency leading implementation of the water plan. “Water resource management is a huge outside influence over land loss in the state that the land trust community should be thinking about.”

Conservation can help.

With relationships in the

Christi Bode

landowner community and access to treasured water resources, land trusts are taking a leadership role in negotiating arrangements that optimize benefits for their partners.

“Conservation is a little different for everybody, and that requires a creative and inclusive approach from everyone,” says Keep It Colorado’s Daruna. “Our goal is to keep broadening the tent.”

That tent now includes everyone from city and state government bodies to farmers to energy organizations— anyone ready to work creatively.

With broad benefits to water conservation that improve wildlife habitats, soil health and, yes, water supply, the organizing work of land trusts around water has grown to help almost any partner.

Scott Lorenz, senior project manager for Colorado Springs Utilities, said he has found trusts like Palmer Land Trust to be helpful as he tries to improve his city's water supply without competing with surrounding rural communities. “The idea that we’re all just separate communities independent of each other has gone by the wayside,” he says, and land trusts can help bridge that gap between landowners and public interests—from municipal to environmental and beyond. “[Land trusts] have people in the region with these relationships in the community, but also an understanding of what our needs are. That includes conservation,” says Lorenz. “Water and land, we're well past the point of thinking they're not related.” H Jason Plautz is a journalist based in Denver specializing in environmental policy. His writing has appeared in High Country News, Reveal, HuffPost, National Journal, and Undark, among other outlets.

A Colorado Water Trust project benefits the Little Cimarron River using a senior water right that keeps productive land irrigated in a split-season arrangement, where water is applied to fields in the first part of the season, then left in the river during late summer months when fish need it most.

A TRUST FOR COLORADO WATER

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hile land trusts are now focusing more on water, one group has been restoring water from the start. The Colorado Water Trust (CWT) was founded in 2001 to restore healthy streamflows to the state's waterways, and has since restored nearly 41,000 acre-feet of water to 444 miles of rivers and streams.

CWT’s work to keep water flowing is essential to restore environments and prevent streams from drying. As just one example, during the 2012 drought, when flows were perilously low, CWT leased water out of Stagecoach Reservoir and released it down the Yampa River.

Releases have continued to bolster the river in seven of the last nine years, helping cool flows through Steamboat Springs, improve fish health, maintain hydropower production, and keep the area open for boaters. Leased water will likely continue boosting flows for years to come, thanks to the recently established Yampa River Fund.

CWT also works as a partner to the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s (CWCB) instream flow program, which over five decades has appropriated instream rights on more than 9,700 miles of water and completed more than 35 voluntary water right acquisitions. By law, CWCB is the only entity in Colorado that can use water rights for instream flow purposes. CWT can act as a liaison to bring water rights holders to the state, educating them on the benefits of keeping water flowing, and managing complex transactions, engineering reviews, and appraisals.

“It’s invaluable to work with them,” says Linda Bassi, chief of CWCB’s Stream and Lake Protection Section. “They’re able to be out in the community more than we, as the state, can be.”

The partners have a number of tools at their disposal. Water rights can be sold, donated, loaned or leased on a long- or short-term basis for instream flow use. The parties may also reach a private agreement, where the water right holder executes timed reservoir releases or agrees to not divert some water.

HB20-1037, signed in March 2020, allows water users to put augmentation water rights back into rivers for environmental purposes without impacting other diversions for consumptive uses.

A group of water users on the Cache la Poudre River sought this legislation together with CWT to protect flows on hard-working rivers.

The creative deals have paid off. In 2014, CWT and Western Rivers Conservancy collaborated to purchase land and water rights on the Little Cimarron River near Gunnison—the land has since been sold to an ag user. CWT granted an interest in McKinley Ditch water rights associated with that purchase to the state for environmental use and an interest to the landowner for irrigation.

Farmers will keep using water early in the growing season, when irrigation is most needed, and forego diversion later in the year when flows are lowest.

With those tools in hand, CWT has its sights set on a new goal: connecting rights along the Cache la Poudre River from Fort Collins to Greeley, restoring healthy flows to a parched section of the waterway. H

— Jason Plautz Courtesy Colorado Water Trust

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C O N S E R VAT I O N T O O L S While land trusts and the Colorado Water Trust work toward similar goals, most of their conservation tools are distinctly different. Perhaps the biggest dissimilarity: Land trusts usually protect water rights forever, whereas the CWT is often only able to temporarily change water use to boost streamflows in rivers and streams. The temporary

nature of CWT’s work is in part due to the statutory tools available, but also because many Coloradans are interested in temporary watersharing arrangements. Despite their different approaches, land trusts and the CWT have identified opportunities to partner by layering their unique conservation strategies.

LAND TRUST

TOOL

WATER TRUST

Conservation easement

A voluntary agreement to protect private land by limiting development, in perpetuity. Water rights associated with the property are often encumbered in the easement. Those rights are generally restricted to their historical use in perpetuity, though sometimes can be temporarily leased, and remain owned by the landowner.

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Permanent acquisition

Land and water rights can be permanently purchased or donated to land and water trusts, typically requiring water court approval.

• Land trusts, open space entities, and others can purchase land and water rights. That purchased land may simply be protected as open space land or encumbered with a conservation easement.

• CWT can help facilitate the permanent acquisition of water rights for instream flow, which are then owned and managed by the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB).

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Land management practices

Improved agricultural practices, riparian restoration, and other land management practices are commonly used by land trusts. Both land trusts and CWT do work to repair and improve water infrastructure with projects like removing abandoned dams and upgrading headgates for diversion efficiency.

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Nondiversion water conservation programs

Water right owners can reduce water diversions for five years in a 10-year period without penalty to their water rights. Reduced use can have restorative benefits to rivers so CWT works with owners to develop the conservation program and secure approvals.

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Short-term leases or loans to CWCB for instream flow

Short-term leases allow the lessee’s water to be used in a location with a CWCB instream flow water right in five of 10 years to restore streamflows. These leases require partnership with the CWCB, and require only a quick administrative process instead of water court approval.

These can be activated upon mutual agreement or by a low-streamflow trigger.

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Long-term leases or loans to CWCB for instream flow

Long-term leases allow the lessee’s water right to be used for an agreed-upon term to restore streamflows. They typically require a transfer to instream flow use, acceptance by the CWCB, and water court approval, and may require full- or partial-year separation of water from the land.

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Water rights agreements and strategic deliveries of water

Private agreements between the water owner and CWT can be implemented to restore streamflows. These include non-diversion agreements and strategically timed reservoir releases.

Plan for augmentation of instream flow

A 2020 bill authorizes the CWCB to use an acquired water right, whose historic consumptive use has been previously quantified and changed to include augmentation use, for environmental streamflow benefits.

Substitute water supply plan for temporary approval of instream flow for use by CWCB

Short-term acquisitions and administrative approval allow a water right change from its original use to instream flow use by the CWCB for up to five years, or while a water court application is pending.

Agricultural water protection water right

This leasing mechanism allows owners of decreed irrigation water rights to change the right to an ag water protection right so the owner can lease a portion of water to any beneficial use while keeping a portion in irrigated ag through a conservation easement or other land protection program.

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H O W A C O N S E R VAT I O N E A S E M E N T W O R K S A conservation easement (CE) is a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and a qualified conservation organization (typically a land trust) that permanently restricts the use or development of land, and often water, to protect certain resources forever. These resources can include wildlife habitat, scenic views, agricultural land, or other features of the property that provide a public benefit.

When a landowner protects his or her property with a CE, certain rights are permanently conveyed to the land trust, including: • The extinguishment of all or most development rights except small areas for building homes or other structures • The right to share in proceeds from a condemnation action • The right to enforce the terms of the CE—

this can include many terms including those related to water rights such as ensuring ag infrastructure is able to convey water • The right to be a party to negotiations of third-party requests to use the land, such as oil and gas leases and right-of-way agreements The land trust “holds” the CE, but neither owns the property nor becomes involved in day-to-day management. After a property is encumbered with a CE, land trusts continue to work with landowners to perpetually steward the land and water and conduct annual monitoring. The CE is tied to the land’s title, so even when the land changes hands, whether through a sale or an inheritance to the next generation, the terms of the CE remain.

Although they protect private land and water rights, all CEs must provide

When a property is protected by a CE, some development and use is often restricted. Typical restrictions and allowances include:

public benefits. Section 170(h) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) requires that tax-purposed conservation easements include perpetual restrictions for specific conservation purposes. Those purposes fall into four categories: • Preservation of land area for outdoor recreation by, or the education of, the general public • Protection of relatively natural habitat of fish, wildlife or plants, or similar ecosystem • Preservation of open space ɦ for scenic enjoyment ɦ farmland and forest land • Preservation of a historically important area or a historic structure To qualify for a Colorado state income tax credit, the conservation easement must satisfy at least one of these purposes.

28+ land trusts operate in Colorado

Some of the largest land trusts protect: Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust

637,000+ acres Colorado Open Lands

560,000+ acres The Nature Conservancy

475,000+ acres

with conservation easements A. Development: Once protected, no or limited division of the property is allowed.

Current or future homes or buildings are located only in identified areas.

B. Mineral: Typically no surface mining is allowed under a CE, however oil and gas leasing may be permitted. The landowner must work with the land trust that holds the CE before entering into an oil and gas lease agreement.

C. Water: Continued historical use of surface or well water rights on the property is enforced—therefore water rights can’t be

sold separately from the land. However, if the CE permits, the temporary leasing of water rights may be allowed.

D. Agricultural: Some CEs aim to keep working lands in production. Agricultural structures such as barns and corrals and water infrastructure needed for ag is permitted.

E. Ownership: Landowners don’t typically give up the right to sell or lease the property.

The landowner retains the title to the property and all rights not transferred or limited under the CE.

198,000+ acres as preserves

Palmer Land Trust

135,859+ acres Colorado West Land Trust

120,000+ acres

2.2 million acres

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Making Dollars and Sense of Conservation Easements

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or Wes Herman, a farmer in southeastern Colorado, the decision to conserve his land and water in perpetuity was more than a management strategy—it was a long-term commitment to feeding his community.

“From childhood, you dream of owning land,” he says. “Whether

it be my family or some other family, if the water is here, somebody is going to farm the land.”

Herman was able to guarantee that his property—where he grows corn, wheat and other crops—would not be developed by engaging in a voluntary legal covenant known as a conservation easement. Serving to protect the land’s character and the resources within its bounds, conservation easements allow landowners to retain ownership of their land and water but transfer development rights to a land trust, tribe, or governmental entity. The land trust can either purchase the easement or the landowner can donate it. A donated easement comes with similar tax benefits that a donated car or other charitable gift would: For easements that meet the legal requirements there’s a federal tax deduction that reduces taxable income and Colorado also offers a transferable tax

credit that can offset state income taxes or be sold for cash.

When Herman, now 49, decided to donate an easement in 2010, doing so was far from popular in his small town of Rocky Ford, which abuts the Arkansas River 60 miles east of Pueblo. Many neighboring farmers were selling their water to Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District, transferring it to municipal use, which yielded better financial returns for the landowners.

Set on “keeping the water with the land,” Herman completed the easement process with the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District. Today there are five farms in his immediate area with conservation easements, and more than 60 easements spanning more than 17,000 acres held by

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the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District, including his own property and that of his 27-year-old son, Ty. In order to donate or sell an easement and conserve any associated water rights along with the land, property owners must hire a certified appraiser to determine the value loss they would incur by foregoing the chance to develop the property. But therein lies a challenge: Valuation is based on market data.

It hinges on the concept that development brings value, while foregoing development incurs loss. In some cases—particularly now, during a pandemic—this presents a barrier

to conservation. For many landowners, the question of whether to conserve comes down to one thing: Does it make financial sense?

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WATER AND LAND VALUATION hen valuing any property for a conservation easement, the appraiser determines the value loss by subtracting the projected after-easement value from the before-easement value. For donated easements, landowners receive a financial return through a federal tax deduction and a Colorado tax credit—which comes in at 75 percent of the first $100,000

Courtesy Colorado Open Lands

donated value and 50 percent of any remaining donated value, up to a $5 million per donation maximum.

As part of the valuation process, water rights—if there are any—must also be appraised. When pricing an agricultural water right, any indication of municipal interest in purchasing the right increases its value, but only when direct market evidence exists, says Kevin McCarty, a veteran appraiser and president of McCarty Land & Water Valuation, Inc. While appraisers can base their valuations to some extent on sales of similar water rights, they aren’t permitted to

At the confluence of the South Platte and Big Thompson rivers, a conservation easement held

by Colorado Open Lands protects 72 private acres.

Westervelt Ecological Services has partnered with the landowner to create a bank of wetland credits that a developer or government can purchase to offset the impacts of a construction project. Mitigation banking, carbon banking and other tools can add value to a conservation easement, making conservation more financially viable for landowners.

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speculate about future municipal influence.

When there’s no municipal influence on the horizon, even if water rights ostensibly seem vulnerable, their appraised value might come in lower than if a city was poised to purchase. In this instance, a landowner would only receive a small tax incentive for protecting their water rights with a conservation easement, dampening the prospect of conservation. On the other hand, if a municipal water market exists, water is appraised at a higher value, driven up by that market, so landowners capture more of the value of their water when encumbering their water rights in an easement, McCarty says. Nonetheless, the cash return is still much lower than if the water or land was sold outright.

“Everything is based on the loss of a development right and that doesn’t always work out for landowners in every area of the state,” says Melissa Daruna, executive director of Keep It Colorado, a nonprofit coalition of conservation organizations and landowners. “[Valuation] is inequitably applied and it prevents conservation from moving forward in communities where we know we’re going to need it in the future but we can’t make the numbers work.”

In relying on market-based valuation, land trusts often lose opportunities to protect vulnerable land and water rights or important natural resources such as habitat or rare wetlands, says Erik Glenn, executive director of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust (CCALT).

“You’re valuing in hypothetical loss of development and if there’s no development happening, even if that resource is really important to the state, you’re just not going to get it done,” Glenn says. By tying land and water appraisals to traditional development, the very real benefits of conservation aren’t being valued, leading to a financial disconnect that incentivizes development and not conservation, he says. On the other hand, by using real market data collected through appraisals, Colorado follows federal law and conservation efforts are being focused on the land and water rights where the threat of development is highest, says Jill Ozarski, who represents the general public on Colorado’s Conservation Easement Oversight Commission.

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On a property with low development risk, a farmer might sell his or her water rights, or both water and land, rather than wait around indefinitely for municipal influence. This reality has aroused concern as Colorado’s farming and ranching population creeps toward its senior years. While the prospect of preserving property might incentivize some children to stay on family land, the complexities of engaging in this process often thwart the very conservationist ambitions that an easement aims to achieve.

Likewise, if the next generation has no intention of returning to the farm, then cashing out at, say, $5 million for an 88-acre tract of land and associated water rights might be the easiest option, McCarty says.

By fully restricting the property through a conservation easement, the owner might realistically yield only about $2 million from the tax credit. Still, they would have the opportunity to continue to profit from their assets through ongoing operations, or by selling in the future to a new owner who assumes the same easement-related restrictions and agreements.

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REGULATING TAX CREDITS hile valuation and the process of donating an easement may hinder some conservation, the process is in place for good reason: Certain appraisers, attorneys, accountants and others—collectively known as promoters— exploited an under-regulated system in the not-so-distant past.

Tax credits for easements have been available since 1999, but conservation easements only gained popularity when the state’s tax credit cap increased in the early 2000s—it has risen from just $100,000 in 1999 to as much as $5 million today. After seeing hundreds of millions of dollars claimed, primarily between 2003 and 2007, the Colorado Department of Revenue asked the federal Internal Revenue Service for help, says Aaron Welch, director of the Colorado Division of Conservation.

“The majority of landowners weren’t abusing the program, but there were fraudulent appraisals,” Welch says.

Promoters trying to turn a profit approached willing landowners suggesting that they donate a conservation easement, then

appraised properties at suspiciously high values. Those high appraisals meant that the landowners made money off of inflated tax credits, as did the attorneys and appraisers, with taxpayers shouldering the cost.

“It was too good to be true,” Welch says.

“But sometimes, landowners were willing to either turn a blind eye or they just couldn’t resist.” Plus, landowners trusted unscrupulous promoters.

As the Colorado Department of Revenue worked through review and audits, the department began challenging easement donations, requiring landowners to repay tax credits plus interest, sometimes years later. By then, some of the farmers who put overvalued easements on their properties— mostly in southeastern Colorado—had rolled the money back into their operations.

Repayment left them broke or bankrupt.

Some landowners entered into legal battles, but much of that tax credit money, a total of about $220 million, was eventually paid back to the state. Landowners who were conned continue to demand compensation for their easements. Most recently, in June 2020, a controversial bill that would have provided money back to these landowners—SB20135—was postponed indefinitely.

While challenging for those landowners involved, that period of inflated valuations prompted change in the form of increased oversight. In 2008, the state launched an official program requiring the certification of conservation easement holders. That was followed by a pre-approval process for the issuance of associated tax credits in 2014.

Because this process was housed in the Division of Real Estate, however, reviewers began submitting problematic appraisal reports to the Board of Real Estate Appraisers as possible license violations, according to Welch. The ensuing investigations created a bottleneck in the system and caused appraisers to shy away from easement work, Welch explains.

“That is how the Division of Conservation was born,” he says. The division was created in 2018. “Basically, they recognized there was an insufficient firewall.”

Welch has directed the division for the past year, overseeing the assessment of both tax certificates and the entities that hold conservation easements. The division now

A conservation easement held by the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust protects the Fetcher Ranch near Steamboat Lake in Routt County. Development rights on the property were purchased by the Routt County Purchase of Development Rights Program, which provides local landowners with an economically attractive alternative to selling land for development.

ensures that unambiguous front-end review has replaced back-end bureaucracy, he says.

“Landowners are buying themselves a much lower level of risk,” Welch says. “I think on the whole it has been a large win for landowners across the state of Colorado.”

It has also been a win, in many ways, for taxpayers. “It’s a public program, these are public dollars, and there should be some form of oversight to make sure those dollars are being used in an efficient way,” says Ozarski.

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ADDING VALUE TO CONSERVATION oloradans looking to conserve don’t have to be limited by appraisals. Some landowners are making additional financial gains by stacking other elements onto conservation easements, such as reaping value from sequestered carbon, or implementing an alternative transfer method, or ATM—where they temporarily transfer their agricultural water rights to a non-agricultural use.

With ATMs, landowners can temporarily fallow their land and lease their water for mu-

nicipal use, for example, under an Interruptible Water Supply Agreement, which allows such a lease for no more than three out of 10 years. In this way, they bring in money through the easement’s tax credits, but also continue to generate a financial return from their ag business and occasional water leases.

The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District has become particularly successful at implementing conservation easements that enable landowners to lease their water. McCarty went so far as to call the region “a model” for other parts of Colorado.

Jay Winner, general manager of the Lower Arkansas district, stresses that this winning combination of ATMs employed on top of conservation easements provides farmers in the region with “a permanent revenue stream,” while granting cities the assurance that they will have water in the future. It also protects the agricultural heritage and prosperity that irrigated farmland brings to the region, keeping land and water rights in the hands of producers.

The same goes for carbon markets, which

Courtesy Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, by DJ Glisson

are less tested than ATMs. The May Ranch in eastern Colorado’s Prowers County is protected by an easement held by the CCALT but the Mays have also partnered with the Pinhead Climate Institute, a Telluride-based carbon offset program; Audubon’s Conservation Ranching Initiative; and Ducks Unlimited, which assessed the ecosystem services or benefits that the public obtains from the property. According to Ducks Unlimited, the ranch contains 14,500 acres of native prairie that, if tilled or developed, would release around 8,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year for the next 50 years. Through its Conservation Ranching Initiative, Audubon is conducting soil monitoring on the May Ranch to evaluate the ranch’s potential to increase soil health and carbon sequestration.

The May family signed a 100-year agreement to forgo tilling and conserve 85 percent of their ranch, storing carbon in crop residue, with Pinhead purchasing 7,000 tons per year.

On other properties, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and others provide compensation for the same natural assets.

Could the State of Colorado do something similar, providing compensation for ecosystem services, making conservation more cost effective for landowners?

“There is a whole different way to value properties,” Ozarski says. “Landowners who have critical water rights could do things like soil carbon sequestration. We should have a way to reimburse them because those are important services. However, that is not a conservation easement—it’s payment for ecosystem services.”

While payment for ecosystem services can be layered on top of a conservation easement, or can exist separately, for some willing landowners conservation may still not make financial sense in Colorado’s existing market-based system.

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NEW VALUATION METHODS lenn with CCALT suggests flipping the equation to reconsider whether today’s valuation methods truly account for the worth of the land and water on a property—perhaps it’s time to reconsider how valuation is conducted. “What are we valuing?” he posits. “Are we valuing no houses or are we valuing preserving sage grouse habitat [for example]? If it’s habitat, we’ve got to

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On the no-till May Ranch in Prowers County, a conservation easement protects the land, a carbon sequestration agreement through the Pinhead Institute protects the soil, while certification by Audubon’s Conservation Ranching Initiative helps make the ranch economically viable, which is essential for keeping the native prairie intact for birds and wildlife, like this lark bunting.

find a different way to place value.”

The market is forcing appraisers to reckon with this proposed paradigm shift.

Lands protected by conservation easements as early as the 1990s are beginning to be sold on the market. In some remote areas, like in northwestern Colorado where people are purchasing private hunting and fishing grounds for recreation, conserved properties are selling for more than those without easements. It’s because the properties that have been conserved have a higher resource value, Glenn says. “Now you’re seeing appraisers look at these comparables and say, ‘Well this sold for as much as it would have if you didn’t have an easement,’” he says.

This dynamic raises questions for appraisers as they look toward the future.

Land trusts are planning toward a tomorrow that accommodates this proposed paradigm shift. A group convened by Keep It Colorado has been exploring alternative valuation methods—this is a new iteration and continuation of work initiated last year by HB19-1264. The aim now is to agree on a desirable alternative valuation method or two to test through pilot projects in different parts of the state.

“We need to find better solutions for more

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conservation. To help more landowners,” says Keep It Colorado’s Daruna. “That’s why we’re picking the conversation up now,” she says, referring to the pandemic-stemming economic challenges that landowners are facing this year. COVID-19 has made rural Colorado’s agriculture sector more vulnerable, which could lead to increased development and subdivision of ag lands.

The group hasn’t yet honed in on specific valuation techniques—though, as part of this effort, a report was published in late October by Andrew Seidl with Colorado State University’s Regional Economic Development Institute, assessing a wide variety of alternative valuation methods. While there’s some urgency to move forward, the group is cautiously considering the measures necessary to protect the integrity of the state’s conservation program. “It’s something to slow walk and be methodical and careful about, especially given the history that we’ve seen of the program being abused in the past,” Daruna says.

One thing is certain: Any new, Colorado-specific valuation method wouldn’t wholly replace the current methodology. If the state develops an innovative, credible way to value conservation easements that isn’t

based on value loss, by nature it wouldn’t align with the IRS charitable deduction statute and therefore landowners wouldn’t qualify for the federal tax deduction that they get today, only for the state tax credit.

“It would be a point where we have to say to landowners, ‘If you’re looking to do an easement, we have two paths forward,’” Daruna says. “‘If you don’t have development pressure and you’re not going to see the financial return to make [conservation] happen for you [with traditional valuation], we could value it a different way.’”

For now, McCarty stresses that landowners must remember that a conservation easement is considered a charitable donation for a reason. “If the appraisal is done right, you are always going to end up with something less than you started with,” McCarty says. “You cannot make money by doing a conservation easement, but you can preserve land.” H Sharon Udasin is a Boulder, Colo.-based environment and energy reporter, who recently completed a 2019–2020 Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado. She previously spent nearly a decade in Israel, where she primarily reported for The Jerusalem Post.

Courtesy Audubon Rockies, by Evan Barrientos

Marj Perry and her husband, Bill Fales, raise cattle outside of Carbondale on Cold Mountain Ranch, which they’ve protected with a conservation easement. Although their easement doesn’t permit them to lease their water, the ranchers wanted to help enhance Crystal River flows and have participated in a diversion coordination agreement with the Colorado Water Trust.

Flexibility in Perpetuity Creative approaches to conservation easements are helping Coloradans address water scarcity

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ooking at a meadow of rippling grasses, it’s natural to want the scene to stay unchanged forever. Conservation easements were developed to do exactly that: They transfer properties’ development rights from landowners

who agree to preserve the parcels to a certified holder, such as a land trust. The agreements apply in perpetuity, making them a very powerful tool for land conservation. But on the topic of water rights, easements haven’t always been so effective.

BY KELLY BAS TON E Blake Gordon

Colorado’s conservation easements date back to 1976, and in the early years, most of them neglected to mention water at all, says Sarah Parmar, director of conservation for Colorado Open Lands, which holds easements on more than 500,000 acres. “As the [land trust] field developed, people realized the importance of describing water rights in easements,” Parmar explains. By the early 1990s, conservation easements typically encumbered all of a property’s water rights and declared that water should never be “severed” from the land. Furthermore, contracts dictated that irrigation must continue as it had before.

Such language offered advantages. It prevented the landowner from selling off the water that sustained the land’s agricultural or ecological value. It also protected easements’ water from being wrested away by distant urban or industrial users.

But over time, as Colorado’s population grew and drought became the state’s new normal, conservation easements’ handling of water rights seemed too rigid.

The language often forbade the landowner from altering the land’s productivity, says Megan Knott, director of stewardship for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust (CCALT), the country’s fourth-largest land trust. That prevented farmers from trying different crops that might require less water. Switching from flood irrigation to water-saving pipes and sprinklers, which improves irrigation efficiency, could run afoul of the easement’s requirement to support any wetlands that might exist on the property. And the obligation to maintain and upgrade water infrastructure could impose heavy financial burdens on the easement’s current and subsequent landowners. “A headgate can easily cost $800,000, and that’s a problem if the price of infrastructure exceeds the benefit of its use,” says Knott. (Consequently, the CCALT is trying to establish an endowment that could defray the cost of irrigation upgrades with grants to landowners.)

What’s more, easements’ requirement to continue with unabated irrigation sometimes conflicted with emerging statewide efforts to manage water for conservation rather than consumption. For example, conservation easements occasionally prohibited landowners from leasing their water to the state, as is often facilitated by the nonprofit Colorado Water Trust, to support H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 2 0

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Cleave Simpson, general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, walks through a groundwater-irrigated field in the San Luis Valley. To combat the unsustainable decline of valley aquifers and encourage irrigators to use less groundwater, Simpson is working with Colorado Open Lands and the Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust to develop conservation easements that restrict groundwater pumping.

instream flows for environmental benefits.

Such leases might have achieved gains for multiple stakeholders—including landowners, aquatic species, and the surrounding communities. But the easements’ language prevented the water from being “severed” from the property, even temporarily. “Ironically, that precluded the most conservation-minded landowners from participating in instream leasing programs,” says Parmar.

Conservation, it seemed, needed some wiggle room.

FLEXIBILITY WITH “FOREVER” ver the past 10 years, Parmar and members of the land and water conservation communities began to brainstorm ways to build more water-management flexibility into conservation easements without undermining the perpetuity that gave them their strength. In 2011, the Colorado Water Trust developed template language for land trusts’ use in drafting conservation easements that permitted temporary transfers of water off the land for instream flows. And in 2018, Parmar co-authored “Sharing Water to Save The Farm: A Guide to Agricultural-Municipal Water Sharing for Colorado’s Land Conservation Community,” which offered additional template language that conservation easements could use to acknowledge water leases, known as Alternative Transfer Mechanisms or ATMs, between agricultural producers and municipal utilities.

The publication was also pivotal in convincing the conservation community that

O

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flexible water management needn’t weaken perpetual protections. “Now, there is a lot more conversation happening about creative approaches to water rights that allow for new kinds of collaborations,” Parmar says. “Instead of us saying to a farmer, ‘It’s all or nothing,’ we have that diversification option for landowners to lease [water] in appropriate ways, to a municipality or even a fellow farmer,” she adds.

The first perpetual agreement to test an expanded range of water flexibility involved Larimer County and the City of Broomfield, and was finalized in summer 2017. This ATM doesn’t involve a conservation easement because Larimer County purchased the property with funds that specifically designate it as open space, a municipal status that would be incredibly difficult to change. Located on the border between Boulder and Larimer counties, the 211-acre Little Thompson Farm enjoys sweeping views of Longs Peak, which, along with the farm’s water rights—shares on two ditches plus 240 Colorado-Big Thompson Project units, the yield of which changes each year—made it a prime candidate for development. To preserve the working farm, Larimer County purchased the property for $8.2 million in August 2016, with the Town of Berthoud and the Gates Family Foundation contributing $100,000 each.

The county sold nearly half of the farm’s C-BT water but retained 125 units to keep water on the land forever. As part of the deal, Larimer County partnered with the City of Broomfield, with Broomfield paying

more than $3.7 million to own 115 units of C-BT water and the option to use an additional 80 units during three of every 10 years. This ATM arrangement presents a groundbreaking alternative to the prevailing “buy and dry” transaction that municipalities have long used to acquire water rights by purchasing farms and transferring the associated water rights. Irrigation continues to produce corn and beets on the property, which is now publicly owned but leased to a farmer. And although the perpetual agreement refers to the water rather than the use of the property, its designation as open space gives it powerful protections against future development.

Thus, says Western Water Partnerships’ Todd Doherty, who facilitated the agreement and co-authored “Sharing Water to Save The Farm,” the agreement saved the property as an irrigated farm while granting Broomfield forever access to valuable water rights. “Its permanency is the big thing. It’s not just a one- or two-year [water] lease, which isn’t attractive to municipalities that need more certainty in their water planning. It’s perpetual,” he explains.

The Little Thompson Farm agreement has served as an inspiring model for new negotiations in progress. Doherty is working on a conservation easement and ATM pairing involving some 500 acres near Fort Morgan, and the City of Greeley is also considering water-sharing deals via conservation easements and ATMs. “Agriculture is Greeley’s heritage, and they want it to continue to be part of the comChristi Bode

munity in the future,” says Doherty. “They also want to be an example of responsible governance in their region.” Meaning that Greeley would prefer to avoid the buy-anddry scenarios that put farms and related industries out of business.

On the Western Slope, negotiations with Cold Mountain Ranch on the Crystal River have created a new paradigm allowing water associated with conservation easements to be used to support healthy river flows.

Bill Fales and Marj Perry, the landowners, wanted to participate in leasing options offered by the Colorado Water Trust, which sought ways to boost Crystal River flows to sustainable levels. But Pitkin County rules stymied the landowners’ participation: Under the terms of their conservation easement, entered into in 2009 with Pitkin County and CCALT, Fales and Perry had to irrigate as they always had—the water couldn’t be “severed from” the land.

So the Colorado Water Trust worked with the county and with the landowners to develop an alternate approach. Instead of reducing their water use, Fales and Perry could adjust the timing of their diversions and irrigation to reduce their impact during periods when the Crystal was flowing critically low. Finalized in January 2018, the diversion coordination agreement didn’t reduce the property’s productivity or cut back on its consumptive use. Instead, it factors the river’s needs into the ranch management calendar. And all timing adjustments are strictly voluntary: CWT only compensates Fales and Perry if they coordinate their diversions under the agreement. “It gives a lot of options and flexibility to Cold Mountain Ranch,” says Mickey O’Hara, director of programs at CWT. Still, the deal’s efficacy remains to be proven. Now, in the third and final year of the pilot term for the diversion coordination agreement, CWT has not yet enjoyed an opportunity to capitalize on the terms. Dry conditions in 2018 and 2020 prevented Fales and Perry from delaying or coordinating their diversions, and in 2019, the Crystal River flowed so strongly that adjustments weren’t necessary. “If we have no chance to implement [the agreement] before its term expires this year, we will go back to the drawing board to see if the agreement’s constraints are appropriate, given climate factors,” O’Hara explains. “We’ll take stock and make the

adjustments we need to get creative, with a slightly different approach.”

BEYOND THE SURFACE ome of the most visionary work with conservation easements is underway in the San Luis Valley. There Colorado Open Lands and the Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust are working with irrigators within the Rio Grande Water Conservation District (RGWCD) to envision a new species of conservation easement that would protect and replenish the region’s aquifer system, which is shrinking to alarmingly low levels given irrigator’s dependence on well-drawn groundwater. The valley’s unconfined aquifer, which is fed by the Rio Grande River, has decreased by about 1 million acre-feet since the drought of 2002—that’s more water than Blue Mesa Reservoir, Colorado’s largest above-ground body of water, can hold.

“Traditionally, conservation easements have focused on properties with valuable surface water rights,” says Parmar. “But in the San Luis Valley, the biggest challenge to agriculture is the potential shutdown of agricultural wells because of groundwater depletion.” And in the valley, home to the nation’s second-largest potato economy, agriculture is paramount.

One irrigator—who also happens to be general manager of the RGWCD—proposed this new model of using conservation easements to protect groundwater.

A fourth-generation farmer and rancher, Cleave Simpson grew up in Alamosa, then worked as an engineer in the coal industry before returning home to work for the RGWCD. Water difficulties on his property forced him to set limits on his own groundwater withdrawals. “Every year, I have to make management decisions that will keep me from going over my limit of 250 acrefeet every five years,” he explains. “That got me to wondering, ‘How could we incentivize people to do something similar?’”

His neighboring irrigators may need better incentives to reduce pumping than they’ve had so far. In 2004, after the 2002 drought, state lawmakers passed a bill requiring the state to regulate the aquifer to make it more sustainable. A few years later, in 2011, the state approved irrigators’ management plan to self-regulate their aquifer withdrawals. As a result, irrigators have dried up thousands of acres of land,

S

with farmers paying a fee for the water they pump—that fee goes toward compensating producers who agree to fallow their land.

While those in the valley have worked hard and fallowed land, drought struck again in 2018, wiping away 70 percent of the groundwater gains the region had achieved in recent years. Even though irrigators have through 2031 to hit the aquifer’s sustainability targets, the state engineer has warned that this office could have to shut down the region’s wells if it becomes obvious that they are not on the path toward sustainability. Simpson and the two land trusts suspect that the compensation provided by conservation easements could motivate irrigators to limit their groundwater withdrawals even more significantly than they’ve done so far.

“This is uncharted territory,” he admits.

So far, only one farm in the San Luis Valley has entered into a conservation easement that would restrict groundwater pumping.

Members of the local conservation community support the effort, but it remains to be seen if more land trusts and their financial backers will also get behind it. “But if this [conservation easement] effort is successful, and if we can get enough participation and some help from Mother Nature, this could be a huge step back to historical conditions and a healthier aquifer—which effectively means healthier everything, including river systems and riparian areas,” Simpson says.

In the San Luis Valley, while using conservation easements in this new, flexible way could mean healthier “everything,” across the state, creating conservation easements that allow for flexibility in water management can give all parties greater water security, says Knott with CCALT. To avoid state intervention in the San Luis Valley, irrigators will need to further self-regulate their groundwater withdrawals. And as nearby municipalities come looking for water to support growth, flexibility keeps landowners’ hands on the steering wheel.

Says Knott, “We don’t want municipalities to get to the point where they feel they have to seize water. Collaboration can forestall that and build a more sustainable future.” H A freelance writer living in Steamboat Springs, Colo., Kelly Bastone covers conservation and the outdoors for publications including Outside, AFAR, 5280, Backpacker, Field & Stream, and others.

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Thank You Water Education Colorado members form the bedrock of financial support that makes our work possible! The WEco community is connected by a deep appreciation for water and a love for our state. Together we're committed to advancing water education for Colorado community members, decision makers, and industry professionals alike. We'd like to take a moment to recognize our members (as of Oct. 1, 2020) at the Stream level and above. Look for a full listing of financial supporters, including our valuable $50 members and other contributors, in our annual report online at wateredco.org/about-us/annual-reports.

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IN THE SPOTLIGHT Thomas Gougeon Pete Gunderson Jim Havey Taylor Hawes Roy Heald Matt Heimerich Holly Huyck Don Ireland Greg Johnson Frank Kinder David LaFrance Katie Leone Patricia Locke John McClow Bill McCormick Dennis McGrane Julie McKenna Kristie Nackord John Ott Brian Payer Bob Peters Hensley Peterson Jim Pokrandt Patty Rettig Steven Rogowski Kate Ryan Alli Schuch Thomas Sharp Glen Simpson D. Randall Spydell

Our members invest in youth This issue we’re highlighting Jay Loschert, Water Educator Network affiliate from southwestern Colorado. Jay is Outreach and Education Coordinator at Montezuma Land Conservancy. He says joining WEco last year “was a no brainer. I needed to get involved, garner more tools in my toolkit, and be ready to better engage teachers.”

With 45,000 acres conserved since 1998, Montezuma Land Conservancy is part of an international effort to conserve 30 percent of the world’s land surface by 2030, dubbed “30 by ’30,” to protect biodiversity. “It starts with the people we serve,” says Jay. “We’ve shifted focus from acres conserved to, ‘How are we having an impact on people’s lives?’”

That’s where Jay’s work at Fozzie’s Farm, an 83-acre educational facility near Lewis, Colo., comes in. “The programs I do at Fozzie’s are focused on building that connection between people and the land. I think about it as a love affair, and hopefully it leads to a long-term commitment and lifelong relationship.”

Jay hosts field trips, working with area teachers to coordinate in-class lessons to

complement hands-on learning at Fozzie’s.

The farm is also used to test limited irrigation practices, so building water into programs for regional youth and other producers is something that has “huge potential” at Fozzie’s, says Jay. Jay cites WEco resources, trainings, and opportunities to network with other educators as the most valuable benefit of membership, but he also appreciates WEco’s leadership on improving access to water education. “If we’re going to make this 30 by ‘30 thing a reality, we have to make a special effort to invite and include people who have been left out of that conversation for too long.”

Jay, we are so pleased to have your support and engagement!

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London Mine Water Rights

A unique water source that is environmental friendly & fully reusable

Rocky Ford

Aurora’s continued farming program keeps agricultural vibrant and economically viable

Water Conservation

Aurora Water has award winning efforts that educate & incentivize customers through dynamic water-wise programs

WISE Partnership

Using water wisely through collaboration to meet water needs

Learn more about Aurora Water’s innovative thinking.

AuroraGov.org/WaterInnovation