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| Post from Cory Gardner, CO State Rep; Several state lawmakers representing a swath of Colorado’s agricultural belt asked the governor Wednesday to step in on behalf of about 200 South Platte River farmers who were left high and dry this week when a court shut down their irrigation wells. Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, Sen. Dave Owen, R-Greeley, Rep. Dale Hall, R-Greeley and Rep. Diane Hoppe, R-Sterling, called on Gov. Bill Owens in a letter Wednesday to help find cooperative solutions and alternatives to the curtailment. |
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| The lawmakers noted that the court order forced the state engineer to turn off the tap just as affected farmers in several counties have planted their crops and now face the prospect of costly losses and even bankruptcy.
”While people are watering their lawns in Boulder, we won’t have Colorado sweet corn or broccoli in the grocery store,” Gardner said. This is a perfect storm in which a drought, recent court rulings and regulatory inflexibility come together to create havoc in agriculture. Observed Brophy, a corn farmer, “It is frustrating that the West’s most precious resource continues to be controlled by lawyers instead of engineers. This is a make-or-break issue for a number of farmers in Adams, Morgan and Weld counties. They might have to literally sell the farm over this.” The court-ordered shutdown is an abrupt development in a long-standing legal dispute. At issue is a 2002 law that requires many well-dependent farmers along the South Platte to find new water sources because the wells they have used for generations feed off of the same underground aquifer that feeds the river. ”This has turned into a zero-sum game where the farmers lose when the river gains,” said Gardner. “There has to be another way.” |