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At first glance, the plumbing of the San Luis Valley
looks simple. It's easy to assume, as the Spanish did, that
the whole thing drains south via the Rio Grande.
But the Valley actually comprises two drainages. There's
the Rio Grande in the south, from Creede to Alamosa and then
down to New Mexico. The upper Valley -- roughly, everything
north of Hooper -- has no natural outlet. It's the "Closed
Basin." Streams flow into Saguache Creek, which terminates
in lakes near the Great Sand Dunes, where the water
evaporates.
As if that isn't complication enough, there's a third
dimension. The water in the surface gravels of the Closed
Basin belongs to the "Unconfined Aquifer." About 150 feet
below that is a layer of rather impermeable clay, and
between the clay and the bedrock floor of the Valley is the
"Confined Aquifer."
The San Luis Valley is part of a bigger geologic
formation called the Rio Grande Rift, which extends south
from the headwaters of the Arkansas River at Leadville to El
Paso, Texas. Over millions of years, the flanking mountain
ranges (Mosquito and Sangre de Cristo on the east, Sawatch
and San Juan on the west) rose while the block of crust in
between either stayed put or sank.
In the San Luis Valley, that block of bedrock could be as
much as 30,000 feet below the surface. Between the surface
and the bedrock is whatever washed off the mountains --
everything from sand to boulders -- over the years.
The fill isn't monolithic; it has gaps between its solid
matter. Since water runs from the mountains down into the
Valley, those spaces get filled with water. Just how much
water is a good question, but hydrologists say a fair
estimate is 2 billion acre feet -- about as much water as
the Colorado River carries in 150 years.
You don't need UFO sightings to decide that the Closed
Basin is a strange place. On the surface, it's a chico-bush
desert that gets less than a foot of precipitation each
year. Beneath the surface, there could be as much water as
in 75 Lake Powells.
That's the water that's at issue with the proposal by
Gary Boyce and his Stockman's Water Company to drill wells
into the Confined Aquifer and pump the water, up to 150,000
acre feet a year, to the Front Range.
Boyce controls a fair-sized chunk of land -- about
100,000 acres -- over the Closed Basin. One big question is
whether he can operate wells there without injuring the
others who pump water from the Closed Basin.
Among the current pumpers is the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation, which transferred 40,000 acre-feet in 1997 from
the Closed Basin to the Rio Grande. This helps Colorado meet
its obligations to New Mexico, Texas, and the Republic of
Mexico, and it also means more water for irrigators along
the Rio Grande.
So there really isn't a question about "should water be
pumped out of the Closed Basin?" That was settled in 1985,
when the Closed Basin Project began pumping water. The real
question is how much water, which direction it goes, and who
profits.
Boyce is about as popular in the Valley as anthrax or
potato blight, and it's easy to say "save agriculture in the
San Luis Valley."
I'm all for that. I like Valley potatoes and carrots and
beer made from Valley barley. I cherish the Valley, all 100
miles from that make-you-gasp view at Poncha Pass to
Colorado's oldest business, the R&R Market in San
Luis.
But there are a lot of other places in Colorado, from
Ovid to Norwood, that I like, too. And which place will get
trashed if Boyce is stopped?
Since 1990, Colorado has gained about 700,000 residents,
which works out to an increased domestic demand for about
150,000 acre-feet of water each year. If this population
growth continues, mostly in developments along the Front
Range, new domestic water supplies will have to be
developed.
The water is available in Colorado; the question is where
it will come from. It's very easy for a public official like
Attorney General Ken Salazar to say that he will go to court
to stop Gary Boyce, but what does he propose instead?
Will he also go to court to stop all those subdivisions
between Fort Collins and Pueblo that cause the need for
water development?
Or will some other venue get drained or drowned if the
Closed Basin doesn't? Transfer some more South Platte water
from agricultural to municipal, and put the farmers at Ovid
out of business? Expand some deception like Windy Gap
Reservoir (supposedly built to save agricultural supplies,
and in fact used to cool a power plant), and see how many
more trout we can infect with whirling disease? Drown more
of Taylor Park with Union Park Reservoir?
The next time you hear "Boyce must be stopped," ask one
question. And when you hear that "We can't stop people from
moving to the Front Range," then ask "What basin do you
propose to trash if it's not the Closed Basin?"
Let me know if you get an answer.
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