December 27, 2007--Framing key water issues for the future in the Arkansas Valley (Pueblo Chieftain)
The average age of the farmer keeps climbing, and fewer young people are considering careers in agriculture. The demographic trend of fewer farmers is nothing new and not limited to the Arkansas Valley. In the valley, however, when farmers leave the land, the water is more often leaving with them. The revenues from a water sale may be a farmer’s 401(k) at the end of a long career. About 16.5 percent of the jobs in the Lower Arkansas Valley are considered to be agriculture-dependent, and where water rights have been sold - Crowley and Otero counties - the economic impacts are fairly obvious. A plan promoted by the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District, would create a land fallowing, water lease management organization, nicknamed Super Ditch, that would attempt to keep water rights in the hands of farmers, while allowing leases of part of their water to cities.
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