Colorado

By Terry McCarthy/Durango Monday, Sept. 09, 2002
    • THOMAS MICHAEL ALLEMAN FOR TIME

    Ron gillen has a face like his farmland-brown and a little bit broken. "I don't know how we're going to make it," the farmer says as he looks at some of his cows huddling under a bridge to escape the burning sun. Gillen, 66, has only 20 cows left from a herd of 450. After three years of drought in southwestern Colorado, Gillen's fields are parched, his irrigation water is spent, and he has been selling off land and livestockto cover debts. His banker keeps telling him that he should find some other line of work, that farming these days "is pretty grim." But after a lifetime of farming, Gillen says, "where would I go to find work? Welcoming people at Wal-Mart?"

    Thirty miles away in the city of Durango (pop. 15,000) at El Patio Bar & Grill, misting machines spray diners to keep them cool. Lawns are lush, and the golf course has fairways greener than fresh limes. But according to the widely used Palmer monthly drought index, the region around Durango is suffering the worst drought in the U.S. In June the Missionary Ridge fire, northeast of town, burned 70,000 acres. Only 2.86 in. of rain have fallen all year. And Durango, which since 1877 has had first rights to the water that flows down the Florida River and the local Animas, can hold only a seven-day supply in its reservoir. So the city uses up most of its entitlement, consuming 6 million gal. of water a day to preserve an oasis environment on a semidesert plateau. The golf course alone absorbs half a million gallons a day, water that would otherwise flow downstream and feed the Colorado River. "We created an arti.cial environment here, and we are trying to keep it," says city manager Robert Ledger. "The water we don't use ends up in a fountain in Vegas."


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    Durango-which means "well-watered place"-embodies all the perplexities of water management in the West. Any water that is allowed to run downstream is wasted water. Any water that can be held captive behind the thousands of dams built under the 1902 Reclamation Act is good water. Today the contradictions of this water policy are starting to show through as clearly as the cracked earth on the bottom of the Lemon Reservoir. Some 14 miles northeast of Durango, the Lemon was built in 1963 to hold 40,000 acre-ft. of water for irrigation in the area. It is down to 9% of capacity, all irrigation has been suspended, and the reservoir serves as an amusement for locals who drive pickups outonto the dry bed and make doughnut shapes with their tires.

    An old mining town that once thrived on smelting gold and silver ore, Durango today is following Aspen and Telluride in remodeling itself as a tourist destination and a home for wealthy retirees seeking an outdoor life. The small town is quaintly restored, but the economy is sagging. Fires and drought have put an end to much of the hiking and whitewater rafting, restaurants are laying off staff, and many tourists have canceled trips. While the rest of the country keeps a nervous eye on the Dow Jones industrial average, everyone in Durango follows cubic-feet-per-second flow rates on the two local rivers. Both are running at one-fifth their normal levels for this time of year. "It will take two to three years to get out of the hole we are in now," says Ken Beegles, head of the Durango office of the state division of water resources. "We are counting on Mother Nature to change."

    But what if Mother Nature doesn't comply? Some 35 miles west of Durango, in the Mesa Verde National Park, site of a fire in July, are the famous cliff dwellings of the Anasazi-or ancestral Puebloans, as they are now known-whose civilization flourished there until the end of the 13th century, when the combination of a 30-year drought, a population explosion and overuse of natural resources forced them out.

    Durango is oblivious to the lessons of history. It plans to build enough houses to expand its population 160%, to 40,000. This growth will require more water, and the city is banking on another dam, the controversial Animas-La Plata project, which has been on the drawing board since 1968. It is still unclear whether Congress will appropriate the entire $350 million needed for the dam. Water flows toward money. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s pushed small farmers off the land and consolidated larger land holdings. The drought of today will force farmers like Gillen to sell off more of their land for housing subdivisions. The grass on those future lawns will probably be kept greener than his dying fields. -With reporting by Rita Healy/Marvel