Water, the most fundamental, life-sustaining element in the natural world, has shaped the American West for millenniums. An overlapping tale of peoples, interactions, management, infrastructure and nature, the ever-changing role of water continues to shape the very fabric of Western existence in the United States.
Water played a vital role in Indigenous cultures, impacting the Native Colorado homelands of the Ute, Arapaho and Cheyenne peoples.
“The land and water were not just the source of their livelihoods — they were also the source of their spiritual values,” said Glenn Patterson, a Colorado State University ecosystem science and sustainability faculty member. “As they knew, water is life, and the American West is defined by scarcity of water.”
Similarly, the Ancestral Pueblo people, who built Mesa Verde, constructed basins to hold at least 10,000 gallons to 25,000 gallons of water at a time.
“All of us as citizens of the state have a stake in this. So the state set up rules for letting other people use (the water), and this is where water rights come from. So basically, you’re giving somebody a water right to use somebody else’s property, which is the state’s property.” –John Tracy, Colorado Water Center former director
European patterns of colonization and settlement of the Western United States was also directly influenced by water.
“Water will become the central feature for settlement patterns and the development of towns, villages, cities, farming opportunities and agricultural communities,” said Doug Sheflin, a CSU associate professor of history. “All that stuff is based on, very loosely, access to some kind of water, even when it doesn’t run all year long. So it’s quite literally the lifeblood of western expansion and settlement.”
Within the Colorado territory, the earliest example of delegated water rights were found in the 1852 digging of the People’s Ditch in the San Luis Valley by Hispanic settlers. Traditional Hispanic water laws are known as acequias, which are “water distribution systems that established rules for water sharing in times of scarcity and enforced a commitment to community-based water governance,” according to Colorado Water Knowledge.
Rapid population growth fueled by the 1858 Colorado Gold Rush led to the creation of the Colorado Doctrine, a series of formalized legislation that defined prior appropriation — the state’s first water law system.
“(Under prior appropriation), the right to water is based upon the concept of first in time, first in right,” said Kathie Troudt Riley, a water rights attorney and CSU instructor of water law, policy and institutions.
Early European settlers’ knowledge of the state’s arid landscape influenced their push for the system that still delegates water control in the modern era.
“They knew that in this semi-arid region, control of water meant control of productive land, food, industry, wealth and political power,” Patterson said. “They did not want such wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few large riparian landowners. Instead, they wanted small farmers of modest means, even those with land far from water sources, to have a chance to build farms and thrive.”
Under state law, as the Colorado Constitution reads, “All surface and groundwater within Colorado is owned by the public and is dedicated to the use of the people through water rights established as prescribed by laws of Colorado and the United States.”
John Tracy, former director of the Colorado Water Center and faculty member in the department of ecosystem science and sustainability, elaborated further.
“All of us as citizens of the state have a stake in this,” Tracy said. “So the state set up rules for letting other people use (the water), and this is where water rights come from. So basically, you’re giving somebody a water right to use somebody else’s property, which is the state’s property.”
As Colorado’s population has continued to rapidly increase since the 19th century, water management has been an issue.
Agriculture remains Colorado’s dominant water consumer, producing $40 billion annually. Simultaneously, water demands have increased from the state’s growing cities. When an urban area meets the capacity of its given water rights, it’s forced to acquire others.
“Bringing water means (developers) have to go out and search for sufficient shares of water for sale that they can then transfer to that community water system to be able to serve their new development,” Troudt Riley said.
Water management in the Colorado River Basin has faced growing threats in recent years, with prolonged regional droughts and a changing climate. Seven states — California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona and Colorado — as well as Mexico and several Indigenous reservations’ shares of the river are delegated by the Colorado River Compact of 1922. This management delegation has faced growing challenges in recent decades.
“As water demand increases and water supply diminishes due to warming temperatures and increasing frequency and intensity of droughts, there is a looming threat that the lower-basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona could wind up in a shortage situation and place a ‘call’ on the flows from the upper-basin states,” Patterson said. “This could result in curtailment of junior users in Colorado, including the city of Denver.”
While the region’s challenges are ever present, Colorado has met them head on through direct countermeasures, including developing the Colorado Water Plan.
“The state has a carefully developed (the Colorado) Water Plan and a planning process that is inclusive of stakeholders in all of the major river basins,” Patterson said. “This process has resulted in greater awareness of water issues, greater cooperation in solving water problems and greater efforts toward activities such as water conservation programs.”
Continual, collaborative effort and proper water management will allow the lifeblood of the American West to continue to shape the region for many generations to come.
“It’s certainly not a … calm time, but there’s so many different opportunities for new thoughts and the ability to negotiate, the ability to really spot problems and try to resolve problems,” Troudt Riley said.
Reach Katie Fisher at science@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.
