Colorado Revegetation Bill Puts Buy-and-Dry Cities on Notice

The Colorado Sun reports on House Bill 1340, a revegetation measure aimed at shaping how Colorado cities handle “buy-and-dry” water deals when they purchase agricultural water and permanently remove it from farmland. The bill grew out of pressure from Lower Arkansas Valley communities, where farmers and county leaders have spent decades watching city water needs turn productive ground into dirt, dust, weeds, and economic loss.

The bill is expected to be signed by Gov. Jared Polis after support from the Department of Natural Resources, according to The Colorado Sun. Its main idea is simple enough that even a Front Range water lawyer might understand it: when a city takes the irrigation water off the land, the city should be responsible for properly reclaiming and revegetating what it leaves behind.

The Bullet Point Brief

• House Bill 1340 says that when irrigation water is permanently removed from farmland, the responsibility to revegetate and reclaim that land belongs to the entity removing the water. In other words, you do not get to drain the bathtub and then lecture the rest of us about cleaning the ring.
• The bill strengthens county involvement by requiring water courts to incorporate local revegetation criteria and enforcement mechanisms into change-of-use decrees. That matters because counties are the ones left with the aftermath, including roads, weeds, dust, and the privilege of explaining to residents why “regional cooperation” looks like rural Colorado eating the bill.
• The original bill had sharper teeth, including a limit tying water transfers to successful revegetation progress and a five-year water court oversight requirement. Those provisions got softened, because apparently asking cities to clean up after themselves was just a little too traumatic.
• Aurora Water says it supports the overall intent but has reservations about expanding this kind of legislation to other basins. Naturally. The minute rural Colorado asks whether these protections should apply beyond one valley, the room suddenly fills with “complexity,” “feasibility,” and other expensive words.
• The article notes this controversy is not limited to the Lower Arkansas. Thornton’s purchase of thousands of acres of water rights in Weld and Larimer counties gets a mention, which means this is not some faraway Arkansas Valley story. This is our backyard, our land, our water, and our future being loaded into a pipeline with a nice municipal logo on the side.

My Bottom Line

I have watched this bill like a hawk, and I find it fascinating because it finally forces Colorado to stare at the thing we usually pretend not to see. When cities buy agricultural water and dry up farmland, they are not just moving a resource from one spreadsheet column to another. They are changing the future of a community.

I sympathize with my fellow commissioners in those counties who told stories about mobilizing snowplows, not to move snow, but to push blowing and drifting dirt off county roads. That image ought to haunt every city council member who thinks rural water is just sitting out here waiting to be “optimized.” Those roads did not get dusty by accident. That dirt did not start moving because farmers forgot how land works. It happened because water left.

The metro area has a thirst that needs to be quenched, so it does what it always does. It turns to rural Colorado to see what else it can take. Food? We provide it. Fuel? We provide it. But lately the Front Range appetite has moved beyond ordinary supply and into something far more dangerous. Water, land, and our kids, our human and natural capital, are all being drained toward the glorious ruling city at the extreme detriment of rural Colorado.

I will always fight to protect private property rights. Land and water are property. But they are also more than property. Every drop of water that disappears south across the Weld County line takes economic opportunity with it. It is gone. Forever. And that hurts Weld County. It changes us. The reason we have severance taxes on oil and gas is because the mineral, and all the economic opportunity it represents, is severed from the land and taken away. The exact same principle applies to water. The exact same. When water is stripped from the land and exported, it takes a toll on the place it leaves behind.

So here is the question. Why not a severance tax on water? Tell me how it is different. Tell me why rural Colorado should absorb the permanent economic loss while growing cities get the benefit, the lawns, the rooftops, the tax base, and the ribbon cuttings. If water is going to be severed from the land, then the community losing it deserves compensation. Not a sympathy card. Not a glossy sustainability report. Compensation.

Source: The Colorado Sun