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Greetings from SW CO.We just got the bad news today.Farmers will get only 4.5% of allocated water this year.This means only one cutting of hay instead of the usual 3 to 4 cuttings.I remember 2001 when it was the same way herds were sold off as we could not over winter them.Ranchers who sold hay to Chicago racetracks for top dollar were now importing hay from NY to feed their cows.Looks bad I expect beef prices to go down this year and then skyrocket after that new supply is gone.We will recover again but will suck till then.Pray for the monsoons this year we need them more than ever.
Greetings from SW CO.We just got the bad news today.Farmers will get only 4.5% of allocated water this year.This means only one cutting of hay instead of the usual 3 to 4 cuttings.I remember 2001 when it was the same way herds were sold off as we could not over winter them.Ranchers who sold hay to Chicago racetracks for top dollar were now importing hay from NY to feed their cows.Looks bad I expect beef prices to go down this year and then skyrocket after that new supply is gone.We will recover again but will suck till then.Pray for the monsoons this year we need them more than ever.
That's not in the plans. It is to depopulate the country and the world. Eliminate meat products and fossil fuels. Call it crazy, but I've seen this tried once before. The greens will have their way right before the marxists kill them off. O'course we will be at the head of the longest of lines - stairway to heaven
How flammable is cannabis, anyway? could cacao be cultivated here in Colorado? Would either of them contribute to, or in the alternative, mitigate, the risk of wildfires?
Well, suzco you could probably measure how flammable cannabis is by first experimenting with small amounts of it. Time how long it takes to smoke a bowl or puff a joint down to its very last seed. Do this and keep a record of your results until you have smoked the equivalent of 40 acres of cannabis. Subtract the weight of all the sweat given off by the mule which was used to plow the field, then multiply the resulting number by pi R squared. Keep in mind that mass equals force times acceleration (m=f X a) and carry the 6. Hint: Once you get the results from your calculations you will see immediately that cannabis will only make the wildfire situation here worse.
Cacao on the other hand, is native to Peru and Columbia - two countries where the High Andes Mountains dominate the landscape just like the Rockies do here in Colorado. You might think that our state would be perfect for growing Cacao. We have the high altitudes, and if we just sit back and wait for somewhere between 10 to 50 years, global warming will have advanced to the point that the average temperature in Colorado will be equivalent to what it is in today's tropical zones, Columbia and Peru included.
But before you run out and buy cacao futures, stop long enough to remember that even 50 years from now, we will never gat an average of 100 inches of rain per year like they do in Columbia. And while our crisp mountain air is going to start feeling downright soggy (due to warmer temps causing the air to become more saturated with water droplets), the new humidity records in Colorado will be at most half the normal humidity as measured today in those cacao fields far to our south. So, cacao is going to be a no go in Colorado for at least 80 - 100 years (scientists vary in their estimates).
Greetings from SW CO.We just got the bad news today.Farmers will get only 4.5% of allocated water this year.This means only one cutting of hay instead of the usual 3 to 4 cuttings.I remember 2001 when it was the same way herds were sold off as we could not over winter them.Ranchers who sold hay to Chicago racetracks for top dollar were now importing hay from NY to feed their cows.Looks bad I expect beef prices to go down this year and then skyrocket after that new supply is gone.We will recover again but will suck till then.Pray for the monsoons this year we need them more than ever.
Yeah, it was on the front page of the Cortez Journal, and the news was much worse then what I had been led to believe when I first started this thread.
From the Journal (emphasis my own);
Quote:
Runoff from below-average snowpack is forecast to result in the lowest project irrigation supply in McPhee Reservoir history.
According to most probable forecast, Dolores River Basin snowmelt is expected to deliver 95,000 acre-feet of water to McPhee Reservoir, just 32% of the average 295,000 acre-feet average, reports the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center. The forecast could also continue to drop.
~snip~
Full-service farmers of the Dolores Project are expected to receive just 1 inch per acre of irrigation water, or 4.5% of the 22 inches per acre provided when the reservoir fills, reports Ken Curtis, general manager for the Dolores Water Conservancy District that manages McPhee.
The forecast of 1 inch per acre is “the worst ever” for the Dolores Project, he said. The reservoir first filled in the late 1980s.
The amount of water predicted for this year is not enough for even one normal crop of alfalfa. With a full supply farmers typically get three to four crops of alfalfa per year. Farmers will be forced to consolidate crops into smaller acreage to produce anything on the limited water.
This year’s forecast shows McPhee Reservoir will fill less than 40% of its 229,000 acre-feet active capacity, according to forecast models. The reservoir had no significant carryover supply from last year’s water season.
Water shortages are across the board, except for domestic supplies for municipalities...
I have been heartsick every since I read that story in the Journal. I certainly won't be growing a garden this year and I doubt that my peach and apple trees will bear any fruit. But my woes are completely trivial compared to what the family who runs this ranch will have to endure.Their livelihood has been stripped away just like that, and the past few years have hardly been anything to brag about either.
I remember 2001 just like you do, Parfleche. I was living in Norwood then and I had formed the habit of stopping by the local diner every morning for coffee. The atmosphere in that place would have been better suited to a funeral home rather than a diner. The tables near me would be filled by men wearing cowboy hats and John Deere caps. Their faces were carved with deep lines from too much sun and too much wind and too much worry. They were still trying to hang on to some of their stock at that point, but it was a losing proposition. Week after week, all summer long, one rancher after another would be forced to cave, and I listened to their stories with my face buried in my coffee cup.
Hard, hard times such as I had never seen before, and now they appear to have returned. I pray that this year the monsoon will come roaring back and that it will rain all the way from the beginning of July to the end of September. If anyone reading this is a person who prays or just sends out good thoughts, we sure could use a prayer or two sent out on the behalf of the hardworking ranchers and farmers of Colorado's Four Corners region and also their wives and their children and everyone else here who earns their living through agriculture related activities.
Some excellent thoughts on here! I am a meteorologist, and agree with many of the statements made above. I lived near Pagosa Springs recently (for about 3 yrs) but we left in 2019, because the writing was on the wall regarding water shortages and increasing desertification into the region.
I now live in the mountains of West Central Idaho. While our water situation here is generally good, I have concerns that the rapid development in the Treasure Valley/Boise area (and also increasing drought years) could start to impact our region more every year. Thankfully, I live in a valley that drains a very large area of mountains, so I don't see an immediate problem for our local communities, but the future still concerns me greatly.
I sometimes think of these small indoor water usage conservation tips as a parody of what a real conservation effort should be. Having a lawn that requires irrigation (even if done efficiently) will quickly zero out any of these small indoor water savings. Most water utilities that serve residential customers in the west don’t mandate any outdoor conservation but will provide a list of best practices for both indoor and outdoor use (the indoor use ones usually include turning water off while you brush your teeth). Instead they could restrict outdoor watering to 1 or 2 days per week and make a real conservation impact.
Only just now read your post, and I'd like to respond.
Here in the Four Corners we do have mandates on outdoor water use if you happen to live in a town or city. The town of Cortez usually has some kind of outdoor water use restrictions in effect depending on the local level of drought. One of my favorite yards in my old neighborhood is planted solely with sage and rabbit brush (chamisa). It actually looks pretty nice, especially when the rabbit brush comes into bloom in the late summer and fall.
However, there's a paradox to conserving water for outdoor residential use. The more water we conserve, the more water is available. For example, if everyone in Colorado Springs landscaped their yards with chamisa and sage, the city's reservoirs might end up much fuller than what they are now. Along comes a developer who wants to build a new neighborhood way to the east of town, adding to the city's sprawl as it inexorably marches to Kansas. Since there's now enough water the new housing project gets the thumbs up, and 20,000 thirsty newcomers move to Colorado Springs. Continue this exercise enough times and the law of diminishing returns is going to hit the city's water supply in a major fashion.
The Southwest simply can't support all its millions of water gulping residents now; attracting new flows of people from other parts of the country will mean disaster. It's high time that our state and local governments recognize this.
Only just now read your post, and I'd like to respond.
Here in the Four Corners we do have mandates on outdoor water use if you happen to live in a town or city. The town of Cortez usually has some kind of outdoor water use restrictions in effect depending on the local level of drought. One of my favorite yards in my old neighborhood is planted solely with sage and rabbit brush (chamisa). It actually looks pretty nice, especially when the rabbit brush comes into bloom in the late summer and fall.
However, there's a paradox to conserving water for outdoor residential use. The more water we conserve, the more water is available. For example, if everyone in Colorado Springs landscaped their yards with chamisa and sage, the city's reservoirs might end up much fuller than what they are now. Along comes a developer who wants to build a new neighborhood way to the east of town, adding to the city's sprawl as it inexorably marches to Kansas. Since there's now enough water the new housing project gets the thumbs up, and 20,000 thirsty newcomers move to Colorado Springs. Continue this exercise enough times and the law of diminishing returns is going to hit the city's water supply in a major fashion.
The Southwest simply can't support all its millions of water gulping residents now; attracting new flows of people from other parts of the country will mean disaster. It's high time that our state and local governments recognize this.
I appreciate your response CR, and I actually felt somewhat regretful about making that reply to Pika’s earnest suggestions. But as to your point, I’m not sure that conservation by existing residents is really going to enable more growth. My city, requires new development proposals to guarantee that they will provide the water shares necessary to support the new households. I suspect that this is common - politically it’s fairly easy to add these sorts of restrictions to the development process. A smart city is going to require that new water rights are provided by the developer rather then trying to leverage any additional water that happens to remain in the reservoirs because of successful conservation efforts. I think that the only possible way that conservation is going to enable more growth would be if the per capital usage went down enough to affect the formulas used to determine how much water is needed to support X amount of new households. If the formula is based on 110 gallons per person per day vs. 130 gallons then a developer could conceivably build more homes for the same amount of water shares. But I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing if the amount of water used is the same. We don’t have negative population growth in this country (although I personally think that would be good) so we should at least try to reduce the per capita resource usage.
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