The Colorado State Website lists these changes in Colorado’s climate:
“Warmer and shorter winters, thinner snowpack and earlier runoff, less precipitation, with more falling as rain than snow; …longer droughts, longer and more intense wildfire seasons; lower river flows, less hydroelectric power production, degraded water quality and more stress on reservoirs.”
Colorado is drying out. Our rivers and aquifers receive less water every year, while more people move into the State, demanding car washes, golf courses and lawns.
I sympathize with landowners like Terry Everett and Frank McMurray who have ranched here for generations, and know what it takes to make a living in this dry country. They may be the last of a vanishing breed, and it is understandable that they have little patience with those who think that beef comes in shrink-wrap, water comes from a tap, electricity from a socket, and gas from a pump. Their way of life is threatened by high fuel prices and overpopulation. I was a petroleum exploration geologist for 35 years and watched my own breed lose 700,000 jobs because consumers wanted cheap oil from countries without environmental regulations more than the more expensive finding, developing and conserving it here.
Economies and climates change. We can lament the change or adapt. To survive, we must adapt. Our mining, petroleum and water laws were formulated when we assumed that our resources were inexhaustible. The landowner was given the rights to the wealth on and under his land, based on the assumption that owners would be the best stewards of the resources. This is like assuming that the free market would self-correct because corporate leaders have social consciences. We recently learned how costly those assumptions can be.
We are entering an era of intense competition for every natural resource in the world: water, metals, and fuel. Shortages create price spikes and generate immense profits for the few owners of the depleting resources, at the expense of the many consumers. Lawyers generate immense profits by representing both consumers and owners, and the battle is on. Laws are being rewritten to legalize the change from owner-takes-all to a system that requires resource owners to consider the larger community’s good as well as the owners’ personal wealth.
In Chaffee County, we see this change with the Friend Ranch development and Nestles’ water export proposal. Certainly the owners of the land and water rights can sell to the highest bidder; that’s the law. And certainly they must expect contention, as the larger community demands a share of the resources. We cannot stop Colorado from drying out, and we cannot replace the cheap supplies of oil that we wasted. But we can adapt.
Change challenges, but change creates opportunities. Adaptation doesn’t mean mere survival, but a better prosperity than can be measured by having more dollars, bigger houses and vehicles. There are win-win solutions everywhere, and there are better opportunities created by using Chaffee County water here, than as profit-makers for a giant Swiss corporation.
Ed Berg
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