The Area: A Brief water history
The San Luis Valley in southern Colorado covers nearly 8,000 square miles at 7,600 feet above sea level - the largest high mountain desert in North America. The “Valley” is bordered by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east (some reaching over 14,000 feet in elevation) and the San Juan Mountains to the west. The mountain peaks hoard moisture-laden clouds and leave little precipitation to fall on the valley floor – only about 7-8 inches annually. Melting mountain snows feed the Rio Grande River (the third longest in the U.S.) as it flows through the valley and then southward toward New Mexico and the Texas/Mexico border.
The Problem
In 2022, San Luis Valley farmers completed a potato harvest for the record books, but unrelenting drought has created problems of record magnitude for growers. Since 2002, below average precipitation has decimated groundwater levels in the unconfined aquifer of the Rio Grande Basin – the result of record low streamflow levels in the river. These record lows have caused the State of Colorado to issue an ultimatum to groundwater irrigators in the San Luis Valley: create a more sustainable use of groundwater in the Valley or irrigation wells will be shut off by 2031 or sooner.
What is an Augmentation Plan?
Colorado has a very strict water rights system, probably the most restrictive in the U.S. It evolved in the 1860s during the Colorado Gold Rush and later evolved into the concept of “first in time, first in right.” In 1876, this was more formally called the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation and became part of the Colorado Constitution.
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About Us
In 2021, the Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, Inc. (“SWAG”) was formed as a Colorado non-profit corporation to develop a plan for augmentation for its members’ groundwater irrigation wells. SWAG’s 257 member wells irrigate 17,317 acres of cropland in the San Luis Valley. Due to ongoing drought and unsustainable groundwater use in the San Luis Valley, all well owners are under notice from the State Engineer’s Office of Colorado that they must reduce groundwater use for irrigation or cease pumping by the year 2031.
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Plan For the Future
The Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, Inc. (SWAG) has purchased the 574-acre Shadow Ranch located six miles northwest of Del Norte, Colorado. The property includes two center pivot irrigation systems, senior water rights from the Atkins Ditch, junior water rights from Meadow Glen and Voss Seepage ditches, and one-half mile of prime river frontage along the Rio Grande River.
The Gunbarrel Road Alamosa Farm property is located approximately six miles northeast of Center, Colorado, and contains over 6,000 acres of land of which most was recently irrigated and under production. In 2022, the SWAG group acquired a lease/purchase option on the property to continue to cease irrigation of the land to reduce groundwater pumping impacts to the Rio Grande River. This reduction in groundwater pumping would be a component of SWAG’s augmentation plan to reduce depletions to the shallow aquifer of the river.