Article Contributed on: 6/15/2008 10:12:35 AM
NO WATER - NO FARMS - NO FOOD
Year round, supermarkets sell baskets of flavorless red things they call berries. Where did the flavor go? Check the labels. You'll find that the berries grow in far away often foreign lands, in places with cheaper labor and laxer environmental control. They are picked before they are ripe, then shipped great distances. Shipping uses fossil fuel, jacks up the price and reduces the nutrient value. That the berries are flavorless should tell us something. That we're being stiffed!
With summer in the air, we can move beyond this travesty. Across the state, farmers' markets brim with fresh produce, celebrating the end of our long cold and windy winter. These small farmers, many of them from family-owned farms, reawaken our taste buds, first through our noses, with the season's first strawberry harvest. Don't miss these luscious mouthfuls. They are the "real thing."
Even though people throughout the United States are more aware about food-security, "food-miles" (added fuel cost of shipping food long distances) and locally-grown produce, Colorado's farmers' markets remind us of a pressing concern: NO WATER - NO FARMS - NO FOOD.
Water is our on-going issue. Colorado is the only state in the Union that serves as the headwaters for l7 other states. Yet somehow there is not enough to sustain Colorado's own food supply? This is the third consecutive summer that farmers along the South Platte suffer with no water from the shut-down wells. This loss represents 30% of the total irrigated acres in Colorado, a good quarter of the state. Farms are at great risk. Something needs to be done NOW. Will Colorado's second most lucrative income source (recreation being first) be eliminated?
Not just food supplies are at risk, but also water quality and other environmental concerns. The facts are these: The sum total of surface storage capacity on the South Platte River is approximately 1 million acre feet while the aquifer holds an estimated 10.5 million acre feet on the main stem of the river. If the tributary aquifers to the South Platte River are included (Big Thompson, Cache la Poudre, Saint Vrain, Bijou, Crow Creek, and the host of other smaller creeks) the estimated aquifer storage is 28 million acre feet. There is 28 times more water stored in the combined aquifers than all of the lakes and reservoirs along the South Platte River! In order to sustain the South Platte's stream flow, the aquifer must be pumped and used (conjunctively) along with surface irrigation.
Water quality in the aquifer is being totally overlooked! If the aquifer is not pumped and recharged with fresh water, the leached down salts will continue to concentrate in the aquifer and destroy the irrigated farmland. Also, the numerous abandoned exploratory wells are sources for the introduction of heavy metals, including uranium and bacteria into the aquifer. These foreign substances will continue to concentrate if the aquifer is not replenished and refreshed through pumping.
Our mountain snow pack has set a new decades-high record. The run off is under way. This water will again go to Nebraska, leaving Colorado dry. Last year 60 thousand acre feet beyond our commitment flowed to Nebraska. Does this make sense?
Our State Legislature recently vetoed a bill to turn on the wells, betraying its commitment to act for the benefit of our state and its citizens. We're talking not just about farmers, but about you, the consumer who has the right to all of the above. How unconscionable to destroy recreation as well as agriculture.
Support your farmers' market. Savor all the farm-fresh produce. Bring your neighbor and get the word out of our fresh food supply's precarious situation. Immediately contact your legislators: including members of the Agriculture, Livestock & Natural Resources & Energy Committee: House, Representative Curry,chair person, 970-209-5537, Gallegos, Fischer, C Gardner, Hodge, Looper, McFadyen, McKinley, McNulty, Rose, Scanlan, Solano, Sonnenberg -Senator Isgar, chair, 970-385-7664, Schwartz, Brophy, Gibbs, Harvey, Romer, and Taylor. If you won't help us with this simple request, who will? Remember, it's your food!
Together, we the people, have the power. Now is the time to exercise it and make the difference. And savor those strawberries.
ColoradoWaterUsers.org
Dorothy Thomas Phelps