MONTEZUMA COUNTY, Colo. — I started getting a bad feeling last summer. The nearby McPhee Reservoir, which provides water for 63,000 irrigated acres and, on good years, draws scores of boaters, seemed to be shrinking daily.
Then, we had no winter. Our better reservoir, also known as mountain snowpack, hit an all-time low in Colorado as well as in Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.
Boaters on the reservoir this summer are hard to find, and farmers are working with less than 15 percent of their usual allocated water. I can walk to McPhee’s islands.
Drought is nothing new here in southwestern Colorado, but this year, due to tangible and intangible causes, handling it seems harder.
On windy days, the dust works through your jeans and shirts. It gathers on your floors and windows. It tans your skin and gets in your eyes, ears and nose.
The dust, the wind, the drought, the heat and the wildfire smoke all start to take over daily life. Collectively, they mess with your head. Collectively, we’re struggling in much of the West, especially those of us working outside, with plants and animals.
Montezuma County sheriff’s deputies have the not-so-fun responsibility of acting as “water cops” in the summer. They’re the ones who are called when disputes arise between neighbors over irrigation rights from the myriad head gates, ditches and canals that control flow to those who have contracts for shares of water.
Sgt. Ryan Hancock told me that this year has been particularly challenging: It’s not one call with contentious neighbors, it’s multiple calls. It’s not a five-minute visit, it’s a half hour.
“Tensions are higher because they have much, much less water,” said Hancock, who can’t recall a summer as dry as this one.
Tensions are high because we have much, much less water.
Sgt. Ryan Hancock
Joe Lanier hasn’t seen it this bad, either. He’s a fourth-generation rancher in Pleasant View. I asked how he’s doing. “It’s funny you should ask,” he said with a polite laugh. “The last few days, it’s been easy to get depressed, to let the overwhelmingness of it take over.”
Lanier reduced his cattle numbers last fall and says he’s glad he hasn’t replenished his herd this year. He and his wife have six children, four of them still at home. At every mealtime, he said, they pray for rain.
I checked in with Doug Wilkerson, who manages the Carrica Ranch in west central New Mexico. At this time of year, he’d usually be going full tilt, tending to 500-800 yearling steers on Carrica’s 44,000 acres.
This year, due to the drought and for the sake of the land, the ranch has brought in none of the steers. Wilkerson has been trying to stay busy with repair projects, doing some welding, helping his wife, Haley, with their two kids. Rarely is he on horseback. “It’s super un-cowboy,” he said. “A shot to the ego.”
Haley is trying to raise sheep, but this spring all the lambs were killed by predators. When we spoke on the phone recently, the couple was heading north to the Navajo reservation to pick up a young livestock guardian dog. “Because I don’t want to go to jail for shooting wolves or bears,” Doug said.
The last few days, it’s been easy to get depressed, to let the overwhelmingess of it take over.
