For farmers, help will come from the government or the sky In this case, the house is nature, and it sets the odds that fish and farmers will wager their lives and livelihoods on. Farmers are always gamblers."īut there's a saying in gambling that the house always wins. "I'm hopeful that we get a good winter and we see lots of snow in the mountains," he says. I just never knew that would be this severe." And I knew that farming would never be easy to begin with. "With the current water situation, it does have me worried and concerned. Landan bought his first piece of land in 2017 when he was just 22 years old. "It's not looking much better for 2022 than it did for '21." Full allocation is 23," Brian Wilson said. "We had 1.7 inches of water available to us as farmers. Landan Wilson walks with his father Brian Wilson in Pleasant View, Colo. The farm used only 8 of their 110 fields in 2021. This year, the farm wasn't able to grow much given their water allotment they had to lay off 50 percent of their staff, who are mostly members of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The farm relies on the water from the reservoir to grow fields of alfalfa and corn. Owned by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, it's one of the region's biggest water users. Dry ground and higher rates of evaporation make it harder for water from snowmelt and rainfall to reach its destination - whether it's a Dolores River fish pool or the Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch Enterprise, a nearly 8,000 acre farm 40 miles downstream from the reservoir. It's so low that entire islands in the reservoir that should be underwater are visible.Īcross the Colorado River Basin, which includes the Dolores River and McPhee, higher temperatures due to climate change are making the landscape drier. The water levels at the reservoir are down more than 50 feet in parts. The McPhee Reservoir in Dolores, Colo., moves water through canals to farms dozens of miles away. Farmers at one ranch planted crops on a fraction of their fields
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