Sidebar by Ed Quillen
Water Conservancy Districts – April 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
In some ways, water conservancy districts represent part of the vision of John Wesley Powell. He may be best known as the leader of the 1869 expeditions down the canyons of the Colorado River, and in 1868, he was part of the first recorded climb of Long’s Peak.
Powell, who lost his right arm fighting for the Union in the Civil War battle of Shiloh, was more than an explorer and adventurer, though. He was a scientist who made careful measurements in his explorations of the West, and that made him conclude that there wasn’t nearly enough water to irrigate all the otherwise arable land.
How to allocate that scarce resource?
Rather than go on the usual “first-come, first-served” basis (and Indians don’t count), Powell proposed a new social and economic system in his 1878 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region.
Powell had little use for mining or industry in general; he believed agriculture was the only basis for a stable society. But crops wouldn’t grow in the “arid region” without irrigation, and the Homestead Act didn’t recognize the dry reality of life on this side of the 100th Meridian.
Homesteads were set at 160 acres. If the land was irrigated, that was more than a family could maintain — 80 acres was more like it, Powell said. If the land wasn’t irrigated, it was fit only for grazing, and 160 acres wasn’t nearly enough to support a family — Powell proposed 2,560 acres.
Rather than have the countryside chopped into the usual survey grid, Powell said the land should be organized by drainages and watersheds, and the surveyors would determine which land could be irrigated farms and which could be non-irrigated pasture. The surveyors would also designate reservoir sites.
Property lines would be drawn accordingly, and a homesteader could chose an 80-acre farm or a 2,560-acre ranch.
As for constructing and administering the dams and canals, “A general law should be enacted to provide for the organization of pasturage districts, in which the residents should have the right to make their own regulations for the division of the lands, the use of the water for irrigation and for watering the stock….”
Powell’s proposal ran into strong and immediate opposition from boosters and developers, who argued that “rain follows the plow,” and thus there would be ample water in the West. Plus, it smacked of socialism during the Gilded Age of American capitalism. Congress killed it.
But a tragedy like the drought and Dust Bowl of the 1930s can force political and social institutions to make some accommodations to geography and aridity.
Thus in 1937, Colorado passed a law allowing for the creation of water conservancy districts, and in some respects they resemble Powell’s proposed “pasturage districts.”
