Brief by Central Staff
Water – September 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Many San Luis Valley residents celebrated when Congress agreed to expand Great Sand Dunes National Monument into a national park, since it meant that one plan to export the Valley’s water would go away.
But maybe the Valley is already exporting water. Or so it appears, from this paragraph, discovered by subscriber Charlie Green; it’s from the Colorado Weed Management Association:
“Perennial pepperweed can be found in pastures, riparian areas, roadsides, and waste places. It has a limited range in north and south central Colorado from 5,500 to 8,000 feet. In areas where the weed grows in Colorado, such as in the San Luis Valley along the South Platte Drainage, the plant has taken over thousands of acres.”
Hmmm. If the San Luis Valley is “along the South Platte Drainage,” then Valley water is flowing in some directions that we didn’t know about. Or perhaps, as Charlie speculates, it’s just a missing conjunction.
Those bales of straw arranged along U.S. 285 in the northern San Luis Valley were not placed there by extra-terrestrials. According to the Colorado Department of Transportation, the idea was to channel storm and irrigation run-off so that it wouldn’t harm the roadbed. The CDOT person we talked to agreed that this wasn’t the year that the bales were needed.