Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande

by David Stiller

Overview

Water has always been one of the American West’s most precious and limited resources. The earliest inhabitants—Native Americans and later Hispanics—learned to share the region’s scant rainfall and snowmelt. When Euro-Americans arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century, they brought with them not only an interest in large-scale commercial agriculture but also new practices and laws about access to, and control of, the water essential for their survival and success. This included the concept of private rights to water, a critical resource that had previously been regarded as a communal asset.

David Stiller’s thoughtful study focuses on the history of agricultural water use of the Rio Grande in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. After surveying the practices of early farmers in the region, he focuses on the impacts of Euro-American settlement and the ways these new agrarians endeavored to control the river. Using the Rio Grande as a case study, Stiller offers an informed and accessible history of the development of practices and technologies to store, distribute, and exploit water in Colorado and other western states, as well as an account of the creation of water rights and laws that govern this essential commodity throughout the West to this day. Stiller’s work ranges from meticulously monitored fields of irrigated alfalfa and potatoes to the local and state water agencies and halls of Congress. He also includes perceptive comments on the future of western water as these arid states become increasingly urbanized during a period of worsening drought and climate change.

An excellent read for anyone curious about important issues in the West, Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West offers a succinct summary and analysis of Colorado’s use of water by agricultural interests, in addition to a valuable discussion of the past, present, and future of struggles over this necessary and endangered resource.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948908801
Publisher:	University of Nevada Press
Publication date:	06/15/2021
Edition description:	1
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

David Stiller is an environmental historian and former consulting hydrologist with more than thirty years of experience in mining, hazardous waste remediation, water supply, environmental policy analysis, irrigation, and agriculture. He owned and operated an irrigated farm and landscaping nursery and served on the board of directors of one of western Colorado’s largest irrigation companies. He also is the author of Wounding the West: Montana, Mining, and the Environment. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

1 The River, the Valley, and Early Customs with Water 3

2 Mining and Farming-One Fed the Other 11

3 A Doctrine for Water Takes Shape 18

4 Agriculture Settles In 26

5 Era of Bonanza Farming 32

6 The Role and Importance of Storage 39

7 Making an Aquifer 46

8 The Compact and the Closed Basin 56

9 Competing Interests Butt Heads 62

10 A Fire and a Kitchen Sink 72

11 Crisis in the Valley 82

12 Collaboration as an Economic and Cultural Tool 92

13 Elsewhere in Colorado and the West 105

14 A New Normal 118

Epilogue 126

Acknowledgements 133

Notes 137

References 147

Index 159

About the Author 165

Editorial Reviews

Mr. Stiller serves as a well-informed guide for those wanting to better understand the challenges facing irrigated agriculture today. He understands water and agriculture and the importance of water in economies heavily based on irrigated agriculture. He has a feel for the uniqueness of place, the people who devote their lives to farming and to managing water so others can farm.”
—Lawrence J. MacDonnell, Western Historical Quarterly

“Stiller’s book is useful for several audiences. Students of water and Colorado history will find that the book gives greater shape to an understudied region. Water professionals should find both insight and resonance in Stiller’s interviews with water managers and his ability to demonstrate the interrelationship between geography, infrastructure, and law.”
—Michael Weeks,Environmental History

“A useful lens for viewing current western water dilemmas.”
—Hannah Holm, Director of the Hutchins Water Center at Colorado Mesa University

"David Stiller takes the reader on a 600-year journey through time, tracing the West’s most valuable commodity—clean, unpolluted water—through generations of agricultural uses and legal battles. This book shows how centuries of aggressive water use can have unintended consequences, and how those consequences can be compounded by a changing climate and altered patterns of precipitation, sounding a warning note that treating streams and rivers as commodities to be owned and profited from rather than natural dynamic systems to be safeguarded can ultimately result in disaster for the local communities—human and nonhuman alike—that depend on them."
—Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project

From the Publisher