Jay Fetcher and other ranchers in northwest Colorado measure snowpack each winter using their barbed wire stock fences.
A healthy level is called a three wire winter, when the snow piles up past the third wire above the ground. But on Feb. 9, the region was experiencing a zero wire winter.
“We just have no snow, and I have never seen it, in my 75 years here, I have never seen this,” Fetcher said Monday as he navigated patches of mud on his ranch in the Elk River valley north of Steamboat Springs.
Many of the hills and meadows surrounding his ranch were brown and bare. The thermostat on Fetcher’s truck read 50 degrees, and the last patch of snow was melting fast off the roof of a barn.
This year, Fetcher’s ranch is on the frontlines of record-low snowpack across the West that is adding a sense of urgency among seven states to finalize a plan for how to conserve the dwindling Colorado River.
The snow in the nearby Zirkel wilderness melts into the Elk River and irrigates Fetcher’s fields before the water eventually joins the Colorado River and flows to millions of people downstream.
But things have been changing near Fetcher’s ranch over the past decade, and it could have implications for states competing for the water supply.
Since 1951, the Fetchers have tracked how long the snow stays on their meadows by marking the date in a little red journal. The data shows the snow is melting sooner in the valley.
“In the past 10 years, the snow leaving the meadow has moved up by 12 days,” he said. “This winter is a real indication of climate change, with bare meadows in the middle of February. I mean, what date am I going to write down for (when) snow left the meadow this year? Did it ever come?”
The dwindling water supply in the Colorado River basin is driving intense negotiations among the seven states over how to share it in the future. Some forecasts predict water levels at Lake Powell could get so low this year that its dam would stop producing electricity. States have until Saturday to come to an agreement and the pressure has been building.
If they don’t, they might end up fighting each other in the Supreme Court.
Downstream states, including California and Arizona, say Colorado and states in the upper basin should pitch in with mandatory water restrictions during dry years.
But leaders in the Rocky Mountains are digging in.
They say ranchers and cities are already enacting conservation plans, and more cuts should not be forced on them.
“If we don't choose how to live within the river's limits, the river will choose it for us, and she will not be gentle,” Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top river negotiator, said in a speech to a water conference in January. “Operations (of the river’s reservoirs) must be supply based, not demand based, not entitlement justified, and not built on a hope that the next big year will save us.”
Negotiators in the lower basin are calling for compromise. J.B. Hamby is California’s water negotiator.
“It’s going to take everyone chipping in and making the necessary (water) reductions to balance the supply with the demand we have moving forward,” he said during a speech last month.
Sitting on a patio on his ranch in northwest Colorado, Fetcher said Monday he’s not confident the lower and upper basins will resolve their differences anytime soon.
He said he’s willing to donate some water he doesn’t use each year downstream to California, but under current regulations, he would risk losing his water rights under a ‘use it or lose it’ system.
“I know that we will be able to irrigate these meadows just fine, because of our water rights, because of where we are, because of the ranch being on the Elk River. So from a personal standpoint, I'm okay with it,” he said. “The challenging question is, what happens with the lower basin? They're just going to have to think about how to get by with less water and not have so many golf courses out there.”
The deadline for the seven states to agree on a long-term plan for how to conserve the Colorado River is Saturday.
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.