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remembered unreliable summer flows near the tu rn of the century: “T he river used to be <br />so low,” he recalled, “we could cross it with just a common pair of Sunday shoes on <br />24 <br />without getting your feet wet.” In effect, the river would si mply sink away into the vast <br />aquifer below. <br />Unbeknownst to the early settlers, huma n activity had already begun to change <br />the character of both the river and the aquifer beneath it. In the upper reaches of the South <br />Platte, heavy farmland irrigation was causing what one contemporary called a “revolution <br />25 <br />in natural conditions.” This revolution was due to seepage water, an occurrence which <br />was articulated scientifically for the first time in the valley by L.G. Carpenter, a <br />researcher at Colorado’s State Agricultura l College in Fort Collins. In 1897, Carpenter <br />posited a “filling of the subsoil” by irrigati on runoff near the vall ey. Water levels had <br />26 <br />risen in some places by forty to sixty feet, and were continuing to rise. Before irrigation <br />came to the region, spring floodwaters common ly surged down the South Platte. But <br />beginning in the 1870s, irrigation companies bu ilt reservoirs to capture and save these <br />flows. When farmers applied this storage water to their crops, a substantial volume <br />soaked into the porous soil rather than flow ing away as floodwater, evaporating, or being <br />absorbed by plants. This seepage eventually reemerged in the river downstream, causing <br />volumes in the South Platte and its tributaries to rise. Most important to irrigators, the <br />flows became increasingly re gular during late summer a nd autumn, when the river <br />historically had been lowest – and when many crops most needed water. Carpenter <br />predicted these flows would only increase, valu ing them at more than two million dollars <br />24 <br /> Statement of Charles H. Lent, 1-2. Box 26, DEC. <br />25 <br /> Statement of Charles C. Huffsmith, 16. Box 26, DEC. <br />26 <br /> L.G. Carpenter, Seepage or Return Waters from Irrigation, The State Agricultural College Experiment <br />Station, Bulletin 33 (Fort Collins: Colorado Agricultural College, January 1896), 4, 51. <br />11 <br />