Water Sale Holdouts Cite Other Values: Pueblo Chieftain

Home Browse Search

The Pueblo Chieftain Online I Saturday Images trade the water upstream of Pueblo and pump it Classroom Chieftain over the mountains to the Platte River valley. School District 60 School District 70 Pueblo Library District The sale will dry up about 3,000 acres of farmland. Buying the rest of the ditch would net Aurora about 5,000 acre -feet of water, enough by some estimates to provide for 5,000 families of four people for a year. The total project is expected to cost almost $20 million. Some of the folks who elected not to sell did so for purely pragmatic reasons. The Valco Inc. concrete company decided not to sell its two shares because the company uses the water to replace water that evaporates from gravel pit ponds. For others, selling would be just plain wrong. Sara Chambers, who works in the Otero County Department of Social Services, didn't want to sell the water from her small pasture and hay field near Rocky Ford. Raised on a farm in New England, she said she was brought up to consider herself a steward of natural resources. "I personally feel it's a grave disservice to the valley to sell the water," Chambers said. "Once the water is gone, it's gone." Fewer migrant workers will spend their money in town, Chambers noted, as will fewer farmers who will buy less diesel fuel and fewer tires and other local goods. "There's a whole lot of trickle -down economics that'll be gone," she said. The proposed sale also affects taxes. Non - irrigated land is worth a lot less than irrigated cropland. In Otero County, irrigated cropland is taxed at an income -based value averaging $775 per acre. The average value used to tax non - irrigated land, such as pastures, is only $15 per acre. The county, school district and other taxing http: / /www. chieftain. com /wednesday /news /display.php3 ?article =4 Page 2 of 5 04/22/2000