WSP01021 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Origins :of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District o t." ~ ",1 '-If We celebrate 1937! it is the year in which Colorado passed th:e Water Conservancy District Acd when the Northern Colorado Water: Conservancy District was organized; and the year which witnessed the birth of a stat~ water agency, the Colorado Water Conservation Board. How much new wate* has passed under the bridge, through tl)e tunnel, into the reservoirs, ditches, crop rows, and homes of northern Colora4o in fifty years as a result of these landmatk accomplishments? How wa& it possible for a small group oE Coloradans to gain support of a New Deal legislature that was beginning to retreat from sp~nding policies of the first Roosevelt admini~tration? How did these same men solve t~e engineering problems, gain cooperation qfWest Slope farmers and politicians, seIIj the project- to Front Range farmers already ~eeling under a decade of drought and agrkultural depression, and persuade th~ appropriate governmental agencies to find funding and to enact appropriate enabliri'g legislation? Problems were legion. The story is complex. But the results are! worthy of a real celebration, Historically, fifty years is a short time, Historians tend to avoid working in recent time periods because they fear theif views might be distorted or new mat~rials might come to light contradicting tPeir interpretations ~nd conclusimi-s. But when something as significant as tHe Colorado-Big Thompson Proj'ect (C- BT) comes along to create such dtamatic changes in people's lives - asy~tem which is studied nationally and intertiationally for its engineering marvels and administrative successes - the historian has (ew qualms about digging into existing records to tell its story. This golden anniver&ary is, indeed, the celebration of a human and technological miracle deservirlg of an appropriate historical toast. : Let's go back to the early Thirties for a look at the forces which convinced northern Colorado to fight for!a major transmountain diversion proje~t. After Fragik lands. By the mid,1930sefosionsuch as this forced many farmers off the land NCWUA Certificate of Incorporation good years in farming during World War I, agricultural markets coIlapsed in the Twenties. While the rest of the nation was returning to Ilnormalcy," drinking bathtub gin and necking in the back seat of Henry Ford's new Model T, farmers were suffering. Prices for their products declined every year, and in those days, there weren't any government crop supports. Furthermore, the weather was fickle. Although the rains came, they were inconsistent, and from 1927 on, northern Colorado found itself increasingly 'caught up in a drought cycle, By the early Thirties, and as a result of fanners "shotgunning" in hopes of getting one good crop, fragile lands had begun to blow. By 1933, erosion was visible to both farmers and stockmen, and topsoil had begun to lift in huge, billowingclouds, . some of it reaching up to the jet stream before returning CO earth in the form of muddy rain over. eastern cities and the Atlantic Ocean. By 1935, as a resulrofan especially bad storm in Oklahoma, anA.P. correspondent applied the name lIDust Bowl" to an area stretching from the Dakotas south through northeastern Colorado to Texas. There just wasn't enough reliable water to sustain a fanning population much longer, Supplies had always been erratic in northern Colorado, but drought was making the problem intolerable. In addition, relief that might have been expected in the form of North Platte River water was reduced toa bad dream in 1933 when the Supreme Court denied reserved water rights to Colorado in the second Colorado~ Wyoming water suit. Meanwhile, the nation as a whole was deep into the Depression. While fann prices continued to decline, markets became harder and harder to find, and there seemed to be little hope for relief from either the state or the federal government, What to do? In good western tradition, the people of northern Colorado took the matter into 1UJJfuJ)~.J.WmmJ.'., ~J;mil>. ' 1!J.B1JJJW .f.~JI!i.~,.J-_7;'" ,/II!,//y"'V'''..-'.th..''''.--1'v"''"r..... ....,.....""""'."",..._,."".....="'... .......".="'.,.'.""".T...~... ...."'-"'..""T,'............u>O.._.. ~~~&~~~~~f~;2, ~~~~~~~f~~=i~~~; <'N,~/Y~,?~hr',~~f~0~~~~:~?:: . . )/"_,c (.,"".... rr:/8;fi.'..!;F.;:......., their own hands, Led by Charles Hansen, Fred Norcross, J., M. Dille and many' others, it was decided that the region had to have more water, that it wasn't going to come from the Laramie-North Platte systems,- and that their only chance was to bring it over from the Colorado River, then looked upon by attorney William Kelly and others as "the last water hole in the West." FOftuitously, Hansen, who was head of all relief agencies inWeldCounty, had been contacted by officials in Washington. They were looking for bona fide projects which might help the Public Works Administration sustain its budget at a time when federal funds were increasingly hard to come by. Convinced of the viability of a transmountain diversion plan, O. G. Edwards, presid~nt of the Greeley Chamber of Commerce, appointed a group known as the "Grand Lake Committee" in June of 1933, Its role was to make plans for surveys and funding of such a project. This committee eventually became known as the Northern Colorado Water Users Association (NCWUA) which lasted from 1935 to 1937 until replaced by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District (NCWCD) and its Board of Directors. It was the NCWUA which laid the groundwork for the successes of 1937. Although not officially incorporated as a mutual water association with powers to issue stock until January 25, 1935, the NCWUA decided early on that financing of a Colorado-Big Thompson Project would require support from a broad segment of the population, not just the immediate water users. 2