Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande by David Stiller (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by:

• Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande by David Stiller
• Amahia Mallea (bio)

Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande By David Stiller. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2021. Pp. 188.

The focus of Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West is the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. The valley is bounded by the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the seasonal snowmelt forms the upper Rio Grande River, which greens this intensely irrigated valley.

The Colorado Doctrine of water law that developed in the mid-nineteenth century, first with mining and then with agriculture, became the prior appropriation water law that now governs this valley and the U.S. West. The law is often summarized as "first in time, first in right," and it allows water to be controlled by private interests, despite being a valuable public resource.

Environmental historian David Stiller's perspective on water is shaped by his personal experience as an "irrigator"—an identity differentiated from a landowner and conveying a more specific set of challenges than "farmer." Stiller seeks to build empathy for the irrigator and to enumerate the insecurities faced by rural agricultural communities dependent on overpromised water resources in a time of drought, population growth, and climate change. Stiller doesn't sugarcoat the economic and environmental challenges; he acknowledges that the San Luis Valley, like the arid West, has a mismatch between expectations and reality that is historically rooted.

Adding to the history of western water and land use—like Donald Worster's classic Rivers of Empire (1992)—this monograph draws attention to the Rio Grande, instead of the oft-discussed Colorado River. Although the back-of-the-book summary highlights the Indigenous Utes and the Hispanos (Spanish settlers in the 1850s who used community-based irrigation called acequias), the author does not say much about the process of dispossession. The text is focused on the Anglo-American farmers who arrived after the U.S. Civil War and who continue to dominate the valley today. More attention to the legacy, culture, and management of acequias would have further differentiated the Rio Grande and presented historical alternatives for organizing and operating water systems.

Stiller connects irrigation technologies to resource exploitation that harmed communities. Four main canals were in place by the 1880s, initiating the first era of unsustainable development in the San Luis Valley. This canal-building boom and "bonanza farming" (p. 37) left the Rio Grande dry [End Page 722] for downstream users in New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. Earthen dams upstream, and the Elephant Butte Dam downstream, sought to address water limitations and inequity. Flood (as opposed to furrow) irrigators raised the water table in the San Luis Valley, allowing for junior water right holders to access well water. Basically, irrigators redirected the river and created an aquifer in the valley. Postwar well drilling was largely unregulated, and by the 1970s, a wildcat era of pumping, center-pivot irrigation was common. Though center pivot was more efficient, it was "a double-edged sword" (p. 85); the number of junior water rights holders bypassing prior appropriation increased productivity and further taxed resources. Additionally, starting in the early twentieth century, the extensive subirrigation resulted in soil salinity that damaged farmland.

The boom and bust of innovation followed by resource exploitation has not created stability for agricultural communities. Stiller concludes that "only innovative thinking attained a limited degree of equanimity" (p. 122), by which he refers to the collaborative efforts of irrigationists, conservationists, and regulators. These include the 1938 Rio Grande Compact, water districts, and a twenty-first-century computer model mapping the valley's hydrology, which created data for decision-making. Outside menaces to the valley—like state intervention or urban thirst—have united San Luis Valley residents to address problems cooperatively.

This development of water resources in the upper Rio Grande remains relevant. Current challenges include recurring droughts, climate change, and the pressing demand for water coming from urban Colorado. The metropolitan Front Range has the money to purchase water, and willing sellers exist, but the regulating water...