This story is the first part of a four-part series about three groundwater basins in Colorado. It was originally published by Big Pivots. The story was commissioned by Water Education Colorado and a version of it appears in the summer 2025 issue of Headwaters magazine.

To understand the predicament in the Republican River Basin of eastern Colorado, you need to appreciate the volume of water being hoisted from the underlying High Plains Aquifer. The most important component is the Ogallala.

Farmers and the few small towns in the Republican River Basin average 720,000 acre-feet of withdrawals annually. In one hot and dry year, 2012, they pumped 940,000 acre-feet. As a point of reference, Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest water body in the state, can hold 947,435 acre-feet.

Image

Groundwater mining cannot be sustained far into the future in many areas of the Republican River Basin. Wells in some areas have not declined while wells in other areas have declined 13 feet during the last decade. Pumping at existing rates cannot be maintained. Within 25 years, about a third of land that’s now irrigated will have no water. In other places, pumps already sputter.

“Sustainable” and “pumping” do not belong in the same sentence in this basin. The water of the Republican River Basin in the High Plains Aquifer accumulated from 18 to 4 million years ago.

Far from the snowmelt of the Rocky Mountains, it is recharged by minimal surface water. Based on studies, the Republican River Compact of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas assumes that 17 percent of the water on the surface trickles down through the ground to the aquifers. So, only very slowly is the aquifer recharged. It’s mostly an ancient bank account with now small, almost tiny deposits and fast-and-furious withdrawals.

The Republican River Basin and several other regions of the state rely largely on groundwater. In a 2024 decision, Colorado Supreme Court justices pointed out that it would be difficult to overstate the importance of groundwater given the state’s population and arid climate. The 285,000 wells poked into the earth across the state deliver 18 percent of Colorado’s water.

The Republican River Basin, the San Luis Valley, and the south metro area of the Denver Basin are all, to varying degrees, rethinking water — both its sources and uses. All three have historically relied heavily on groundwater, and all have made at least limited progress in shifting toward more sustainable groundwater use in the last 20 years. The cities have adopted policies that foster smaller, less water-intensive lawns. They have diversified their sources. Two south-metro water utilities that 20 years ago pulled nearly all their water from wells, today have lessened that dependency to 60 percent to 65 percent.

Farmers in the Republican River Basin and San Luis Valley have somewhat different challenges. They have taken action to use less water and to save their communities, but whether those actions match the scale of the challenges they face is another matter. Changes can best be achieved before emergency sirens wail. In the Republican River Basin, some already see a swirl of red lights warning of catastrophe ahead.

It’s going fast

The Republican River Basin consists of 7,000 square miles, an area slightly smaller than New Jersey. It is largely located within a triangle between Julesburg, Limon and Cheyenne Wells. A few businesses cater to travelers but agriculture constitutes nearly all of the basin’s economic foundation.

An average 17 inches of precipitation falls per year across the basin, less in some areas. High-dollar agriculture depends almost entirely upon water drawn from the Ogallala. A 2010 state report found that of the basin’s 600,000 acres then under irrigation, only 1,000 were supplied by surface water. Locals suggest the true number is far, far less.

Dryland farming prevailed until the arrival of high-capacity pumps and rural electrification in the late 1940s. Farmers in the 1950s began converting dryland areas to irrigation, dramatically expanding crop yields. Other farmers arrived to plow hitherto virgin turf. Twice in the 1970s, groundwater extraction exceeded a million acre-feet per year.

Image

Drafting of groundwater via 5,000 wells today produces a bounty of herbaceous crops. Most end up in the bellies of livestock. Two feedlots near Yuma alone can each hold more than 150,000 cattle and several others can accommodate 75,000. The basin also has three hog farms, several dairies, and an ethanol plant.

In 1942, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas allocated the waters of the Republican River and its tributaries in an interstate compact. The state engineer in 1973 ordered a moratorium on new wells. The most powerful limitation did not come until 1990. Rules were changed, reducing the allowed rate of depletion, effectively precluding new well permits.

Existing wells, however, were drawing down the aquifers in the Republican River Basin. Kansas in the 1990s complained that it was getting shorted by Nebraska. Nebraska in turn blamed Colorado. A 2002 settlement stipulation among the three states represented a new line in the sand. By whatever means, Colorado had to figure out how to deliver water to the downriver states.

Colorado responded by forming the Republican River Water Conservation District. In effect, the state gave farmers and others in the eight-county district responsibility for figuring out how to comply with the compact. To help achieve compliance, legislators gave the district authority to levy fees on irrigators. The fee, originally $5 per acre, has been boosted twice and is now $30 per acre annually.

This $15 million in annual revenue is used in several ways. An early project was a pipeline to boost the amount of water flowing into Nebraska. The pipeline carries water from eight wells previously used for irrigation. They had been drilled amid hills with sugar-like sand between Wray and Holyoke in the deepest part of the aquifer. The water from these wells flows 12.6 miles through the pipeline and into the North Fork near the Nebraska border. The wells are pumped from October to April, ensuring minimal loss to evaporation or riverine trees or grasses.

This pipeline, since its completion in 2012, has allowed Colorado to meet its compact delivery requirements. The cost of the wells, pipeline, and water rights was $72 million. Faced with declining production from these wells, the district in 2025 is planning four more wells and 9.5 miles of pipe at an estimated cost of $14 million to deliver what the compact pledges to Nebraska.

In another move toward compact compliance, Bonny Reservoir, a 165,238 acre-foot impoundment on the South Fork of the Republican, was drained. Prior to the 2011 draining, Bonny had delighted boaters and anglers but lost too much water to evaporation and seepage. Water now flows more efficiently downstream.

Image

More actions were needed to ensure Nebraska and Kansas received their apportioned water. Beginning in 2006, Colorado removed 30,000 to 35,000 acres from irrigation. A multi-state agreement in 2016 specified that Colorado would remove an additional 25,000 acres in the South Fork drainage by 2029. Dick Wolfe, then Colorado’s state engineer, was asked at the time how this was to be done. He paused a moment, then likened it to getting a haircut: a snip here, a snip there.

This snipping of irrigated acreage has been encouraged with financial incentives assembled from pots of local, state and federal funds. The money is delivered via two federal programs: the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP), and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The latter allows farmers to use the land for dryland farming or grazing.

By early 2025, the Republican River Water Conservation District had retired 17,120 of the 25,000 acres as required by the 2016 settlement. It was a milestone, a time for momentary celebration. The harder work lies ahead. Nearly 8,000 additional acres must be retired to meet the December 2029 deadline. If the goal is not met, the state engineer has authority to shut down wells. Nobody wants that, least of all the state engineer. To help sweeten the incentives in 2025, state legislators appropriated $6 million. This adds $750 to the $4,500 per acre paid to farmers participating in CREP and $750 to the $3,500 per acre in EQIP.

Using less water is the paramount challenge. This has been accomplished almost exclusively by taking land out of irrigation. There are other ways, too. Today, corn is king, responsible for about 85 percent of irrigated acres in the basin. It commonly receives 20 to 22 inches of supplemental water. A growing realization of late has been that less can be more. Planting fewer seeds — say 18,000 per acre instead of 30,000 — will save money and require less fertilizer. Fewer seeds will then require only 12 to 14 inches of supplemental water, meaning less pumping and shaving electricity bills. Lower crop yields can counterintuitively produce better profit margins.

Conversations are also underway about water-conserving crop alternatives: milo, millet and wheat, kidney and pinto beans, even black-eyed peas. It’s partly a matter of developing markets. Deb Daniel, the general manager of the district since 2011, has been toying with how to emphasize productivity strategies with the phrase “crop per drop.”

None of this adds up to the scale of the challenge, though.

Kenny Helling, a fourth-generation farmer from the Idalia area of Yuma County, believes more is needed than financial incentives to take land out of production. “Continuing to throw money at the problem won’t fix the problem,” he says. Ways must be found to keep land in irrigation, because irrigated land pays more in property taxes. Those taxes are crucial for operating fire departments, schools and other community purposes. “It’s a very big concern to me.”

The answers? Helling sees value in permits specifying reduced volume of pumped water. He would like to see more crop rotation.

Helling was a member of the Republican River Water Conservation District Board of Directors for nine years. He says the district needs other tools. The true authority for limiting pumping belongs to the eight groundwater subdistricts within the basin. They do not use it. Why?

“Everybody on those groundwater management districts are generally irrigators,” says Helling. “Most of them are neighbors. A lot of them go to church together. A lot of them might have kids and grandkids in school together. Nobody wants to make anybody mad. And so, unfortunately, the groundwater management districts do not use all the authority they could to restrict the amount of water used.”

Colorado legislators, he says, need to give the Republican River Water Conservation District more authority. It needs sticks, not just carrots. “We need to use less water.”

Tim Pautler told members of the Colorado Groundwater Commission something similar in May 2025. A dryland farmer from the Stratton area, he has served on the Republican River Water Conservation District’s Board of Directors for 21 years. He says that the board has accomplished almost no basin-wide conservation. It hasn’t figured out how to substantially reduce water use.

Most landowners who have taken advantage of the incentives have been irrigators who have less groundwater available in their wells — nearly all in the southwestern portion of the basin, where many wells were already sputtering. He says if reduced water use is the goal, the fees charged to farmers must be based on acre-feet of water pumped and not just on irrigated acres.

There’s no pretense of sustainability in the Republican River Basin. The water deposited over millions of years is now being mined. The task is to maximize value of the remaining water, to prolong the availability of the High Plains Aquifer. Few have yet been willing to talk about the gravity of the challenge.

“I hope enough water remains in the hole to sustain society,” says Pautler. “I hope we don’t go completely dry.”