ROCKY FORD, Colo. — Ron Aschermann could barely eke out a living raising melons, cucumbers, tomatoes and other crops on his 300-acre farm. But quitting the business will earn him more than $1.2 million.
Aschermann and scores of other farmers on the high plains of southeastern Colorado are selling water, which once produced melons, to the Denver suburb of Aurora. The prairie will retake land that has long known the plow.
"Yeah, it's not a healthy thing to do for the area, but let me tell you: Farming is not that great anymore either. These rural communities in almost any state you want to go into, they're all getting smaller," said Aschermann, 60, whose family has farmed in the area since 1911. "The best dollar for the asset right now is the water."
The same thing is happening across the West as the nation's fastest-growing region shifts more water from farms to thirsty cities. Billions of gallons changed hands last year in eight Western states, and even more will flow in years to come. California recently approved a 75-year shift of water from desert farms to San Diego.
Colorado's Arkansas River Valley serves as a cautionary example for the West's burgeoning water market. For a onetime payment of $18 million, Aurora bought water to flush toilets and grow flowers in new homes, and a faded farm region will be dealt another blow. What was once the town's pride, a 13-mile ditch that settlers dug by hand shortly after the Civil War, will be nearly drained. When the water leaves, more jobs and local businesses are expected to dry up as well.
"Westwide, over the next 25 to 50 years, you will clearly see additional examples of what's happening in the Arkansas Valley," said Bennett Raley, a Denver water lawyer who is now the Bush administration's point man for Western water issues.
Across the Arkansas River from Rocky Ford, Carl McClure, 65, president of the local farmers union, offers a tour of what happened to a neighboring county that sold most of its water to Colorado Springs and other cities.
McClure noses his pickup past Crowley County's closed railroad stations, empty storefronts and a shuttered car dealership. An alfalfa field has disappeared beneath the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility, a medium-security state prison. McClure retired after working there 12 years to supplement his farm income.
"This is what replaces farms when you take the water away," McClure said, gazing at the prison's floodlights and chain-link fence.
