A bevy of state and federal officials came to the state Capitol on Monday to sign a first-in-the-nation agreement to help with water conservation efforts in the south fork of the Republican River on Colorado’s Eastern Plains.

At the same time, the agreement will help farmers who are allowing their groundwater wells to dry up to be able to continue farming on their land. 

Colorado leaders announce new water conservation efforts for Republican RiverTomHellauer
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The agreement is known as the Colorado Republican River Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP), which arose out of efforts started more than five years ago by then-Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture Don Brown, who worked alongside Mike Sullivan in the state engineer’s office. 

In an exclusive interview with Colorado Politics, Brown explained how this program will work.

The agreement was inked between the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, which will administer the program, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency. 

CREP is part of the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program, the country’s largest private-land conservation program. Administered by the Farm Service Agency, it leverages federal and non-federal funds to target specific state, regional, or nationally significant conservation concerns.

Under the program, “environmentally sensitive” land is removed from production, and farmers and ranchers are paid an annual rental rate, along with other federal and non-federal incentives. Participation is voluntary, and the contract period is typically 10-15 years, according to the USDA. 

Brown said Colorado’s CREP program is for irrigated acres.

“You’re retiring irrigated land, you give the well permit up to the state and no longer irrigate,” Brown said. 

“It’s always been a concern of mine that we have highly-productive soils,” he said.

Colorado’s CREP allows for irrigated acres to be placed under the program, in exchange for a reduced payment, but permits continued farming with crops suitable for dryland farming, such as corn, wheat or sorghum, Brown said, adding that this scenario is better for younger farmers, too. 

That reduced payment is equivalent to 75% of the rate on previously irrigated ground.

Brown believes this will also help with retiring wells in the current effort to satisfy the compact on the south fork of the Republican River with Nebraska and Kansas. That compact requires farmers in the Republican River Water Conservancy District’s south fork to retire 25,000 irrigated acres by 2030. So far, about 10,000 acres have been retired. 

That progress has been helped along by a $30 million pot of money approved by the General Assembly last year to pay farmers to shut down groundwater wells. 

While Brown doesn’t think farmers will line up around the block to get into the program, it offers an incentive to farmers with very good soil to retire their wells and allow them to continue to farm.

He also commended the efforts of USDA Commissioner of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who, he said, had been a driving force behind the program.

Prior to Monday’s signing ceremony, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said the program has been a long time coming for the farmers along the Republican River. He noted the contributions of Brown and Rod Lenz, the head of the Republican River Water Conservancy District, for bringing forward the challenges farmers faced between payment rates for dryland farming being too low and the existing program’s requirements too rigid, which he said discouraged farmers from enrolling.

In the 2018 farm bill, Bennet said, Congress – mostly under Brown’s instructions – worked to give the USDA the authority to allow dryland farming on retired irrigated acres. 

Until today, however, that type of program had never been implemented anywhere in the country.

“This agreement will help Colorado enroll more farmers in the program to keep the state in compliance with the compact,” Bennet said.

It will conserve more water while keeping the land productive and ensure that agriculture continues to support the economies of small towns and rural communities on the Eastern Plains, Bennet added.  

“These agreements are critical to helping our family farms and ranches adapt to a hotter, and drier future, and give them the chance to be able to pass their farms and their ranches to the next generation,” Bennet added.

The program still needs tweaking, which could happen in the farm bill currently under consideration in Congress, Brown told Colorado Politics.

Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., who also was on hand for the ceremony, said, “Every single person in this country eats the food that we grow in our, rural areas … Now we can have dry land farming, where it makes all the sense in the world.”

Dan Gibbs, executive director of Department of Natural Resources, said as drought and climate challenges stress water supplies in Colorado, the Republican River basin faces “eminent threat to involuntary and uncompensated curtailment of groundwater pumping.”

“We know that this would result in devastating impacts to your communities, your livelihoods, and the state’s agriculture economy. Maintaining compact compliance in the Republican river basin is critical,” he said. 

Lenz, the head of the Republican River Water Conservancy District, said the agreement is not perfect. 

“But it is certainly going the right direction,” Lenz told Colorado Politics.