From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):
“If anyone in this country thinks the cities are not going to try and buy the whole thing, they haven’t been paying attention,” said John Schweizer, Super Ditch president. “This way the farmer gets to keep the water to sell as another crop.” Schweizer disagrees with recent objections raised about the Super Ditch exchange application in Division 2 Water Court that the movement of water will diminish flows in the Arkansas River…
He is concerned not only about Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District hunting for water rights on ditches in the valley, but also last year’s sale of more than one-quarter of the Bessemer Ditch to the Pueblo Board of Water Works. “If Woodmoor, or Pueblo, takes the water, it won’t come back for 100 years. I don’t understand the difference,” Schweizer said. “Why is it all right for them to buy up the Bessemer? The people will take the money, spend it and then they’re gone. If the water stays here, the money will be spent here.”[…]
The High Line Canal’s lease agreement with Aurora in 2004-05 was a demonstration of how a temporary contract can help farmers, Schweizer said. “In 2002, we didn’t have enough water to spit at,” he said. The next three years weren’t much better, but the deal with Aurora allowed farmers to sell the water, while keeping some land in irrigation. Since there are no deals yet for the Super Ditch, no one is sure how much land would be dried up. “We’ve talked about a 35 percent limit, but in a drought year, there’s not enough water. All the High Line lease did was help the farmers by giving them another crop, and the money from it was put back in the valley,” Schweizer said…
Schweizer said the water needs to stay in the Arkansas Valley to retain the ability to grow food locally and is convinced that when the time comes there would be no way to keep cities from taking the water, unless they could merely borrow it.