Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dennis Webb). Here’s an excerpt:
November 14, 2025
Some shareholders have sued the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association, contending they aren’t receiving their fair share of irrigation water and their livelihoods are being harmed…The plaintiffs have been “deprived of consistent and proportional water deliveries during critical irrigation periods since 2022,” which is when new association management took over, the suit says. Over that period plaintiffs also have been deprived of water owed to them based on priority water rights, the suit says.
“These failures have occurred even in years with above-average snowpack and available water. Despite Plaintiffs’ repeated requests to the UVWUA to correct these deficiencies, Plaintiffs continued to receive disproportionate, inconsistent, and insufficient water deliveries during the 2025 irrigation season,” the suit says…The suit says the plaintiffs have experienced problems including weeks without delivery during planting and growing seasons. One plaintiff, Tom Gore, reported going 60 days last year without expected water deliveries. Another, Frank Gilmore, has been able to run only two irrigation pipes simultaneously instead of the normal five and has lost entire cuttings of hay. Delayed irrigation last year left a third of plaintiff Dan Varner’s newly reseeded 34-acre hayfield unproductive, requiring costly reseeding, the suit says. It says the impacts to shareholders have included things such as failed crop rotations, increased cattle feed costs, reduced soil health, and loss of profit from hay and sweet corn yields…
The plaintiffs are shareholders receiving water from the Ironstone Canal system, one of the project’s primary delivery systems. The suit says the association’s delivery practices have deprioritized the Ironstone system and intentionally favored the East Canal system instead. The suit says that last March, Pope admitted in a meeting that the association was intentionally and disproportionately routing water to the East Canal system before delivering to Ironstone System shareholders, contrary to historical practice. It says that in July, Pope also acknowledged that the delivery of 10 cubic feet per second of priority water rights had been mismanaged that irrigation season. Pope said that corrective action would be taken, but as of August, the association had failed to restore full delivery of that water, the suit says. The suit says the association also has failed to regularly maintain association ditches by burning or clearing debris.
