Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Chris Lopez):
July 14, 2026
Retired farmer Ernie Myers spoke Tuesday to the threats and hostilities he faced as a groundwater irrigator and how he felt like a “whipping boy” for surface water farmers who complained “that I was pumping their water.”
Myers was the first to testify in protest of the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management as part of the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group opposition to the plan.
He served on the Subdistrict 1 board of managers from 2012 to 2016 and told Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales that “I was exhausted,” when he stepped down. “They beat me up mentally and financially.”
Myers and his family, along with Asier Artaechevarria, are asking Gonzales to reject the plan, which is designed to recover the unconfined aquifer through a one-for-one pumping mechanism — for every acre-foot of water pumped, an acre-foot of water must be returned to the aquifer — that limits pumping to the amount of natural surface water that comes into the subdistrict.
Groundwater irrigators with little or no natural surface water coming into their fields will have to offset their pumping either by purchasing surface water credits or paying a $500 per acre-foot fee, which Myers and Artaechevarria told the judge would put them out of business.
The plan has been approved by the Subdistrict 1 board of managers, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District board of directors, and the state engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources.
Artaechevarria told the court that he didn’t think enough had been done under the current plan of water management to try to make it work. Both Artaechevarria and Myers said they were willing to retire more acreage under the current plan and that the $500 acre-foot fee is beyond the economic means of groundwater irrigators.
“My land would have no value,” Artaechevarria testified, because he wouldn’t be able to market it for sale and wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage as a result.
“You can see the issue there,” he told the court.
Myers said it was after 2002, when the Upper Rio Grande Basin first experienced historic low flows from a lack of snow runoff, that he first began to feel targeted as a groundwater irrigator and had the feeling that surface water farmers were trying to put him out of business.
“I was pumping their water. I had no right to pump their water. I had a few farmers telling me, ‘I’m third, fourth generation. You’re a newcomer. You came in ’73 with your father. You have no right to do what you’re doing.’”
“And were there actually people saying that they intended to put you out of business?” SWAG’s attorney asked.
“Yes, yes,” testified Myers.
The Division 3 water trial is in its third week at the Alamosa Judicial Center.
