“It’s a big job trying to keep track of everything, and then when you have people dropping their pump in — pretty soon it gets unfair,” UVWUA manager Marc Catlin said.
He said about 200 such pumps are registered, though he estimates as many as 300 hundred aren’t. Registering the pumps is not only a requirement but gives the association an idea of how much water to let into the basin’s ditches.
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Catlin said that if there isn’t proof of where water is being used, it is assumed to be wasted.
“The myth still lives on that we have more than we need,” he said.
Catlin said that on Friday afternoons after people get off work in the summer, the impact of illegal pumps on some ditches becomes noticeable as homeowners irrigate their landscaping.
“The ditches below go dry, and the farmers below — they’re making a living with it (the water),” he said.
“This isn’t about rationing people. We’ll just put some more water in the ditch so that when they turn on (their pumps) the water continues.”
He said irrigated farmland in the Uncompahgre Valley generates about $21 million per year in “first time sales just in the row crop industry.”
“So that’s a big part of the local economy. We don’t want to do anything to hurt that.”
The annual registration fee for a pump is $165 and can be paid at the UVWUA office at 601 North Park Avenue. A special sticker is used to identify registered pumps along the ditches. The association has 16 ditch riders who check the 575 miles of canals and laterals.
“If you don’t pay for the pump we’ll take it out,” Catlin said.
He said the association has been telling people to register as their unregistered pumps are found, but that the recent increase in the number of subdivisions has made this more difficult.
“We’ve been keeping track of the number of pumps for an awful long time. It’s just with this spurt of growth in the last five years, the number of houses that have gone up have been substantially more than what we’ve had in the past,” he said.
“And we’re trying to get them to do that this winter so they don’t have their pumping rights interfered with this summer.”
The Uncompahgre Project irrigation system diverts water from the Uncompahgre and Gunnison rivers to serve nearly 80,000 acres. It supplies raw water to the Project 7 Water Treatment Plant, which provides drinking water to the municipalities of Montrose, Delta and Olathe.
Contact Robert Allen via e-mail at roberta@montrosepress.com
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