Podcast transcript:
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Erin O'Toole: You're listening to KUNC's Colorado Edition. I'm Erin O'Toole. Today, I'm joined by reporter Adam Rayes for something different. Hey Adam.
Adam Rayes: Hey Erin.
O'Toole: So, you've been reporting this series of stories about wells drying up and decades-old legal commitments looming over the Republican River basin in Northeast Colorado. People there are scrambling to save the river, secure their community鈥檚 economies and prepare this region for a possible future without irrigated farming. I hadn't really heard of the Republican River 鈥� and I'm guessing that's the case for many other folks 鈥� but it's such an important part of Colorado's agricultural landscape, I wanted to devote time for the river's story. So. Where do we begin?
Rayes: During a visit to Yuma County last December I decided to drive over to the closest part of the Republican River鈥檚 South Fork.
O'Toole: That鈥檚 in north-central Colorado, along the eastern border with Kansas and Nebraska
Rayes: And what these communities and this region are dealing with really hit me as I pulled onto the dusty road leading to the Bonny State Wildlife Area, parked and got out next to the bumpy blue line where my GPS told me the river should be.
O'Toole: And?
Rayes: And nothing. No flowing water in that riverbed.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: Not what you want to see.
Rayes: I followed the dry riverbed as far as my little sedan could handle. Wanting to learn and see more, I hopped in Deb Daniel's truck the next day. Daniel is the river鈥檚 conservation district manager. Growing up, the Republican River sustained her family鈥檚 farm. Even with the truck, she struggled to maintain traction at points.
Daniel: So, the thing is, if we were to go upstream four or five miles, there's flow.
O'Toole: So, water still flows for most of the Republican鈥檚 453-mile stretch.
Rayes: Right, like on the North Fork, in the northwest part of the county, where it flows all year. But that鈥檚 just one of three tributaries that feed the main body of the river. All three begin in or flow through Yuma County en route to Nebraska and Kansas.
O'Toole: And while the North Fork and the main body of the river are still flowing, the other two tributaries in Colorado, including the South Fork 鈥� the one you visited with Daniel 鈥� are struggling.
Rayes: Partly because there is such an overgrowth of trees and silt along the riverbed, Daniel says鈥�
Daniel: That it completely disappears.
Rayes: We passed a dilapidated visitor鈥檚 center, abandoned campsite shelters and a long-unused shooting range before reaching a bridge overlooking the Bonny Dam and a basically empty reservoir.
O'Toole: I鈥檝e seen the video and pictures you took of the dam. It's just so striking because the rest of the dry riverbed wouldn't be as obvious to anyone not looking at a map. But here, the plains fold down into a v-shaped hole that snakes into the back of this dam. Signs of erosion remain, a reminder that water once flowed here.
Rayes: The only word I had for it in that moment and now is 鈥渉aunting.鈥�
Daniel: Yeah, isn't it?
Rayes: It really is. It's really haunting.
Daniel: This was a drop spot for a resting place for waterfowl as they were migrating back and forth鈥� cranes and geese and ducks and and and now it's all gone. Yeah, it's really depressing.
Rayes: In 2011, the state drained the reservoir to help fulfill the terms of an 80-year-old compact with Kansas and Nebraska.
Rayes: Climate change, drought, and more threaten the rest of the river. The North Fork naturally sent about half as much water across the Colorado-Nebraska border last decade as it did in the 1960s.
Daniel: Every year, it's going down. We cannot let that completely dry up like this has.
O'Toole: In 2017, the six Colorado counties that rely on the river for irrigation brought in nearly $2 billion in agriculture sales. That鈥檚 significant, that鈥檚 almost a third of the state鈥檚 total ag production value.
Rayes: It is huge. As the North Fork flows decrease, people who farm these plains stand to lose their livelihoods. And some are already starting to.
Learn more about the basin鈥檚 declining water levels in part one of KUNC鈥檚 series:
Rayes: The night after my first visit to the South Fork, I stayed at Doc鈥檚 Bed and Breakfast in Wray.
O'Toole: The second-largest, but still very small, city in Yuma County.
Rayes: I got to know the owner, 60-year-old Joyce Kettelson as she made breakfast. She was kind and very open about herself and her community. But when we inevitably got to talking about the South Fork and the drained reservoir, her bright demeanor turned somber.
Joyce Kettelson: Water is just getting less and less. The wells are not as capable as they were 20 years ago.
O'Toole: I understand she was a farmer, she used to raise pumpkins along with her husband, Phil.
Rayes: For about three decades. After he died suddenly five years ago, she tried to maintain the family farm with her son, but鈥�
Kettelson: I just could not figure out how to pay the taxes, pay the water costs, pay the insurance and make it all work out. It just doesn't support that and a livelihood for my son and I.
Rayes: Two-thirds of their farmland was sold to larger farming operations in 2021. Her son manages what鈥檚 left without her, using the revenue to support just himself and his family.
O'Toole: Will he be able to stay afloat on what鈥檚 left?
Rayes: Maybe, but Kettleson expects it will be tough and says her son has some really tough calls to make in the future. They also sealed up one of their wells as use costs rose and the water level in it dropped dramatically.
Kettelson: Yeah. Yeah, it's very low.
Rayes: Low river flows are partially the result of water in the ground surrounding it being used up mostly to irrigate farms.
O'Toole: And, in turn, groundwater isn鈥檛 replenished because the river鈥檚 limited flows and reduced rain can鈥檛 penetrate and stay in the ground.
Rayes: Exactly, It鈥檚 a dynamic Kettleson has long been aware of:
Rayes: Correct me if I'm wrong. But it sounds like the factors that you were weighing there were the water longevity for the community and your family's economic security?
Kettelson: Right. Correct. Exactly.
O'Toole: How does someone make that kind of choice?
Kettelson: You base it on your family's economic security because we want to continue to stay here.
Rayes: But with their well getting so low鈥�
Kettelson: I don't know that it ended up really being a choice, it was just like the only way. it really was the only way.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: Making this even harder, Kettleson and her husband saw a similar water crisis unfold while growing up in the San Luis Valley.
Kettelson: My parents, at one time, their house well went dry. They did not have water in their house鈥� It was really scary.
Rayes: That influenced the decision to grow pumpkins in Yuma County. They use less water compared to crops like corn and potatoes. Apparently, it was once a fairly successful operation.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: How did they not go running and screaming from farming after the first bad water experience?
Kettelson: There was more than once that I asked my husband, Have we lost our minds? What are we doing? But what we had to weigh against was, it was a lifestyle. Phil knew it was his passion. We both were raised on a farm. We wanted to provide that for our children.
O'Toole: More farmers will have to seal off wells like Kettleson did.
Rayes: And not just be because of an unfortunate lack of water. An agreement between the three states requires Colorado to shut down 10,000 irrigated acres by 2024. Kettelson says she doesn鈥檛 think it's a great solution鈥�
Kettelson: But at this point, it seems like it's the only solution.
Rayes: Most of it has to happen near the South Fork.
O'Toole: And within the next two years! The river conservation district is offering to pay farmers to stop irrigating.
Rayes: But just a third of that 10,000-acre goal has been met. I asked groundwater district manager Nate Midcap why farmers resist giving up irrigation.
MidCap: I wouldn't call it resistant. I think they know what needs to be done. The state engineer certainly has a history of proving that he's not afraid to turn off wells to meet compact compliance.
Rayes: A booming market for irrigated crops, like corn and wheat, over the last two years made it hard to convince farmers to exchange those profits for the irrigation-shutoff payments. Last November, the river conservation district board voted to double water use fees to also greatly increase the amount they offer to farmers who shut off irrigation鈥�
MidCap: They've known that they've needed to retire them for eight to 10 years. But the actual process of getting the fee increased has taken at least nine months.
O'Toole: Well, what鈥榮 been the holdup?
MidCap: People don't like to spend money, right? They want to do their business as cheap as possible for as long as possible. And there's human nature to just wait to the last minute until you absolutely have to do something. And we're kind of at that point.
Rayes: In MidCap鈥檚 spacious office in downtown Wray, giant maps line the walls. Some seem very, very old. Three of the newer ones were鈥�
MidCap: Depicting kind of where the water is sitting underneath the ground. So imagine it like a lake. The deepest part would be the yellow.
Rayes: He points to a large yellow splotch extending from the state鈥檚 eastern border on the first map labeled 鈥�1975鈥�. Then to a smaller one on a map labeled 2000. Then one forecasting 2028鈥�
MidCap: It will continue to shrink until they either pump it out or find an alternative to get some water in here.
O'Toole: That seems a bit dire to me.
Rayes: And yet, MidCap 鈥� who is also a cattle rancher 鈥� later added he has a lot of hope. He thinks Yuma county can sustain itself on the remaining groundwater for another century.
MidCap: But they have to work through the bigger issues of the basin.
Rayes: MidCap鈥檚 confident enough irrigated acres will be shut down by the 2024 deadline. But, that鈥檚 not all. Another 15,000 must shut down by 2029. He's a lot less confident about that.
O'Toole: After the first 10,000 acres get retired, irrigated farms will see less competition for their crops, boosting their value. And their wells will likely last longer because they鈥檙e sharing less.
Rayes: Exactly.
Daniel: But we're between a rock and a sword. There is no other option.
Rayes: That鈥檚 Republican River Water Conservation District Manager Deb Daniel again. She says if they fail to shut down enough wells by the deadline, legal agreements with the state of Kansas could force Colorado鈥�
Daniel: To shut off irrigated ag in northeast Colorado, and we can't let that happen.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: All of it? Or just enough to make up the difference?
Rayes: Probably all of it, from the northeast corner of the state to the middle of Kit Carson County. Things could change, but as the law stands now the state can't just shut down some wells in the basin. If forced to shut down any, it has to shut down all.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: Wow, that's quite the weight on the shoulders of locals.
Rayes: Some folks say the local control the state gave this basin is both a blessing and a curse. Daniel remembers asking when she started working in water here why the state left so many aspects of compact compliance to local control instead of taking charge itself.
Daniel: And so, so in other words, you're going to let us pump ourselves dry and do we have you or us to blame? And he said, yea, you're pretty much going to have yourselves to blame if you pump yourselves dry. And that made me pause a bit. At the same time, that just reinforced that we have to do something for us.
Learn more about a plan to save the South Fork and the consequences of failing to retire all 25,000 acres in part 4 of KUNC鈥檚 series:
Rayes: One morning in Yuma County, I traveled down a pebbled, dusty road, almost parallel to the Colorado鈥檚 eastern border, traveling north. I was driving to see a pipeline, which is crucial to the legal agreement that manages the river across the borderline.
O'Toole: So this pipeline is on the river鈥檚 North Fork, just west of the Colorado-Nebraska border in northern Yuma County.
Rayes: And for the past few years, Tracy Travis has had the grim task of getting the pipeline running.
Tracy Travis: It's not a job that I would like to have, but somebody has to do it.
Rayes: Travis does this work seasonally, splitting the rest of his time between farming and bus driving.
O'Toole: And, again, the North Fork is one of the river鈥檚 only parts in Colorado with consistent water flow.
Travis: We pump water out of the ground and into a tank which flows over into a 42-inch pipeline that runs about 12 miles down to the river.
Rayes: It pumps out about 20 million gallons of water daily beginning in November, usually.
Travis: It's not a good thing for the people in this area because we're giving our water up.
Rayes: A lot of mixed feelings about this pipeline in this area. to understand why it鈥檚 needed 鈥� you need to know what was going on decades ago, in the 1930s.
Rayes: Today, the river is described as not even "deep enough to drown in."
O'Toole: But in 1935 it flooded, killing dozens. A reporter who was there describes:
You could see all sorts of devastation and crop damage and roads washed out鈥� I鈥檒l never forget that day.
Rayes: Up to that point, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska managed the water in their respective borders independently. After the flood, the states wanted to prevent future disasters.
O'Toole: The federal government said it would help with the construction of dams and reservoirs.
Rayes: But only if the states found a way to manage the river cooperatively.
O'Toole: After a three-year negotiation, the Republican River Compact was signed in 1943.
Learn more about the history of the basin and the compact in Part 2 of KUNC鈥檚 series:
O'Toole: So, we left off talking about the Republican River Compact, which Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado agreed to in 1943.
Rayes: It requires certain amounts of water flow between the three states. And in the decades that followed, Yuma County Commissioner Robin Wiley says:
Robin Wiley: A lot of wells were drilled 鈥� And that really increased the viability of irrigated production, especially in Yuma County, but throughout our entire basin.
Rayes: He and his family have farmed here since the 1950s. He says it鈥檚 likely his grandfather and father knew little about the compact, until Bonny Reservoir鈥�.
Wiley: Was built right in our backyard. I think they realized that there was a compact, signed at the time, but no inclination on really how it was going to impact us.
O'Toole: Even if his relatives had carefully combed through every page of the compact, they would have missed the part that now impacts water users the most 鈥� because the word 鈥済roundwater鈥� wasn鈥檛 in the original document.
Wiley: There was no inclination that the groundwater was tied to the surface water.
O'Toole: Meaning if water wasn鈥檛 pulled directly from the river or the ground immediately around it鈥�
Rayes: Colorado assumed it didn鈥檛 affect the river鈥檚 flow which is the primary measurement for compact compliance. That assumption was challenged in 1998 when Kansas sued Nebraska over its groundwater use.
Wiley: And then Colorado got drug into it 鈥� That brought all this to the head.
Rayes: The case, like most interstate compact disputes including the second time Kansas sued over the same issue, went to the Supreme Court.
Justice Elena Kagan: In this case Kansas and Nebraska ask us to settle a dispute over their rights to the water of the Republican River.
Rayes: The court ruled the fact that using groundwater affects river flows is enough to make it inherently part of the agreement.
O'Toole: Okay. So Colorado didn鈥檛 officially recognize the connection prior to the ruling, but that doesn鈥檛 mean the state was treating groundwater as an unlimited resource.
Rayes: Not at all. In fact a permit system started here in 1965.
Brown: I'm pretty proud of Colorado, actually. We were way ahead.
Rayes: That鈥檚 Yuma County farmer Don Brown.
Brown: I mean they were still drilling wells in Nebraska permit-free 15 years ago.
Rayes: When we met, he had this giant, tattered, decades-old map spread out over a conference table in his office. With a large transparent disk, he shows me Colorado鈥檚 process to determine how many irrigation wells they would allow within a given area.
Rayes: Colorado predicted its permit system could shrink groundwater supply 40% within 25 years.
Brown: The bottom line is we're still pumping from it.
O'Toole: How much water did they actually end up losing in that 25-year span?
Rayes: Depends. The area around the South Fork lost about 20%, while the area around the North Fork lost a lot less. But keep in mind, it had already been heavily depleted before the 1965 permit system.
Brown: About 430 feet deep to shale here. Water level originally was probably around 90.
Rayes: A century ago, Brown鈥檚 great-uncle Charlie drilled a well here with simple tools and a horse. I visited one of the much deeper, more advanced wells Brown now uses, which were all permitted long ago. And he showed me one of the last well applications his father filed in 1972. It was denied.
O'Toole: So by the mid-1970s, most people couldn鈥檛 get a permit anymore.
Brown: It was over, it was just plain over.
Rayes: Brown also served as the state commissioner of agriculture under Governor John Hickenlooper. He thought a lot about that history during his tenure in government鈥�
Brown: They, to a large degree, had a lot of foresight. They knew they were mining it, and that if we were going to mine it, it had to be in an organized fashion to try to stretch it out over a lot of years.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: 鈥淢ining鈥� is an interesting word choice.
Rayes: Very purposeful on Brown鈥檚 part, because the state recognized that once the water got used, it would likely never be replenished.
O'Toole: So why let people use so much of this resource if they knew they were 鈥渕ining鈥� it?
Brown: That鈥檚 way above my paygrade, deciding whether you do or don鈥檛 use a resource. It's really easy to say with our mouths full that we shouldn't be using this resource, but we eat cheaper in this country than in any other country in the world. And so it鈥檚 really easy to say that we don鈥檛 need this here. And then one day we wake up and realize we're hungry. So, I don't know where one draws those lines.
Rayes: Ultimately, Colorado鈥檚 state engineer has final line-drawing power here. That office manages multiple interstate river compacts. Dick Wolfe was in that position about 10 years, until 2017.
Dick Wolfe: When I reflect back on it, I don't know if there's too much more we could have done differently.
Rayes: As water levels dropped, the interstate agreements forced officials to make many sacrifices.
O'Toole: Like draining Bonny Reservoir on the river鈥檚 South Fork in 2011.
Wolfe: I'd have to say that was the toughest one.
Rayes: That's out of all the hard decisions he made in 24 years of working in water in a state full of water crises.
O'Toole: Clearly Wolfe didn鈥檛 want to do this. So why was draining the reservoir helpful here?
Rayes: Well, I could let him break it down:
Wolfe: That's hard to explain.
Rayes: Or I could read out and explain the variable and exponent-filled formulas in the compact.
O'Toole: Ugh, well you know how much I love variable and exponent-filled anythings.
Rayes: I鈥檓 sure our audience does too. Or I could just heavily simplify it by saying this: Colorado鈥檚 efforts to reduce groundwater use didn鈥檛 guarantee the state couldn't fall out of compliance. And around 2010, it nearly did. So the way the compact鈥檚 math works 鈥� water evaporating from the reservoir made Colorado get less credit for the amount of water actually sent across the border from the South Fork. Ultimately, Wolfe says it comes down to this:
Wolfe: We can stop the irrigation of the crops out there or we can stop the evaporation.
Rayes: Colorado also almost fell out of compliance around that time because of dropping water levels in the North Fork.
O'Toole: Okay, so that鈥檚 why they bought out irrigation wells from a producer to create the North Fork pipeline we started talking about earlier.
Rayes: It dumps water from those wells into the North Fork, right before a measurement gauge at the Nebraska state line鈥�
Wolfe: It 鈥渞ings the bell鈥� we always used to say and helps us in meeting our quantities.
O'Toole: At $60 million, Wolfe says the pipeline was the most practical, cost effective option to keep Colorado in compliance. It takes another $600,000 to run it every year.
Wolfe: It is a little ironic that the problem we got into for compact compliance was because of well pumping, and we're also using pumping from wells to get us to stay in compliance.
Rayes: Wolfe says that pipeline was never a long term solution, just a 鈥渂ridge to the future.鈥�
Wolfe: And then there's other decisions that will have to be made.
Rayes: There are a lot of ideas, but a full-formed, long-term cure is not yet in sight. Looking over the water flowing out of the pipeline 鈥� water engineer Tracy Travis thinks about the wells on his family鈥檚 farm back in Burlington.
Travis: When they were drilled in the 鈥�60s, they were about a thousand gallons a minute wells and now they're about 300 gallons a minute.
O'Toole: Those wells are far south of here, where groundwater levels are much lower and the Republican River鈥檚 South Fork barely flows. The deepest sections of groundwater are around the very-much still flowing North Fork here, so things are not nearly as dire.
Rayes: But then again, they once weren鈥檛 so dire on the South Fork either.
Rayes: I want to take us back to Republican River Water Conservation District Manager Deb Daniel鈥檚 truck near the South Fork. It was sometimes hard to get her and others to put the compact aside and just talk about what鈥檚 best for the river.
Daniel: I want to see this area survive and actually thrive. We cannot turn our backs on this compact or the really tough decisions we have to make.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: Makes me wonder if what鈥檚 best for the river and what鈥檚 best for the compact are at odds?
Rayes: Me too. So I asked her鈥�
Daniel: I think there would be a lot more cooperation between all three states if we could just talk about what's the best thing for the river. But because we're held to the requirements of that compact, I don't necessarily think that all of what we're doing is for the betterment of the river.
Rayes: 鈥nd Colorado State Engineer Kevin Rein鈥�
Kevin Rein: I don't really have a comment on whether this compact compliance effort overrides that鈥�
Rayes: And Kansas State Engineer Earl Lewis, who notes the agreement requiring Colorado to stop irrigation around the South Fork will almost definitely help maintain flows there.
Earl Lewis: It's probably somewhere in between鈥�
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: Before we go on, Adam, what made you decide to cover this?
Rayes: I drove the two hours to Yuma last November to join an advisory meeting organized by the local Colorado State University extension, just to listen to agriculture producers. No note-taking, no recording, little interjecting 鈥� only listening. People there repeatedly listed the water supply in the Republican River as a top concern. That told me they might see value in coverage of this.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: And the core of this rural reporting project is making communities, like Yuma County in this case, part of as many steps of the reporting process as possible, right?
Rayes: Yep! Be less extractive, more collaborative. Have ideas for stories come from the community, not me. And constant feedback seeking throughout and after to hopefully build more trust.
翱鈥橳辞辞濒别: And that extends to how we present this stuff too, right? The artists we bought the music from in this episode were both raised in and still live in Yuma County.
Rayes: And I'll introduce them to you more deeply in an upcoming story.
O'Toole: Well the most popular crops grown in northeastern Colorado, especially corn used in livestock feed, need a lot of water. So, Adam, is there any way to maintain that economy with less water?
Rayes: Well, there are black-eyed peas鈥�
Jason Webb: I'm like the Johnny Appleseed of black-eyed peas鈥�
Rayes: That's Jason Webb. This alternative crop is emblematic of both the benefits 鈥� and limits of the solutions being considered here.
Webb: Anybody I talk to, we're going to talk black-eyed peas.
Rayes: Webb is a field agronomist with Trinidad Benham 鈥� a Denver-based bean seed company. He works in Sterling, a rural city at the edge of Colorado鈥檚 Republican River Basin.
Webb: It's just so fascinating on how this plant can be manipulated by water and by fertility, where a lot of other crops can't.
Rayes: He says black-eyed peas not only can grow with less water 鈥� but the protein-filled plants actually prefer it. And Webb has gotten a handful of area producers growing them.
Webb: I have a lot of growers that say I would like to replace all my wheat acres with this.
O'Toole: Well, this sounds like a great idea, you save water, and the economy, by filling every acre with black-eyed peas. Which I think are delicious. Problem solved, right?
Rayes: Ehhh, there鈥檚 a catch鈥�
O'Toole: I knew it.
Webb: We can't put in thousands and thousands of acres or tens of thousands of acres of one crop and expect that market to hold up. Not without creating demand on the other end.
O'Toole: Which isn鈥檛 there like it is for corn and wheat.
Rayes: It could be someday, Webb says, but a lot would have to change. There are other limiting factors 鈥� like the fact that some soil types out here can't grow these beans.
Curt Sayles: There is no crop, there's no silver bullet.
Rayes: That鈥檚 Curt Sayles. His family has farmed in Kit Carson County since about 1980, near the South Fork of the Republican River.
Sayles: We've experimented with a lot of crops, and I guess I have an idle curiosity. You know, everybody would say, 鈥淥h, you can't raise that.鈥� And I'm like, well, who are they?
Rayes: Originally, they grew corn and wheat. But since 1998, he鈥檚 tried a lot of alternatives, including鈥�
Sayles: Sunflower, safflower, corn, millet, rye, chickpeas, flax, oats, soybeans.
O'Toole: And these are all the 鈥渄ry-land鈥� versions of these crops, right. So, instead of using the large metal apparatus that you see rotating around a pivot to water crops in many of this region鈥檚 farms, his fields rely on water that is already in the ground or from rain.
Rayes: Yeah. And for Sayles and other dryland farmers in the southern part of the basin, not-irrigating was never really a choice. They鈥檝e always lacked鈥�
Sayles: The water. We couldn't find that kind of water. So.
Rayes: The crop variety he uses also ensures plants are in his fields year-round, so he doesn鈥檛 need to churn 鈥� or till 鈥� dirt to start planting each season.
O'Toole: No-till and year-round planting are gaining popularity among producers like Sayles who say it decreases water consumption, boosts soil health and reduces the need for costly fertilizer and chemicals.
Sayles: It's not the crop by itself, it's the crop in the system.
Learn more about potential agricultural solutions in part 3 of KUNC鈥檚 series:
Rayes: Sayles and others I spoke to say many resist changing traditional farming practices. He says these methods can apply to farms that do have irrigation 鈥� or might be about to lose it. Though, he admits, it does involve some initial financial risk that not everyone can bear.
Sayles: If I'd known that I could extend my irrigating by doing these things 20 years ago, I think everybody would say, Yeah, I'd done that, you know?
Rayes: Farmers who quit irrigating鈥�
O'Toole: To help Colorado meet that requirement to shut down water use on 25,000 acres of farmland near the South Fork of the Republican River by 2029鈥�
Rayes: Can either turn those acres into untended natural grassland for a higher payout or switch to dryland farming 鈥� meaning they can still grow corn and such, but often at a reduced yield.
Rayes: As people work toward these and other solutions, few are under the impression that things won鈥檛 eventually change dramatically in the basin 鈥� even in areas that still have plenty of water.
Daniel: Everyone recognizes the fact that we have got to slow down depletions鈥�
O'Toole: That鈥檚 Republican River water conservation district manager Deb Daniel again.
Daniel: Because the longer we can have irrigated ag in this area, the longer our communities will have to adapt to not being able to have irrigation.
Rayes: Ultimately, clearing an easier path to that difficult future mostly falls on the shoulders of the basin鈥檚 residents. Consequences of their failures or successes will impact generations to come not just in the basin but across the state.
O'Toole: Hey Adam, before we go, I just wanted to note how cool it is that you talked to so many people on so many sides of this issue.
Rayes: Thank you Erin!
O'Toole: But I do wonder if you maybe dropped the ball a bit journalistically by not seeking comment from the Democrat River too?
Rayes: I鈥檓 just not about that kind of both sides-ism stuff (laughter). But in all seriousness, let鈥檚 talk about the river鈥檚 name for a moment.
O'Toole: Does it have anything to do with the modern political party?
Rayes: Absolutely nothing. It actually comes from European settlers observing a band of the Pawnee tribe, who are native to the basin and surrounding plains, and comparing their semi-democratic style of government to the philosophy of republicanism. They began calling this band, the Kitkahawki, that name and it eventually transferred over to the river itself.
O'Toole: So what did the Pawnee people call the river?
Rayes: According to Longmont-Based Pawnee Historian Roger Echo-Hawk, it was likely called:
Roger Echo-Hawk: The Kiraaruta.
Learn more about the river鈥檚 Pawnee history in part five of KUNC鈥檚 series:
Rayes: The word has two parts which are somewhat up to interpretation, he says, the first 鈥渞efers to a body of water鈥� and the second 鈥渢o intestines.鈥� Echo-Hawk says the plains were known for large herds of buffalo, which the Pawnee would hunt as they traveled along the river. They would then butcher the animals and wash their intestines and other organs in the nearby stream.
Echo-Hawk: So you can translate this word in various ways. But I translate it as dirty water or river.
Rayes: The word is a 鈥渏oyous鈥� one, he says, a reminder of what successful hunts entail.
鈥斺赌斺赌斺赌斺赌�
This podcast episode and KUNC's Republican River series were reported, written and produced by Adam Rayes.
Editing by Brian Larson, Sean Corcoran and Stephanie Daniel. Digital editing by Jackie Hai and Ashley Jefcoat. Music in this episode was purchased from two Yuma County residents. 鈥淟azy River鈥� is by Joey Ueymura and 鈥淟oveland Pass鈥� is written by Robert Anderson and performed by the Rufus Krisp band.
This story was produced as part of the initiative using community engagement to inform and strengthen local, regional and national journalism. America Amplified is a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
used with permission from History Nebraska [Collection name: RG4626.MI: Jensen Robert R.] taken from oyez.org under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Other audio taken from Freesound.org user and .
