By Tom Ribe
Busy cities, gleaming ski areas, young families hiking and biking in the latest gear; this is the Colorado outsiders may think they know. But the state is not all prosperity and leisure. It has areas struggling with poverty right in some of the most stunning scenery in America. In the middle of the state’s southern border lies an area most Coloradans either don’t know about or don’t want to talk about: the San Luis Valley.
Baked in relentless sun, the San Luis Valley traces the top of the Rio Grande rift, a vast split in the North American continent hidden under the sagebrush and struggling farms of the valley. Alkali soils, drifting sand and graying wood abandoned farms dot the valley between two ranges of 14,000 foot mountains. Immigrant workers contend with seasonal work and bitterly cold winters.
Standing like a vast dry moat protecting the San Juan Mountains from the urban areas to the east, the San Luis Valley is a nearly 7500-foot-high expanse between the San Juan and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The valley sprawls across an area the size of the state of Delaware, gathering meager streams into the headwaters of the Rio Grande as it begins its flow south to New Mexico, Texas and Old Mexico. Alamosa, the biggest town in the valley was once the hub of railroads transporting billions of dollars worth of ore from one of the richest silver and gold mining areas in the US to Denver and the wider world. Today, Alamosa struggles with a declining agricultural economy, few tourists and a small state college.
And it’s cold here! The San Luis Valley is one of the coldest places in the contiguous United States with winter temperatures well below zero. The San Juan Mountains to the west cast a great rain-shadow over the valley. What little water flows into the valley soaks into groundwater or leaves the valley in the Rio Grande. Little water flows from the massive Sangre de Cristo Mountains into the Valley.
Only 7 inches of precipitation a year fall on the valley. Yet a vast agricultural enterprise covers the south end of the valley where farmers grow potatoes, alfalfa, and hay. Most of the land grows livestock feed that is trucked away to dairies in southern New Mexico. Yet as time goes by, the aquifer that these farmers pump is dropping rapidly, creating a crisis for an already struggling region.
Water and Less Water
According to Colorado College, Rio Grande water and ground water irrigate 550,000 acres of the San Luis Valley. Aquifers of fossil water are dropping rapidly and with global warming raising temperatures, increased evaporation fuels a water deficit. The State of Colorado is telling farmers to radically decrease the amount of groundwater they pump. And if the aquifer doesn’t stop declining, some estimate 100,000 acres of farmland will need to be abandoned to meet Colorado’s interstate and international water conservation obligations.
The growing water shortage creates a sense of doom and uncertainty over agriculture in the Valley.
While potato production feeds people, raising cattle feed strains water supplies in the arid Southwest. More than 80% of agricultural lands grow cattle feed in the Southwest. Much of it goes to dairies in southern New Mexico which relocated from southern California when water and pollution restrictions raised the cost of doing business there. Alfalfa and hay growers in the San Luis Valley truck large amounts of feed to southern New Mexico and Texas dairies, in effect exporting water from the valley.
Ten thousand residents live in the San Luis Valley yet one in 4 people is hungry, 1 in 3 children are growing up in poverty, and homelessness is ten times the national average. One homeless shelter, La Puente Home, serves an 8,000 square mile area with a total population of 47,000 and it runs on grants and donations.
Meanwhile even farmers are making less than $70,000 a year and Front Range cities covet the water in the valley, hoping to pipe it across the mountains to rapidly populating cities like Colorado Springs. Their efforts to buy Valley water in the last 20 years inspired public demand to protect Valley water which supports migratory birds at three National Wildlife Refuges.
Hope
A bright spot for the San Luis Valley is Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. Managed by the National Park Service the park spans 150,000 acres. Here winds from the Valley drop blowing sand against a curve in the 14,000-foot-high mountains creating a massive pile of dunes that attract around 440,000 visitors per year. The park also has water rights and its associated wetlands host birds and other wildlife while recharging the aquifers.
Tourists come through the Valley on their way to three ski areas to the north and west that have some of the best snow in the Rockies. Wolf Creek Pass, Monarch and Crested Butte ski areas are safely away from the freeway crowds. Even so, the San Luis Valley faces an uncertain economic future. Hot springs, respite from Front Range crowds, and a feeling of a bygone era may be a thread of hope for residents among some of the most stunning scenery in the Southwest.
Alamosa is a dump.