Where farming fails, water works

Farmers find water sales more lucrative than agriculture.
ROCKY FORD, Colo. (AP) -- Ron Aschermann could barely eke out a living raising melons, cucumbers, tomatoes or other crops on his 300-acre farm. But quitting the business will earn him more than $1.2 million.
Aschermann and scores of other farmers on the high plains of southeastern Colorado are selling water, which once produced melons, to the Denver suburb of Aurora. The prairie will retake land that has long known the plow.
"Yeah, it's not a healthy thing to do for the area, but let me tell you: Farming is not that great anymore either. These rural communities in almost any state you want to go into, they're all getting smaller," said Aschermann, a 60-year-old whose family has farmed in the area since 1911. "The best dollar for the asset right now is the water."
More shifting
The same thing is happening across the West as the nation's fastest-growing region shifts more water from farms to thirsty cities. Billions of gallons changed hands last year in eight Western states, and even more will flow in years to come. California recently approved a 75-year shift of water from desert farms to San Diego, the biggest transfer of its kind in U.S. history.
Colorado's Arkansas River Valley serves as a cautionary example for the West's burgeoning water market. For a one-time payment of $18 million, Aurora bought water to flush toilets and grow flowers at new homes, and a faded farm region will be dealt another blow. What was once the pride of Rocky Ford -- a 13-mile ditch that settlers dug by hand after the Civil War -- will be nearly drained. When the water leaves, more jobs and businesses are expected to dry up as well.
"Westwide, over the next 25 to 50 years, you will clearly see additional examples of what's happening in the Arkansas Valley," said Bennett Raley, a Denver water lawyer who is now the Bush administration's point man for Western water issues.
Farm towns fail
Farm towns in California have gone under when they lost their water to cities. The Owens Valley, in the high desert east of the Sierra, became a dust bowl when Los Angeles quietly acquired its water and flushed it down an aqueduct to the city 90 years ago. The 1974 film "Chinatown" was loosely based on what's been dubbed the "water grab."
"Whoever brings the water, brings the people," wrote William Mulholland, the aqueduct's legendary creator.
Many believe that water markets offer a way to get water to cities without completely wiping out farms.
Over the past decade, Northern California's rice farmers have sold smaller stakes of their sizable water supply to Los Angeles over years. Instead of viewing it as a threat to their survival, growers say selling water offers them a financial cushion if the price of rice collapses.
"I truly believe that it could be a beneficial part of a farmers' mix at a small level," said rice grower Don Bransford.
Brent M. Haddad, associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of "Rivers of Gold," takes a different view of water markets.
"The bell tolls when you create water markets because all this is going to do is shrink the number of farms," Haddad said. "What we're talking about is a means of moving from farms to cities."