Searing heat and lack of rain are drying up snow-fed rivers, shutting irrigation ditches, forcing ranchers to sell cattle and feed hay, and draining reservoirs, in a drought that could be the worst in Colorado history.
Crops and rangeland are withering in the heat, for lack of rain.State water officials said Thursday that by summer's end many Colorado reservoirs will be empty.
"It's worse than 1977 in some areas, and 1977 was the worst on rec-ord," said Jeris Danielson, state engineer. "There's just no snowpack, and flows are falling off every day."
Danielson's office is shutting off water to irrigation ditches all over the state. The usual runoff was so low in some places that ranchers got no water whatsoever. The La Plata River in southwestern Colorado now disappears before water reaches the New Mexico line.
Dolores County has been declared a disaster area, and Montezuma, Archuleta, La Plata, Moffat and Rio Blanco counties have asked for help.
Russell Kennedy, a water commissioner who has been forced to shut headgates on La Plata that lead to ranches, said the water is "just not flowing. This year, some didn't get any at all. It's pretty severe."
Most city water supplies throughout Colorado appear safe, because of reservoirs, except for the town of Gypsum, near Eagle. Gypsum has only a few days' supply and must borrow or buy water, said Orlyn Bell, water engineer in Glenwood Springs.
The problem dates back to February and March, when the usual late-winter snowstorms never happened. By the end of April, snowfall in the mountains ranged from 20 percent to 70 percent of normal.
A hot, dry spring melted that snow quickly and virtually no rain has fallen since.
The White, Yampa, Colorado and San Juan rivers all are running very low, Danielson said. The East River, near Gunnison, is running one-third as much water as it was two weeks ago. On the Arkansas and Platte, "there just isn't much flow left," he said.
The Colorado River runoff peak was the second lowest on record, and the river is falling daily. The Shoshone Power plant at Glenwood Springs has called for water from upstream users, something that doesn't usually happen until September.
That will probably mean releases of water from Williams Fork, Dillon and Green Mountain reservoirs by next week, Bell said. Those reservoirs allow the Front Range cities to divert water from the Colorado.
Front range reservoirs could be drawn down to record low levels by autumn, said Larry Simpson, general manager of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. The demand out of Boulder Reservoir couldn't be met Thursday and agriculture users in Weld and Larimer counties were given pro-rated amounts.
"Crops in Weld and Larimer counties are about as meager as I've seen them," Simpson said.
Most Colorado reservoirs are currently near full, due to previous wet years and the early runoff.
In the southwest, McPhee Reservoir on the Dolores River has "plenty of water," said general manager John Porter. But near Dove Creek, an area not yet on the Dolores system, ranchers are beginning to sell cattle and feed hay.
The livestock sale barn at Cortez, which normally sells 200 cows a week in midsummer, is selling 600 to 800 a week, said foreman Troy Lichliter.
Many of the cattle are coming up from the Navajo Indian Reservation to the south in Arizona and New Mexico.
Western Slope counties and San Luis Valley are considered in drought, with the southwest and northwest corners of the state "extremely severe," said Bob McLavey, acting deputy agriculture commissioner.
Disaster rules allow the federal government to pay for half the cost of hay and allow grazing and haying of land set aside under conservation programs.
The U.S. Forest Service on the Western Slope also has put ranchers on notice that the 60,000 cattle and 50,000 sheep may have to come off the range early if normal July rains do not materialize.