{"id":1088,"date":"2012-09-06T17:05:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T21:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/?p=1088"},"modified":"2012-09-06T17:05:51","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T21:05:51","slug":"farmers-vs-frackers-in-co","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/2012\/09\/06\/farmers-vs-frackers-in-co\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmers vs. Frackers in CO"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>For Farms in the West, Oil Wells Are Thirsty Rivals<\/h1>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2012\/09\/06\/us\/jp-DRILLING\/jp-DRILLING-articleLarge.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"330\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<div>Matthew Staver for The New York Times<\/div>\n<p>Bob Bellis filled his tanker at a hydrant in Greeley, Colo., in August to supply a drilling site. Lease deals with oil companies are important revenue sources for cities.\n<\/p><\/div>\n<h6>By\u00a0<a title=\"More Articles by JACK HEALY\" href=\"https:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/h\/jack_healy\/index.html\" rel=\"author\">JACK HEALY<\/a><\/h6>\n<div>\nGREELEY, Colo. \u2014 A new race for water is rippling through the drought-scorched heartland, pitting farmers against\u00a0<a title=\"More articles about oil.\" href=\"https:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/news\/business\/energy-environment\/oil-petroleum-and-gasoline\/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier\">oil<\/a>\u00a0and gas interests, driven by new drilling techniques that use powerful streams of water, sand and chemicals to crack the ground and release stores of oil and gas.\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nA single such well can require five million gallons of water, and energy companies are flocking to water auctions, farm ponds, irrigation ditches and municipal fire hydrants to get what they need.<br \/>\nThat thirst is helping to drive an explosion of oil production here, but it is also complicating the long and emotional struggle over who drinks and who does not in the arid and fast-growing West. Farmers and environmental activists say they are worried that deep-pocketed energy companies will have purchase on increasingly scarce water supplies as they drill deep new wells that use the technique of hydraulic fracturing.<br \/>\nAnd this summer\u2019s record-breaking drought, which dried up wells and ruined crops, has only amplified those concerns.<br \/>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not a level playing field,\u201d said Peter V. Anderson, who grows corn and alfalfa on the parched plains of eastern Colorado. \u201cI don\u2019t think in reality that the farmer can compete with the oil and gas companies for that water. Their return is a hell of a lot better than ours.\u201d<br \/>\nBut industry officials say that critics are exaggerating the effect on water supplies.<br \/>\nEnergy producers do not \u2014 and cannot \u2014 simply snap up the rights to streams and wells at the expense of farmers or homeowners. To fill their storage tanks, they lease surplus water from cities or buy treated wastewater that would otherwise be dumped back into rivers. In some cases, they buy water rights directly from farmers or other users \u2014 a process that in Colorado requires court approval.<br \/>\n\u201cThis is an important use of our water \u2014 to produce energy, which is the foundation of all we do,\u201d said Tisha Schuller, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. \u201cThink about the big users of water \u2014 agriculture, industrial development. All these things require energy.\u201d<br \/>\nIn average years, farmers and ranchers like Mr. Anderson say they pay about $30 for an acre foot of water \u2014 equal to about 326,000 gallons \u2014 a price that can rise to $100 when water is scarce. Right now, oil and gas companies in parts of Colorado are paying as much as $1,000 to $2,000 for an equal amount of treated water from city pipes.<br \/>\nThat money can be a blessing for strained local utilities and water departments, but farmers say there is no way they can afford to match those bids.<br \/>\n\u201cWe\u2019re not going to be able to raise the food we need,\u201d said Ben Rainbolt, executive director of the\u00a0<a title=\"Web site\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rmfu.org\/\">Rocky Mountain Farmers Union<\/a>. \u201cHow are we going to produce this with less?\u201d<br \/>\nIn the spring, during an annual auction of surplus water in northern Colorado, Mr. Anderson and a handful of other farmers were outbid by water haulers who supply hydraulic fracturing wells. Although Mr. Anderson ultimately got the water he needed as bids settled after the auction, the mere shadow of energy producers at the auction offered a glimpse of their growing presence in the rush for Western water.<br \/>\n\u201cEnergy companies are moving quickly to shore up supplies,\u201d said Reagan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University. \u201cThey\u2019re going to find it, and they\u2019re going to pay what they need to pay, and it\u2019s on an order of magnitude of what crop producers can afford to pay. That changes the whole deal.\u201d<br \/>\nOil and gas companies estimate that they will use about 6.5 billion gallons of water in Colorado this year, and that figure makes up only 0.1 percent of overall water use, according to state data. Their consumption represents more water than is used making snow on the ski slopes or greening the state\u2019s golf courses. But it is paltry compared with the\u00a0<a title=\"Water use report\" href=\"https:\/\/cogcc.state.co.us\/Library\/Oil_and_Gas_Water_Sources_Fact_Sheet.pdf\">deluge needed for irrigation and agriculture<\/a>, which accounts for 85.5 percent of Colorado\u2019s water use.<br \/>\nStill, the industry is growing fast. The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission estimates that the state\u2019s oil and gas water needs will grow by 16 percent over the next three years.<br \/>\n\u201cWater flows uphill to money,\u201d said Mike Chiropolos, a lawyer for\u00a0<a title=\"Web site\" href=\"https:\/\/www.westernresourceadvocates.org\/\">Western Resource Advocates<\/a>, an environmental group based in Boulder. \u201cIt\u2019s only going to get more precious and more scarce.\u201d<br \/>\nIn June, the\u00a0<a title=\"Full report\" href=\"https:\/\/www.westernresourceadvocates.org\/frackwater\/WRA-FrackWater-Release-FINAL.pdf\">group released a study<\/a>\u00a0that accused Colorado of underestimating the amount of water used in hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, saying the true figure was between 7.2 billion and 13 billion gallons per year \u2014 enough to serve as many as 296,100 people.<br \/>\nDespite the drought and worries about water supplies, several cities \u2014 and even farmers with water to spare \u2014 are starting to line up as eager sellers.<br \/>\nIn July, after receiving proposals from several energy companies, Aurora, a suburb of Denver, approved a $9.5 million deal to lease 2.4 billion gallons of effluent water to the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation over five years. It did not come from drinking supplies. It was excess water that \u201cwe couldn\u2019t capture, couldn\u2019t store, couldn\u2019t do anything with,\u201d said Greg Baker, a spokesman for the city\u2019s water department.<br \/>\nBut the agreement \u2014 the first of its kind for Aurora \u2014 drew stiff rebukes from opponents of hydraulic fracturing.<br \/>\nOpponents said the Anadarko agreement would divert water that would have flowed to other users along the South Platte River and send it far from the community. Molly Markert, a city councilwoman who voted against the lease, said she was uneasy about selling municipal water to energy companies.<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019m not a supporter of fracking,\u201d Ms. Markert said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to enable them.\u201d<br \/>\nFor years, Greeley has leased its surplus water to farmers, construction companies and others. In 2008, the oil and gas companies started making offers, said Jon Monson, the city\u2019s water and sewer director. Most of the water still goes to agriculture, but the city rented 1,300 acre feet to energy companies last year and is on pace to rent 1,800 acre feet \u2014 as much as 586 million gallons \u2014 this year.<br \/>\nIt is easy math for the city: The farmers pay $30 an acre foot. The oil and gas companies pay $3,300, which will earn the city\u2019s water department $4 million to $5 million this year.<br \/>\nPrecious as water is, Kreg Edrington, 26, spilled only a little one recent morning as he hooked his tanker truck up to a fire hydrant in Greeley and opened the tap. Like a herd of thirsty elephants, the tankers begin lining up early to fill their steel bellies. In less than 15 minutes, Mr. Edrington\u2019s tanker was brimming with leased city water, and he was ready to make the two-hour round trip over gravel roads to a drilling site, where he would empty the tank and turn around for more.<br \/>\n\u201cThat\u2019s it,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I drive away.\u201d<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\nThis article has been revised to reflect the following correction:<br \/>\n<strong>Correction: September 6, 2012<\/strong><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nBecause of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated how many gallons of water the city of Greeley, Colo., will rent to energy companies this year. It is on pace to rent 586 million gallons of water, not 58 million gallons.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Farms in the West, Oil Wells Are Thirsty Rivals Matthew Staver for The New York Times Bob Bellis filled his tanker at a hydrant in Greeley, Colo., in August to supply a drilling site. Lease deals with oil companies are important revenue sources for cities. By\u00a0JACK HEALY GREELEY, Colo. \u2014 A new race for&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Farmers vs. Frackers in CO - Alex Prud&#039;homme<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/2012\/09\/06\/farmers-vs-frackers-in-co\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Farmers vs. Frackers in CO - Alex Prud&#039;homme\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For Farms in the West, Oil Wells Are Thirsty Rivals Matthew Staver for The New York Times Bob Bellis filled his tanker at a hydrant in Greeley, Colo., in August to supply a drilling site. 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