Cassie Cerise lives on her family’s ranch on Missouri Heights, a mesa above Carbondale named for the home state of some of the area’s earliest settlers. Like her parents and grandparents, she runs cattle and.
But this season, Cerise and her husband, Tim Fenton, decided to let about 73 acres go dry and get paid for the water they aren’t using as part of the federally funded System Conservation Program, which is aimed at addressing the crisis on the Colorado River.
Inventories of irrigation ditches across the Western Slope have become common in recent years and water managers say they have merit, but the publicly funded studies aren’t always made public.
Inventories of irrigation ditches across the Western Slope have become common in recent years and water managers say they have merit, but the publicly funded studies aren’t always made public.
Inventories of irrigation ditches across the Western Slope have become common in recent years and water managers say they have merit, but the publicly funded studies aren’t always made public.