MONDAY, AUGUST 10 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
has just proposed putting a car-
bon sales tax on the ballot to
help fund a transition away from
fossil fuels — a move that would
be a first for any U.S. city. But
around Grand Junction, where
the oil and gas industry still
dominates, the politics are more
complicated.
The Democrat running for the
Colorado’s 3rd Congressional
District, Diane Mitsch Bush,
identifies dwindling snowpack
and prolonged drought as major
threats to the region. “Climate
change is the defining issue of
our time,” she declares on her
website.
But her GOP rival Lauren
Boebert — a gun rights activist
whose husband has spent his
entire career working in oil and
gas — has mocked Democratic
calls for climate action.
After presumptive Democrat-
ic presidential nominee Joe
Biden tweeted in May, “Climate
change poses an existential
threat to our future,” Boebert
was quick to shoot back. “What’s
your climate change solution
that doesn’t include taxation
and socialism? Oh wait.. .” she
replied.
This area’s economy is so
intertwined with fossil fuels that
when teenagers across the globe
skipped school in a climate
strike last September, student
activists took a different tack.
Seventeen-year-old Liliana
Flanigan, who just graduated
from Palisade High School, re-
members when she heard kids
elsewhere planned to cut class.
“And I remember feeling like” —
her voice dropped to a whisper
— “ ‘I can’t drop out of class.’ I
mean, it would honestly cause
more harm than good.” In-
stead, the kids protested after
school.
The Kehmeiers used to con-
sider themselves Republicans,
and still call themselves conser-
vatives. But under President
Trump, Norman said, “I have
very much left the party, or as
I’ve said, the party has left me.”
Last fall, he offered that “may-
be” some of the warming he’d
observed over his lifetime came
from natural causes rather than
fossil fuel burning.
“I’m not a climate denier, but
I’m not sure how much of it is
human caused,” he said. “I re-
serve judgment on that.”
But in recent months, he’d
come to reflect on the tipping
points that may no longer be
avoidable: warming oceans and
thawing permafrost. “I’m quite
concerned about climate
change,” he said in a phone call
earlier this year.
Still, with his 95th birthday
approaching, he holds fast to a
bit of the optimism that has
sustained his family on this
improbable farming mecca for
more than a century.
“I have faith the species will
solve the problem after I’m
gone.”
[email protected]tap into the Colorado River, sell-
ing your water carries some risks.
Eventually, you might not be
farming at all.
The lesson is 308 miles away,
in a town called Sugar City, east
of Pueblo, Colo. Farmers there
sold off all their water rights to
surrounding municipalities.
“It used to be a sugar beet
growing area,” Kehmeier said.
“And that’s about the saddest,
dust-blown little nothing town
that you ever saw.”
U nder a 1922 compact, Upper
Basin states — Colorado, Utah,
Wyoming and New Mexico —
must deliver an average of 8.
million acre feet of water over
the course of 10 consecutive
years to the Lower Basin states
and Mexico.
But as the Colorado River’s
annual flow since 2000 is
2.3 million acre feet below its
20th-century average, it is be-
coming harder to deliver on its
commitment.
The city of Grand Junction
recently analyzed whether it has
enough water to supply its
30,000 customers even if the
drought persists. In the near
term, according to its utilities
director Randi Kim, the city is
fine.
But it also looked over the
next 50 years — and came up as
much as 3,300 acre feet short,
which would force it to tap
water directly from the Colora-
do and Gunnison rivers. And
that was without calculating the
full impacts of climate change.
“Our pristine mountain water
supply would not be able to
meet those projections,” Kim
said. “I mean, it’s basically just
melted snow. It’s beautiful wa-
ter.”
An hour to the southeast,
David Harold is also trying to
cope.
“I grow just about anything
that I can get my hands on. I do
hops. I do hemp. I do squash. I
do sweet corn, and I do dried
beans,” Harold said as he steered
his truck around his property,
papers spilling off his dash-
board. “We have cattle.”
Hemp was a new addition to
Harold’s rotation. There is a
hemp gold rush underway in the
valley, fueled by the ever-bur-
geoning consumer demand for
CBD oil products. It’s a some-
what awkward fit for this con-
servative-leaning patch of
America.
“You smell that?” said Steve
Anderson, manager of the Un-
compahgre Valley Water Users
Association, wrinkling his nose
as he stepped out of his SUV
right next to an enormous hemp
field.
Hemp uses less than half the
water compared with corn, hay
or alfalfa. Last year, people
rushed to plant about 14,
acres on the area he manages.
“It’s not gonna work out. We
have a bunch of people, some
2C F ROM A14 compared with average, accord-
ing to federal data.
Paul Kehmeier is used to deal-
ing with evaporation: “We have
to, as we call it, ‘suffer the
shrink.’ ” But several factors
compounded his problems this
year. Someone opened the head
gate at his main reservoir, so
water flowed downhill for two
months when it should have
been stored.
“Our little site is not much
better than 2018,” he said.
Everyone can see the problem,
but in a swing state like Colora-
do, politicians remain divided
about the solution.
In Denver, on the other side of
the Rockies, a climate task force
ter uses in the valley.
“We don’t want our water to
disappear, and the irrigated ag-
riculture to disappear,” Harold
said, as he collected compost
from his field. “And then this
place turns back into, you know,
just a valley of chico brush.”Debating climate in oil and
gas country
This past winter, it looked like
the snowpack would deliver. The
Upper Basin’s snowpack was
right at 100 percent. But hotter
temperatures robbed the mesa
of this bounty, by evaporating
water as it ran down the moun-
tain. The Colorado River’s cur-
rent runoff is just 54 percentthat did not pay off. Due to a
glut, the price dropped 66 per-
cent. In the end, Harold couldn’t
find a buyer.
Harold is determined to keep
growing other crops, like the
Olathe Sweet sweet corn his
father trademarked. The two of
them, and a few other farmers,
formed a group dubbed No
Chico Brush to keep farming
alive here.
That name alludes to the
native scrubs that would replace
the green swaths of the valley
that exist thanks to irrigation.
Harold and other farmers are
now consulting with environ-
mentalists and local officials,
trying to balance competing wa-with limited farming practice
getting into it,” said Anderson, a
bespectacled man in overalls
whose drawl stretches out his
words. “So I wish ’em all the best
of luck. But what we’re seeing
now is not sustainable.”
Harold, for his part, knows
he’s taking a gamble. When it
comes to hemp, he said, “We
don’t know what we’re doing.
You know, mine is not the worst,
but it’s definitely not great. You
know, it’s mediocre.”
Colorado accounted for al-
most a quarter of the nation’s
hemp acreage last year, accord-
ing to Colorado State University
agribusiness professor Dawn
Thilmany, but it was a gambleCAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Paul Kehmeier and his father, Norman, run a farm, seen above, in Delta County, Colo. “In all my years of farming in the area, going
back to about 1950, 2018 was the toughest, driest year I can remember,” Norman said. This year, less than half an inch of rain has
fallen since the farming season began on April 1, just 25 percent of the long-term average.