The San Luis Peoples’ Ditch, an acequia that holds the first adjudicated water rights in the region, granted in 1852, is the oldest continuously used community irrigation ditch in Colorado. The ditch has significant ties to local cultural heritage and a storied past connected to traditional water management practices. It’s also in desperate need of repairs.
Years of wear and tear on the channel have resulted in a cracked concrete infrastructure that reduces the efficiency of water transport and harms irrigators. The San Luis Peoples’ Ditch Rehabilitation Project is working to solve this problem.
At last week’s Rio Grande Basin Roundtable meeting, funding for Phase I of the project was approved. Now, sponsors will work to get final approval from the Colorado Water Conservation Board and figure out contracts. If everything goes to plan, all three tasks in Phase I, expected to cost a combined $45,000, will begin in the fall of 2025.
Originally a shallow hand-dug acequia, the San Luis Peoples’ Ditch was lined with concrete in the early 1960s to maximize water delivery to the area. It was incorporated in 1967, and currently serves 16 parciantes, affiliated water-users, irrigating more than 2,000 acres of crops like hay and alfalfa.
Having already lasted more than 60 years, this concrete addition has long outlived the usual expected lifespan of 25 years. Now, erosion from more than six decades of use has left it in urgent need of attention. Years of freezing and thawing has caused large cracks in multiple places along the channel, significantly reducing the amount of water delivered to irrigators.
Acequias – gravity-fed, community-managed irrigation systems – distribute water and snowmelt through hand-dug channels to agricultural fields for both crops and livestock. The acequia system was brought to the southwest United States by farmers emigrating to the San Luis Valley from Mexico. Used in arid landscapes around the world, the practice originated in North Africa to distribute water from rivers to desert valleys. It was brought to Spain by the Moors, and brought to Mexico by the Spaniards during the colonial period.
Traditionally, acequias function on the idea of communal maintenance and equal water sharing during times of abundance and shortage, overseen by a mayordomo or ditch manager. This structure instills important cultural values centered around collective responsibility and respect for community and the environment.
The unique, longstanding cultural practices as well as the physical structures of the nearly 1,000 acequias that exist in Colorado and New Mexico today are facing a multitude of threats, including modernization, socio-economic, political, and environmental pressures.
While just one of many factors impacting acequias and agricultural communities in the San Luis Valley, drought and environmental changes that impact water availability are a serious concern. Demand for water already exceeds supply in the region, and drought conditions like increased temperatures continue to intensify such processes as evapotranspiration that decrease accessible irrigation water. The drought that the southwest has experienced in the last two decades is severe, with 2002 being the worst drought on record. Identified by climate scientists and the USDA Climate Hub as a potentially emerging megadrought, it’s been the driest 22-year period in over a thousand years.
Changing precipitation patterns, even with potential increases in the form of intense rainstorms, put acequia systems at risk due to a lack of major water storage capabilities. Adapting to these changes could mean shifting growing seasons and irrigation schedules. Ultimately, compounding impacts of climate change make maximizing available water even more crucial for irrigators and farmers in the Valley.
“Every drop counts as we face these dry times,” said Amber Pacheco, deputy general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, emphasizing the importance of improving aging infrastructure to lessen water loss.
Phase I of the Rehabilitation Project will get these improvements started. With three main tasks, this phase is focused on surveying and assessing the current conditions of the ditch infrastructure in order to recommend repairs and improvements.
The first task will encompass a GPS and aerial drone survey, and a component survey of the 3.5 mile ditch. The surveys will check structures, turnouts, piped road crossings, and more, taking note of sections that need to be repaired or upgraded.
The second task will involve an engineer analyzing the structural integrity of the concrete infrastructure, identifying weak spots and areas most at risk of failure. An evaluation of the hydraulic efficiency will also take place, modeling how the water is moving through the channel to find obstructions or specific structures that are problematic.
The third task is a comprehensive final report detailing all of the findings, recommending locations for repairs and improvements, and estimating costs for the next phase of the project. It will be used to determine an actionable plan and request funding for the actual concrete replacement.
The existence of the Peoples’ Ditch acts as the physical legacy of those who built it hundreds of years ago. Many current users of the ditch are descendants of the original builders, marking generations of connection and rich heritage embedded in the land and acequia system. The San Luis Peoples’ Ditch Rehabilitation Project aims to enhance the performance and longevity of the ditch while preserving the existing infrastructure and its deep-rooted cultural significance.
