Dolores Water Board to Address Leases, Rates, and Canal Rights in April Meeting

The Main Canal system feeding Dove Creek's irrigated fields has three agenda items riding on it at next week's board meeting, and at least one of them, a due-diligence review of water rights tied to Main Canal 1 and 2, will unfold behind closed doors in executive session.

The Dolores Water Conservancy District board convenes April 9 at 3:00 p.m. at 60 S. Cactus in Cortez to take up whether to execute a municipal and industrial water lease, set Farm Service Agency irrigation rates for 2026, and accept a Bureau of Reclamation operations and maintenance contract proposal for the Dolores Project power plant. Board president Godwin Oliver will preside over two separate sessions: one for the Water Activity Enterprise and one for the full DWCD board, with technical reports beginning at 3:20 p.m. for Operations and Maintenance, followed by the Water Management Report at 3:55 p.m. Bureau of Reclamation representatives are scheduled at 4:15 p.m. and Division of Water Resources officials at 4:16 p.m., a compressed back-to-back slot that reflects how tightly federal and state coordination is woven into even a single afternoon's business.

The proposed M&I lease carries the most immediate weight for Dolores County irrigators. Municipal and industrial leases are mechanisms that reallocate project water away from agricultural headgates toward municipal or industrial users, a shift that in a drought-stressed water year can directly cut what reaches farms in the Dove Creek basin. The board has not disclosed publicly who the proposed lease counterparty is, making the April 9 discussion the first public window into its terms.

Alongside the lease, the board will set FSA rates for water year 2026, the per-acre-foot charges that determine what irrigators pay and, effectively, how much acreage they can afford to keep in production. The agenda also lists a specific line item called "FSA Overuse Penalty for WY 2026," signaling that at least some irrigators have already exceeded their administrative allocation. That penalty discussion lands in a season when snowpack and reservoir inflows are already under stress, compressing the margin for error across the district's delivery system.

Water-right due diligence on Main Canal 1 and 2 and the Dolores River call rounds out the most consequential action items. Senior water rights are the legal infrastructure that shields the district's allocations against downstream administrative curtailments, protections that become critical when the river is under a call. Those topics, along with negotiation matters, will enter executive session, meaning the public will hear staff reports but not the deliberations that follow.

The meeting is open in person at 60 S. Cactus, Cortez, or accessible remotely via GoToMeeting. Farmers with stakes in FSA billing and canal delivery schedules, and municipal officials tracking M&I lease terms, should attend the open portions and plan to follow up with DWCD staff for any published summaries after the executive session concludes. The board's published minutes will be the first formal record of what was decided on water that Dove Creek's planting season depends on.