McPhee Reservoir shortage deepens as drought hits Dolores Project

Farm water from McPhee Reservoir has tightened to an extreme shortage this season, and the first cutbacks are falling on Dolores Project growers deciding what to plant, what to leave dry and where scarce water will go. Dolores Water Conservancy District General Manager Ken Curtis said full-service irrigation supplies are down about 13 to 14 percent, a reduction that is already pushing farmers to rethink acreage, crop mix and hiring.

The pressure followed a dry winter and a warm spring that left district managers warning by March that runoff would likely be rough after poor snowpack and an early melt. Curtis said local river flow could end up as the third or fourth worst in recorded history. Drought.gov now lists all of Montezuma County as drought affected, and January through May ranked as the county’s 15th driest year-to-date period in 132 years, with precipitation 2.99 inches below normal.

McPhee is the main storage reservoir for the Dolores Project, which serves about 63,000 irrigated acres and also supplies municipal water to Cortez, Towaoc and Dove Creek. Curtis said municipal users are protected, which means most homes should not feel the shortage at the tap, but farmers and irrigators are being forced to absorb the impact. The district’s allocations are based on carryover storage from the previous year, forecast inflows, contracts and Colorado water law, which gives senior rights priority.

That makes the practical choices immediate. Emily Lockard, the Montezuma County director for Colorado State University Extension, said growers are already weighing whether to plant fewer fields, shift limited water to a smaller number of crops or prioritize newer and higher-value acreage. In the field, that can mean unplanted ground, lower yields on watered acres and thinner margins for the businesses that depend on a full irrigation season, from equipment dealers to local suppliers.

The reservoir itself shows how hard the system can swing. Over the past 30 years, annual inflows into McPhee have averaged 327,000 acre-feet, but the district says the reservoir took in only 79,757 acre-feet in 2002 and 516,457 acre-feet in 2005. McPhee’s active capacity is about 229,000 acre-feet, with total capacity around 381,000 acre-feet, while average evaporation removes about 5,400 acre-feet a year and seepage another 2,000 acre-feet.

The district’s May 19 release update said McPhee was sending about 5 cubic feet per second to the downstream fishery and expected to stay near that level through the rest of the year, a sharp contrast with the 50 to 75 cfs releases seen in spring 2024. The Dolores Project was authorized in 1968, project contracts were signed Sept. 23, 1977, and McPhee Dam was completed in 1986, but the current shortage shows how quickly the system can shift from supply to rationing.