Many are saying that this year is close to what happened in 2002, just 10 years ago. The amount of water that is received in this area is wholly dependent on the weather, said Mancos Water Conservancy District (MWCD) superintendent Gary Kennedy. The weather is so unpredictable, he said. You just never know from one year to the next what kind of rain and snow were going to get.
This years dry conditions are due to the mild winter last year and little amount of moisture this last spring. This has caused the rivers, lakes and reservoirs in the area to be at a low level, the likes of which have not been seen for a while.
The last time the (Jackson Gulch) reservoir was this low was in 1996, said Kennedy. I dont think it was this low in 2002.
In fact, according to the MWCD who keeps track of precipitation each year, there was slightly less this year than in 2002. There was a total of 12.39 inches in the 2011/12 winter, and 12.98 inches in 2002. In the last 10 years, they were the two lowest precipitation years. The highest was 2005 with 23.22 inches.
But in the winter of 1996/97, there was enough snow that the reservoir was used for only 14 days.
The MWCD was organized in 1941 for the purpose of making sure that this area had water all the time even in dry years mainly for irrigation. Jackson Gulch Dam was dedicated on July 3, 1949 and the first irrigation water was released from it on July 29. The reservoir supplies municipal water to Mesa Verde National Park, the town of Mancos and the Mancos Rural Water Company. The district last year completed a $6.5 million rehabilitation initiative that overhauled old infrastructure on the inlet canal. Around 6,000 acre-feet of water is used every year for 13,500 acres of irrigation.
At the moment, the level of the Jackson Gulch Reservoir is just shy of 15 percent, Kennedy said. The average for the shutdown, which was Sept. 20 this year, is usually 40 percent. We let the water out of the reservoir about a month early, he said.
Kennedy is adamant about the fact that without the reservoir being here in the Mancos Valley, the Mancos River would have been dry in June and the town would have had to take water from the river. The next step, he said, is for the town to lease water.
Water evaporation only takes about 1/2 to 1 acre foot per month, Kennedy said, or 325,900 gallons. That depends on how high the reservoir is, of course.
Kennedy said that, typically, extremely dry years, such as this one, are followed by wet years. We havent seen two extremely dry years in a row, he said.
So, Kennedy is not too worried about the water situation right now.
But it all depends on the weather.
