Xcel Energy Plans to Sell 30% of its Lower Arkansas Valley Water to Colorado Springs Utilities

For nearly 150 years, water from the Las Animas Consolidated Canal has irrigated farmland in Bent County just south of the City of Las Animas.

In the 1970s, Public Service Company of Colorado (a subsidiary of Xcel Energy) acquired approximately 75% ownership in the Las Animas Consolidated Canal Company to use the associated water for cooling operations at a proposed power plant that promised local jobs and economic opportunity to the Valley.

The plant was never built.

But the water remained and was leased back annually to farmers, benefiting the people and communities throughout the Lower Arkansas Valley.

Now that water is about to be sold.

Xcel has plans to sell the water to a newly formed holding company, 30% of which will be owned by Colorado Springs Utilities. Utilities intends to permanently remove that portion of the water from the Lower Arkansas Valley. The remaining 70% is expected to remain in agricultural irrigation under the same canal for now, but there is no guarantee that this water will remain in the Valley in the future.

In December 2023, the Colorado Water Conservation Board awarded a grant of more than $245,000 seeking, in part, “to create certainty for the farmers by tying water back to the land in perpetuity.” The project was developed and managed by Todd Doherty of Western Water Partnerships, and Palmer Land Conservancy was tasked with determining the legal mechanism to ensure this goal was achieved.

However, despite this significant public investment, the permanent protection intended to ensure the agricultural portion of the water remains in the Lower Arkansas Valley has not been achieved.

During a meeting with the Bent County Board of County Commissioners on August 11, Kim Gortz, Chris Olney, and Kelly Roesch with Colorado Springs Utilities stated that a new holding company has been formed for the Xcel water rights and that the bylaws of this company require a four-fifths vote to make any of the 70% agricultural shares available for other uses, including municipal use. Gortz also stated that Utilities is close to finalizing its purchase of the water rights from Xcel.

The decisions we make today become the history future generations inherit.