(gentle music) (upbeat music) - I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't know who I am.

- No matter what happens in life, that the sun will always rise and set the same way.

- As you can tell, I love using my language.

And I love seeing how language can really change the world.

- Build our community, 'cause that's what makes us strong.

(upbeat music) (water flowing) (gentle music) (upbeat music) - [Kate] Colorado's oldest water rights are a system of hand dug irrigation ditches called acequias.

(upbeat music) The acequias of the Rio Culebra watershed, were created by Spanish, Mexican, Indigenous and Anglo settlers in the mid 1800s.

They're still maintained today often by descendants of those who dug them.

The water system remains the lifeblood of these communities.

(upbeat music) Water comes from snow melt high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

It flows to natural streams, then into the acequias system, supporting farming and ranching for more than 300 families in Southern Costilla County.

(upbeat music) - [Charlie] Cotten.

Steve Vanderveer to Mike Sullivan.

I don't know how many bosses I had.

I had a bunch of 'em though, and that's okay.

Can you fit in there?

- [Kate] Rock and roll.

- Rock and roll lady let's go.

(intense music) Farming.

I've done this all my life.

The thing about growing up in a farm especially here was that you helped.

You weren't sitting inside watching TV or playing with your Nintendo or whatever, 'cause there was no such thing.

If you wanted a toy, you build yourself.

We were self-sustained as far as vegetables, whatever.

Whatever you needed.

We had our sheep, beef, whatever.

You killed your own.

We've got all kinds of pasture here, We're gonna bring all the cows over here.

We're gonna bring 'em this next week I think.

Bring 'em on down.

Let 'em eat it all before the snow flies.

It gets pretty chilly.

You didn't have any refrigeration, the garage was our refrigeration.

Just hang it there and leave it there.

My mom use to say, "Go get me a piece of meat."

(Sawing motion) Get her a piece of meat, and she'd feed us.

That was roughing it at the time.

Now we got it made, but that's the way we grew up.

It's like they used to say, there's no way a human being would fly in an airplane.

They're not flying in airplanes, now they're flying in jets.

Unreal.

So things change.

(intense music) Where the hell's our cows?

If you don't have it in here, don't even try it.

You know what I'm saying?

If you want to be a farmer and you don't have the heart for it, don't even try it 'cause you're gonna go down the drain so quick.

Why are you gonna get up by four o'clock to go rake?

Why are you gonna be up all night trying to bale?

It's a mentality that you love it and there's very few.

Yeah, we got different types of irrigation here then everywhere else in the valley.

Like we flood irrigate this.

I used to irrigate everything, flood irrigating.

I still do.

If the snow is up there, we get all that snow.

We got enough irrigating water for everything and sometimes like lately, we haven't been able to, 'cause we don't have the water.

We don't have the snow.

As a farmer you got to know, "Okay, which piece of land will give you more of a product than the other?"

So we irrigate that and concentrate your water on that.

And that's what we've been doing.

I mean, we've got that one, this one, Well, we got that one and another one in the middle, this one, this one and the one on the end don't hardly get anything, 'cause there's not enough water.

And still every once in a while, if it rains it helps.

Like this summer; oh man, we had all kinds of rain which was beautiful, we needed it.

But this is all flood right here.

Well the whole farm is flood and we're needing somebody to change our water every summer so if you're available... - [Kate] I am.

- This is the tubes that we use for getting the water from the ditch.

We get the dam on the ditch, (grass rustling) we put the dam there to hold the water, okay?

The head gate's over there by the cows and you divert it over here.

You put your dam here and then when the ditch is full, you use this babies (grass rustling) like so, (pipe thuds) you fill the tube of water, right?

Fill the tube and when it's full, all you gotta do is...

It siphons it right out.

We use them all over.

(pipe clanging) Okay, let's go.

Let's go get the dams from over there.

You get so damn tired by the end of the day doing this stuff that you say to yourself, "What am I doing?"

But that's life.

It's all different.

(plastic rustling) Different things people do in the world.

(plastic rustling) You gotta be a little off to be a farmer and a little cuckoo.

Your work till... Well you work 24 hours a day almost, 'Cause you set your water and you gotta come back maybe in three, four hours.

Okay, and them three, four hours, you're doing something else.

You're either raking or baling or whatever.

When I bought my dad's farm, I figured what the heck?

(pipe clanging) I was still out in the middle of the field irrigating and there goes...

The cars start coming in from the county, from the school, four o'clock in the evening; still got another six, seven hours of work and they're already home.

And I couldn't figure it out, "What the heck is going on?

What am I doing wrong?"

And it wasn't that I was doing wrong, what I was doing was different than them.

You got an eight hour job?

I don't.

I got a 24 hour job.

That's a heck of a difference.

And like I say you got to be a little off.

(gentle music) And like I tell my grandkids, 'cause they're the ones that are gonna take over anyway, there's nothing wrong in learning to farm.

There's nothing wrong with it.

You can learn it anybody can learn it if you want to.

But if you're gonna be... That you're gonna be a farmer that for eight hours, you're not gonna be a farmer, 'cause it's not gonna happen.

You got to go with whatever's there.

And this is seasonal also to a point to where you gotta get your hay up.

And you got to get your hay up, up there for the animals to eat in the winter.

'Cause this is beautiful now but if it it snows two, three feet, that's underground, under the snow, so there's no feed, so you gotta feed 'em.

When we come back I'll hook onto the trailer and you can load it, how's that?

If you don't have it here son, don't even try it.

Okay.

(intense music) Shirley: Sin agua no hai vida, San Luis, Colorado, Sin tierra no hai paz.

"Without water there is no life, without land there is no peace."

(intense music) (water flowing) We are a land and water based community where we depend on water that irrigates the crops in the lower Rio Culebra watershed, the villages that exist here.

The history here is so unique.

(drum beating) So you're here in the Vega, you see the water, you see this ditch.

This is the Culebra Creek.

This is the mother creek up our community.

All our tributaries, all our acequias start up there, these were hand dug by our ancestors.

Hand dug all the way from the Sierra to here.

Without water that runs in these acequias, we wouldn't be here.

- And our main water source is right there.

(intense music) Where the black is at, that canyon is Culebra.

The one in between is the San Bernardino, and the one on this side of the highest mountain here, that's the Carnero.

The Culebra, San Bernardino and the Carnero.

They still consider this the Culebra but it's the three put together.

And the three supply our water for down there, for our section of the valley.

- [Junita] We have nine canyons in La Sierra, nine of them.

Every community, every village, has its own water source, and the source meanders through the town.

(water flowing) (intense music) Let me show you our stream.

- [Kate] Okay.

-[Man ] Yes, lets go do that.

That's what I want.

- You wanna go see it?

- [Man] Yes.

- Okay, come on.

Let's go see it.

(water flowing) What this stream is...

It's called the San Francisco Creek.

It starts very small and it's little springs; and then when the snow melts, all the snow melt joins into one.

- [Arnie] The trees then provide a canopy for the snow to last a little bit longer before it melts, then it's channeled to a river or a water channel, and then from the water channel, it's diverted to a smaller system, which is the acequia system.

Acequias are gravity-driven.

Water has to flow down, it can't flow uphill.

And so that's the whole premise for the acequia is, working with the topography and the landscape.

- [Junita] This ditch has been in operation for almost 200 years.

They were constructed when the village was created by folks who just had an axe and a shovel and a plan.

- [Craig] Acequias usually operate on the vara system.

And so varas are just strips of land, not very wide, but they go all the way down to the creek system.

And so they have a...

Lot of times it's called the Acequia Madre, the mother ditch.

And they irrigate from that ditch down to the stream system.

Most of the water either gets absorbed in the landscape or returns to charge the river again, and to some people that's maybe all they have.

If they don't have a valid water right, they may have to use a tailwaters or the sobrantes, the water that's sort of leftover, so that they can have an opportunity to irrigate.

And what you're trying to do is give everybody a chance at water.

(water pours) - [Junita] We're communal in the fact that the water has to be shared.

we're dealing with families and we're dealing with a communal mindset.

- [Virginia] And by custom and tradition you were communal because you did what was best for the community, not what was best for the individual.

You take only what you need.

- [Junita] The Mayordomo or the ditch rider, is chosen for one year.

- [Charlie] The Mayordomo is the governing body for that one ditch.

He says he wants to be the Mayordomo this year, "Okay, let's have a meeting tonight.

Okay there's 20 people in the ditch.

Who votes for Rocky?"

"Who votes for Katey?"

"Who votes for Charlie?"

Majority wins.

If he's got more votes than you or me, siento mucho, he's the Mayordomo.

- Those individuals act as our representatives in our own community and they determine how we're gonna use this resource of water.

Because of climate change and other factors, we're encountering less water for the same amount of acreage.

With us, the decision is made for us by nature itself.

- The thing about us people here in this community is we have a tendency to... What is it?

To believe I guess.

- We're living on the hope that we're going to get the resource of snow every year and enough rainfall.

If we don't get it, water becomes very scarce.

- Well you say, "I'm from Washington State, we didn't have to worry about water."

Over here you do.

This is arid.

This is a desert.

- [Craig] Colorado is a unique area because we are in a desert situation, especially here in Division III in the Rio Grande Basin.

We just can't grow anything; any crops, can't have livestock, without irrigation here.

It's just almost impossible.

(calm music) Back east, they use the riparian doctrine.

If you've got water on your land, you can take it for your purposes.

Here in the west, we have not enough water and so we've developed the prior appropriation doctrine; which basically says that if you're the first person to put a ditch in on a stream system, you can take water first in times of shortage.

(water flowing) - How the priority system came around, I don't know.

I'm not a lawyer or anything.

Pero, in my mind I figure this way, Okay.

San Luis appropriated water from the creek.

They made the San Luis People's Ditch.

What for?

For their gardens and trees and animals and all this and that and the other, but it wasn't adjudicated.

Adjudication means you make it legal through the courts.

- [Craig] And so these general adjudications were basically calls by the District Court at that time saying, "Okay everybody that has a ditch come into court and we're gonna hash this out.

-"Okay, we got to take the first 23 decrees are going to court."

- We're gonna figure out who put their ditch in first.

- I'm the judge, and you're the people that come from the ditches.

Who appropriated this water first?

El Roque says, "Well judge, it was me."

"And who's you?"

"Oh, I'm representing the San Luis People's Ditch."

This is the head gate to the San Luis People's.

I think...

I don't know, maybe I'm totally wrong.

I don't know And then... - Who put the ditch in second?

-Then the San Pedro ditch which is the second priority... - [Charlie] This is San Pedro head gate.

I had a few locks torn off of this one.

Who's next?

(calm music) There was a guy from Chama, San Pedro.

"We appropriated the water," and on and on and... - [Craig] The district judge took testimony.

San Acacio was, "Hey, I'm over here, hey."

We actually became number three but still that's good.

That one.

The one with the old type head gate, that's a diversion for the San Acacio.

- [Craig] They had objections and had a whole court process and a whole trial to figure out who was first and who was second and on down the line.

-Now you got a water right, 'cause the judge told you.

Now they're printing it out on the administration list to where it shows me that you got a water right.

The acequia system is the priority system.

One, two, three, four, five.

As long as you got a water right, the water commissioner has got to give you that water right according to the administration list.

-[Kate] How did you become the water commissioner?

-I went to 10 years of college.

No, (laughs) just kidding, I joke a lot.

They had no water commissioner.

The prior water commissioner, he croaked, God bless his soul like I don't know maybe April, in the spring anyway, and they needed somebody now.

"Well, this guy."

"No, he drinks a lot and..." "What about this guy?"

"No, he does this."

"What about that other guy?"

"He's a good guy, but the people will run over him."

Well, on and on and on.

"Okay, I know who, your brother-in-law.

That guy don't drink, don't smoke, don't..." "He's a cool dude, not 'cause he's my brother-in-law but..." And I called him that night and says, "You wanna be a water commissioner compadre?"

"I don't know."

Following morning, he calls me and he says, (shrugs) "Nah."

"Okay, now we're stuck."

I called the office and Steve answered.

He was the honcho there.

And he says, "Well, I'll tell you what, there's 10 people in here that want you."

(Charlie gasps) I was looking for a job anyway, not necessarily that, but I wanted out of the mine, okay?

"I'll try it what the heck."

I stayed 26 years.

My realm like you said was from The Rito Seco which is North San Luis, all the way to the state line.

From the middle of the mountain which flows this way, to the Rio Grande.

(calm music) That was my realm.

There's snow up in the mountains hopefully and then when the snow melts, you administer the water that's coming down the creeks.

- [Craig] And that's what our water commissioners do They actually get the measurements from the streams, find out how much water is every morning and then figure out how many ditches they can turn on in priority.

So they're out in the field every day.

- Every day, - [Kate] Every single day?

- Every day.

The bigger priorities you have to check every day.

This was my first stop right there.

You get to reading here and then you gotta decipher it.

That was my meter for the water coming out of the reservoir.

- [Kate] The wooden one right there?

- Yeah, that was my outhouse, no.

(chuckles) Yeah, I got a key.

(car door opens) They brought up this steel thing 'cause up in San Luis where I metered the water over there coming down.

They broke the wooden one and they decided to go to a steel one which was.. - [Kate] Like on purpose?

- Yeah, like on purpose.

Like really on purpose.

(padlock clangs) (gentle music) At first it was hard.

At first it was really, really hard 'cause I had nobody to teach me and I'm glad to a certain extent.

I knew my water rights per se but I didn't know my ditches and oh Lord, did I walk.

That first year, I traveled I don't know how many miles on these babies 'cause I had to find them.

And I did.

Not only that, I made a map.

This ditch belongs here and this ditch is here, this... Now if anybody wanted to take over my job, there's a map.

(gentle music) This is how you measure your water on a recorder.

This is what they use now.

We've got a pipe coming in through over there, okay?

And that's what gives you the elevation of the creek.

If it goes up, it goes up in here and that rotate your meter.

- [Craig] So we have near real time analysis of how much water we have in the streams.

- [Charlie] You got to learn a lot to be able to take care of the whole system, and not make daily mistakes.

You know what I'm saying?

If you're making daily mistakes, you're in the wrong business there.

(gentle music) The number one water right is San Luis People's, and not only here, but it's also the number one water right in the state of Colorado.

It's beautiful.

You don't have to worry if you're number one.

You know if you're number two you got to worry a little bit, but if you're near number one, "I want my water and I'm going to put it to beneficial use and hey, you can't take it away from me."

-[Craig] If there's a shortage which there almost always is, junior ditches, they might only get water for maybe a week or two or maybe a month during the high part of the season, during the runoff; whereas the senior ditches, they're getting water almost every single day of the irrigation season if they want it.

- [Charlie] If there's no snow there's no water.

But I went through 2002 and it was pretty bad, and it's been pretty bad since then actually.

- [Junita] Every year it gets more difficult because of the scarcity.

- [Tom] The people in these rural communities feel it every day.

Watching their crops wither because the rains didn't come or the snow didn't happen during the winter.

These are tough times.

- The weather's playing such a big part in how we're conducting our acequia issues.

- There's some dire projections out there that we might not have near as much water as even we have now, and now we don't have enough water.

- [Junita] That's the hope that springs eternal, I guess, out of us, that we'll always, always have water.

- [Amyas] Peas, we grew four types of peas.

Corn, we grew corn.

And then we did grow squash.

I guess you could call me a beginning farmer.

My grandpa and all of his family and all the way on were farmers.

I'd be the eighth generation to farm.

I just love the beauty in it and seeing everything grow and the fruits of your labor and just enjoy it so much that it's what I'd like to make it as my life.

Morning!

Good morning, good morning.

You gotta be a certain person.

I mean even to do farming and agriculture, you gotta (chuckles)... You gotta really, really just have a desire to do it and really love the environment.

(corn ruffling) A lot of the youth are willing to learn.

(corn ruffling) The water will come about, I would say seven or eight miles from the ditch and all the gardens have the water every Sunday and we'll flood irrigate the whole garden.

It takes about an hour to do it all as a whole.

It's not that bad.

- Learn all you can just in case.

Just in case.

In 10 years from now you will, "No, This life isn't for me, I want to go back to the farm."

You don't have to ask John Doe over there, "How did you start this machine?"

You already know.

This generation... Now they're working the land.

They're working the land better and I see it every day.

-The tradition of being a land and water-based people, of teaching your children that this water is what gives us in our villages sustenance.

It gives us what we need to live.

It grows our crops.

(gentle music) You have to consider that those things you cannot put a value on, it's invaluable.

It's a tradition.

It is something that you pass from one generation to another.

Leaning toward a more simplistic life may be the way to go.

And who knows, we might be going that way.

(gentle music) (water flowing)