How the Dolores Project pumps river water up to the Dove Creek farms

A lot of Dolores County farming runs on rain and snow alone, but not all of it. Part of the Dove Creek area gets irrigation water, and that water does not fall from the sky there. It is lifted out of a reservoir and carried across the landscape by a federal water project.

The system is called the Dolores Project. It was built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and day-to-day administration of project facilities within the district’s boundaries is handled locally by the Dolores Water Conservancy District. The project dams the Dolores River to form McPhee Reservoir, then sends that stored water in several directions: to the Montezuma Valley, south to the Ute Mountain Ute community at Towaoc, and northwest up to the Dove Creek area.

Getting water to Dove Creek is the hard part, because the farms sit higher than the reservoir. So the project pumps the water uphill and then moves it for many miles through a canal to reach the bean and grain country around town. The project also provides municipal and industrial water for communities in the area, including Dove Creek.

This matters if you are buying land here. Whether a parcel has a share of project irrigation water, or is dryland that depends on the weather, can make two nearby fields very different. The water right is its own thing, separate from owning the dirt.

To understand how the project is run and who it serves, start with the Bureau of Reclamation’s page for the Dolores Project and the Dolores Water Conservancy District.