Hobbs, who has served on the court since 1996 and volunteered in the Peace Corps in Colombia, told how ancient cultures in the Andes and Mesa Verde managed water and closed his speech with how the state's system of laws now do the job. He noted that the efforts of the ancients in both Peru and the Four Corners region were plagued by dry times and wet times, according to ice-core data. "Life in the Americas, including the Americas we live in, is flood and drought," he said. Hobbs' slide show featured pictures of canals at Machu Picchu and the work of an archaeological crew that excavated the water collection systems that were found at Mesa Verde National Park. Moving to the state's modern history, Hobbs noted that Hispanic settlers in San Luis, borrowing on centuries-old traditions from southern Spain, carved out the first irrigation ditch recognized by the state's courts with an 1852 priority date.
Colombia RPCV and Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs spoke to the Southern Rocky Mountain Agricultural Conference and Trade Fair with a wide ranging talk on the history of water development in the Americas
Justice runs down history of water at conference
How ancients managed resources and how they're governed today are highlighted.
By MATT HILDNER
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
MONTE VISTA - Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs closed down the Southern Rocky Mountain Agricultural Conference and Trade Fair with a wide ranging talk on the history of water development in the Americas.
Hobbs, who has served on the court since 1996 and volunteered in the Peace Corps in Colombia, told how ancient cultures in the Andes and Mesa Verde managed water and closed his speech with how the state's system of laws now do the job.
He noted that the efforts of the ancients in both Peru and the Four Corners region were plagued by dry times and wet times, according to ice-core data.
"Life in the Americas, including the Americas we live in, is flood and drought," he said.
Hobbs' slide show featured pictures of canals at Machu Picchu and the work of an archaeological crew that excavated the water collection systems that were found at Mesa Verde National Park. Moving to the state's modern history, Hobbs noted that Hispanic settlers in San Luis, borrowing on centuries-old traditions from southern Spain, carved out the first irrigation ditch recognized by the state's courts with an 1852 priority date.
He noted that Ben Eaton had toiled on a Cimarron, N.M., ranch and learned the basics of working on an irrigation ditch.
Eaton went on to serve in the Territorial Legislature and help shape the state's constitution before teaching the founders of Union Colony at present-day Greeley the ins and outs of a gravity-fed ditch.
Hobbs reviewed the doctrine of prior appropriation enshrined in the constitution with a slide showing a padlocked headgate.
"The priority system is a system of scarcity," he said. "There's no value to a senior right when you don't enforce priority."
Although Hobbs was speaking generally of the prior appropriation doctrine, the statement echoed the claims of some senior surface water users in the San Luis Valley who are fighting a proposal to manage the valley's aquifers in local court.
Nevertheless, the justice made clear at the beginning of his talk that he couldn't address the specifics of any case that might come before the Supreme Court, which handles all appeals from the state's local water courts.
Hobbs went on to address the state's nine interstate compacts, which determine how a headwaters state like Colorado divvies up its waters with downstream states.
Hobbs noted that Delph Carpenter and the other men who negotiated the Colorado River Compact throughout the 1930s, recognized the need for reservoirs on the river since they had lived through drought in the 1890s.
matth@chieftain.com
