This is written to encourage the citizens of Colorado Springs to oppose the Karman Line annexation and sign the petition to send this decision back to the City Council. I would also like to address the one-sided and misleading statements by Travas Deal in his OP/ED on Feb. 7 titled “Factors impacting our future water supply”.

First let me remind everyone that the Karman Line annexation proposes to add a 1,900 acre, “master-planned” community by flagpole annexation, and that this proposed annex is three miles east of the Colorado Springs city limits. The proposal is to build 6,500 homes along with businesses, schools, parks, fire and police stations. This will require additional water rights the city does not have.

I attended the council meeting on Jan. 28 and listened to the comments of farmers from the Lower Arkansas River Basin and learned a lot. Mike Bartolo, an agricultural research scientist and long-term farmer, spoke eloquently about the continued decreased water quantity and water quality this annexation will cause.

Decreased quantity due to Front Range cities buying farm property water rights, leaving those farms to dry up and grow weeds (buy and dry). According to Deal, “what we know is that additional water supplies will be needed to meet future growth and mitigate Colorado River risks.” And “Right now we estimate an additional 34,000 acre-feet of water will be needed by 2070”. This is water that will be needed to build out property within the city limits. Water conservation will help, but the city will need to purchase more water rights, and this will negatively impact the amount of water available for Lower Arkansas River Basin farmers.

Decreasing water quality was not mentioned in Deal’s OP/ED but was explained very well by Bartolo. When the city buys water rights from farmers, the water is taken from Pueblo Reservoir or other reservoirs higher up in the Arkansas River watershed. By extracting this water higher in the watershed, the remaining water in the Lower Arkansas River Basin has a higher level of salts, pollutants and sewage discharge causing farmers to sometimes have to test this water to make sure it is safe to use for irrigation. This is not a “win-win” situation, the city gets clean drinking water while the farmers get water with higher concentration of pollutants.

The Karman Line annexation is too far away from Colorado Springs. Increased utilities, police, fire, roads will create a tax burden for Springs residents. And worst of all, it will negatively impact the water quantity and quality available for farmers in the Lower Arkansas River Basin who grow our food. We need our elected representatives to start limiting growth and say no to huge development plans well outside the city limits of Colorado Springs. We owe it to the farmers who grow our food to be better stewards of this scarce water resource.

Stephen Lenzo Colorado Springs