As drought in the West worsens, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Colorado faces a dwindling water supply
In late June, Simon Martinez drove along one of the dirt roads crisscrossing the parched rocky shrubland on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Farm & Ranch Enterprise, a 7,700-acre agricultural operation owned by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in the far southwestern corner of Colorado. In normal times, he would be driving past giant circular fields of corn and alfalfa irrigated by 110 rotating sprinklers called pivots. But most of the fields are barren this year, casualties of an unprecedented drought — “the worst in 30 years,” said Martinez …