THIRD IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES

YUMA COUNTY — The field came to life in the August wind, dense stalks swaying in tandem, silky tassels swirling like so many kite tails in the sun.

Duard Fix shouldered his way through the lush stand, stopping to break off and husk a prize he'd been waiting for since May: The perfect ear of corn — nearly 800 light yellow kernels in 16 neatly symmetrical rows.

"It looks like this will be one of our best years," the third-generation farmer from Wray declared, stripping a few milky kernels into his weathered hands.

Indeed, this is an unusually green and gold summer for much of Colorado corn country.

Green from the spring runoffs, torrents of rain and uninterrupted irrigation water that have transformed the dry high plain into verdant fields.

Gold with the promise of a record crop and prices that have more than doubled in the past two years with the surging demand for ethanol, an alternative motor fuel made from crushed corn.

Government subsidies and mandates to boost ethanol use have fueled the corn rush, prompting farmers to switch from other crops to benefit from the windfall.

Some Yuma County farm families, the Lenzes and the Sewards, to name two, invested hard-earned cash into a new, $60-million ethanol plant in Yuma, betting heavily on the future of the alternative fuel.

Others like Brett Rutledge remain skeptical about ethanol, or what they call the "dot.corn" rush. They compare it to the "dot.com" boom and bust.

Today's corn boom is far from bust, even as a national debate plays out over the long-term effectiveness of ethanol as a motor fuel.

Even so, dark clouds of uncertainty are gathering, pushing shadows over Yuma County's summer of prosperity.

At issue is the heavily litigated Republican River and its connection to the High Plains Aquifer, which underlies all of Yuma County, the eastern border of Colorado and large swaths of Kansas and Nebraska, among other places.

Yuma irrigation wells are sunk into the aquifer, an underground bowl that has collected fresh water over millions of years. The rate of the aquifer's depletion is one issue, but the most immediate is legal wrangling over the river that may result in the shutting of hundreds of wells.

"The threat is very serious, and I think most farmers understand that," said Ken Knox, Colorado's chief deputy state engineer. "I literally pray that we do manage the situation and not have to shut down thousands of wells. The effect would be devastating to Colorado."

The Republican is a meandering, silty creek, often bordered by water-sucking cottonwood trees, as it flows through Yuma County. The problem is that the river is not meeting its legal obligations to Kansas under a three-state compact negotiated 65 years ago.

Colorado blames the shortfall on drought, while Kansas points to well-pumping on the aquifer, saying that the practice diminishes the river's ability to replenish itself.

Shutting wells and retiring thousands of irrigated acres, mostly under corn production, would mean losses worth millions of dollars to Yuma County.

Naturally, folks here are upset.

"Shutting off wells is a quick fix and not a long-term solution," warned George Seward, an outspoken farmer in Yuma, who also owns the town's only movie theater. "The impact is going to be huge and devastating to our community. The state is not thinking out of the box."

Harsh words, cold stares

Deputy state engineer Knox probably didn't expect a warm welcome in Yuma on a visit last month, and he didn't receive one.

There were cold stares and at times harsh words as Knox told those assembled at the Church of Nazarene about state plans to shut off the irrigation wells within a certain distance of the river, possibly those within three or four miles.

But he also offered a carrot: Farmers could voluntarily sign up for a government initiative called the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, or CREP. They could earn about $2,000 per acre if they retired irrigated acres and turn those into dryland for 15 years.

Sitting in the audience, Duard Fix did some quick math.

Two of his 125-acre circles could fall within the well shut-off zone. Each yields a minimum of 200 bushels per acre. With corn at $4 a bushel, each acre would mean $12,000 over 15 years, or six-fold the CREP offer.

Fix decided he wouldn't sign up.

Born in 1934, he'd grown up and raised kids on the 7,000-acre farm in Wray inherited from his maternal grandfather. Under the state's plan, one-fifth of his irrigated acres will become dryland.

"They want to use a few of us as sacrificial lambs and not even pay us the market value of the land," Fix said. "That's where the hard feelings are."

Fortunately for the Lenzes, their wells are outside the proposed shut-off zone. The Rutledges, meanwhile, are not certain.

But whether inside or outside the shut-off zone, Yuma farmers agree on the outcome: Millions of dollars will be sucked out of the local economy, stunting the area's nascent prosperity, with the new ethanol plant coming on line just this week.

"This is very difficult and I understand (the farmers') concern," said Knox. "But folks have to realize this clearly is more than about $4 corn. This is about the law."

Frozen in time

The Republican River Compact was signed in 1942 by Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska, ratified by the state general assembly and the U.S. Congress.

At that time, the river water was divided between the three states in proportion to each state's irrigated acres in the basin. Nebraska got 49 percent, Kansas 40 percent and Colorado a mere 11 percent.

Since then, Colorado's irrigated acres in the Republican basin have increased to 580,000 acres with 4,000 wells pumping from the aquifer, compared with 4,000 to 5,000 acres irrigated by ditches in the 1940s.

But Colorado's share of the river water has remained unchanged, frozen in time.

"I wish we would have made a better deal in 1942," conceded Knox.

Colorado fought the compact in courts, but lost to Kansas. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court approved a settlement, in which the three states agreed that compact accounting would be based on a five-year average.

The first five-year period will end this year, and the numbers aren't encouraging. Colorado, on average, has shorted Kansas 11,000 acre-feet of water per year. Kansas officials have made it clear they want the owed water.

An acre-foot is roughly the amount needed to supply a family of four with enough water for one year.

Colorado officials believe they can cut the compact shortfall by nearly half by retiring about 60,000 irrigated acres, mostly close to the river.

The remaining shortfall could be made up by retiring ditches or, perhaps, draining the Bonny Reservoir near Burlington.

"If we don't meet the compact, all the 4,000 wells could be shut off and that would affect hundreds of millions of dollars per year in Colorado," Knox said.

Ethanol debate

Rod Lenz pulled into the brightly lit Yuma fairgrounds on a balmy night earlier this month. Squeals from the children's amusement rides drowned out distant thunder, as he locked his worn pickup and strode toward one of the exhibition barns.

He may have anticipated what was inside.

Judges at the Yuma County fair obviously thought highly of the entry by his children, awarding blue ribbons to their 11-foot tall cornstalks.

"This really is no big deal," Lenz said, looking around the empty barn, noting that there were no competitors.

His parents, George and Betty Lenz, began a dryland farm in Wray, east of Yuma, more than 30 years ago. Lenz and his three brothers kept the farm together and helped it expand and diversify.

Today, as the family has grown to include two sons-in-law as partners, they sell 600,000 bushels of corn and 25 million pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes each year. The family sold $1.62 million worth of corn last year. Soaring corn price means the crop could fetch more than $2 million this year, although rising costs will eat into profits.

Electricity that powers sprinklers is a big cost. The Lenzes have 35 motorized, wheel-mounted sprinklers that irrigate half their 8,500-acre farm. In past years, they have reduced water use by changing soil till methods and setting sprinklers to run at optimum times. They know they may have to do more.

Lenz is acutely aware of the brewing storm over water, as well as the background debate over ethanol itself.

"I don't feel guity about us using water to grow crop for food or fuel, as opposed to people using water for lawns or recreation," Lenz said. "I do feel a sense of responsibility to use it wisely."

The Lenzes have invested in a half-dozen ethanol plants — including the new one in Yuma and another in Sterling, 40 miles north. Potential earnings are hefty, but the family so far has seen few dividends.

In the meantime, the devout Catholic family has become more concerned about the controversy surrounding ethanol's benefits.

Wall Street investors, politicians on both sides of the aisle, agricultural companies and farmers alike extol the alternative fuel for its low emission of pollutants and its contribution toward weaning the nation off oil.

President Bush has urged the nation to replace 20 percent of its gasoline consumption with ethanol and biofuels during the next decade. Today, ethanol blended with gasoline accounts for less than 5 percent of U.S. fuel sales, up from 2 percent in 2004.

Ethanol blenders enjoy a 51 cents-a-gallon tax credit, in addition to a 54 cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol.

But detractors say ethanol takes more energy to produce than the energy derived from it. They also argue that using corn to make fuel instead of food is wrong, given world hunger.

David Pimentel, a professor at Cornell University known for his research in alternative fuels, denounces corn-based ethanol. He is among the critics who say production of one gallon of ethanol uses more than a thousand gallons of water.

"I want to know the truth about ethanol," Lenz said, walking briskly in the light drizzle toward the fair's food court, where some members of his family were selling hamburgers and sodas.

Over by a dusty cattle pen where a crowd of teenagers had congregated, he spotted the youngest two of his seven children — son Oneal, 12, and daughter Peyton, 10. Four other daughters have made him a grandfather of eight at age 52.

His faith asks him to do "the right thing" by all human lives, even unborn children, he said. And that includes making the world a better place for future generations.

"I am an honorable Christian man, I can't live a lie," he added. "I want to know if (ethanol) is bad for the society."

Caring for kin

Brett Rutledge shielded himself from the blazing afternoon sun with a hat and sunglasses.

But he couldn't avoid the over-powering stench emanating from the gooey pond just yards away.

Steeling himself, the 39-year-old farmer walked to a rusty generator on a truck parked close to the pond and cranked it to life. He wanted to do the job right. His brother Roc, 35, had given him detailed demonstrations only a week earlier.

"I have never done this before yesterday," Rutledge said.

Before, in a long-established division of labor, he took care of the crops while his kid brother dealt with cattle, hogs and compost. But Roc Rutledge was critically injured in a traffic accident just hours after he showed his older brother how to use hog manure collecting in the pond for fertilizer.

Roc Rutledge is recovering from multiple surgeries at a Denver hospital.

The two-lane Highway 34, where the wreck occurred, is Yuma's main artery, linking it to Interstate 76 and Fort Morgan to the west, which buys a lot of Yuma County milk and beef, and Nebraska, a corn seller, to the east.

Yuma County's robust corn production, among the top in the nation during this summer of prosperity, attracts buyers from feedlots and ethanol plants from other parts of Colorado. Semis roar constantly across the highway.

Rutledge stepped back as the noisy generator triggered a chain reaction in the malodorous pond. A pump with floating rollers began churning the fetid gunk, stirring up pig manure from the bottom. The sludge goes by pipeline into a fertilizer tank, or a honeywagon, in the wry parlance of the farm.

A tractor will pull the manure-spraying tank across the fields in the coming weeks to prepare them for the fall wheat planting.

The Rutledges use their own farm wastes to fertilize 7,500 acres of farmland.

Since his brother's accident, Rutledge has hired two additional hands. Corn will be harvested in October, and he needs all the help he can afford.

He has contracted 40 percent of the crop with silage harvesters who take everything ground up, for about $4 per bushel, a premium rate.

Rutledge is optimistic this will be a record corn year, and he'll make enough profits to pay down 20 percent of the farm's outstanding debt.

His golden summer has been greatly tempered by his brother's accident, of course.

And don't even ask him about the state's threat to shut off irrigation wells.

"I hate listening to that stuff," he said. "They are coming after our water. It makes me so depressed."

About the series

This is the third in an occasional series on the boom in ethanol, a corn-based fuel, and its effects on communities

The Rocky Mountain News began following a pair of families in May. The Rutledges, of Yuma, and the Lenzes, of Wray, plant corn in Yuma County. They have found that the ethanol boom has had a big impact on their livelihoods.

Meet farming families

The Rocky Mountain News began following a pair of families in May. The Rutledges, of Yuma, and the Lenzes, of Wray, plant corn in Yuma County. They have found that the ethanol boom has had a big impact on their livelihoods.

Brett Rutledge of Yuma

Who: Brett Rutledge, born and raised in Yuma, and his wife, Kristy, a track and field and cross country coach at Yuma High School. Two boys, Forest, 2, and Miles, 10 months.

What: 7,500 acres, with 1,200 planted in corn

History: Rutledge graduated from Colorado State University in 1992 and came back to the family farm. He manages crop cultivation with the help of his father, Don, and hired hands, while his brother, Roc, runs cattle operations. His mother, Judy, usually makes lunch for the men, and his wife visits him at work with the boys.

The Lenz family of Wray

Who: George, left, and Betty Lenz, four adult sons — Mike, Jim, Rod and George — and Mike's son-in-law, Marty Buoy.

What: 8,500-acre Lenz Farms, half of it irrigated, with 3,200 planted in corn

History: George and Betty first bought 640 acres of grassland in Yuma County in 1973 and later developed it into irrigated farmland. Four years later, three sons joined them to form Lenz Farms. George came aboard in 1982. Buoy is the youngest partner. The men work the field, while the women run the farm office.

chakrabartyg@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2976

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