Reservoir closures threaten recreational lifeline for Eastern Plains campers and anglers 10%
By Tracy Ross0%
7/14/2026, 10:02:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 3 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect and Loss Aversion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 1.5% saturation with 20 hits. Analysis detected 41 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,312 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 27.1% and a BS Rank of 10% (14,000 of 15,517 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 90.20% of the article peer group.
Wayne Ewing doesn’t just fish Adobe Creek Reservoir, which straddles Bent and Kiowa counties.
He and his family have spent two to three weeks there every summer for the better part of 25 years, he said.
“A lot of birthdays have been celebrated there.
A lot of anniversaries and weddings,” the Lincoln County commissioner added.
He’s also an ordained minister who has baptized people in the deep blue water.
“So it’s more than just fishing.
It's a community-type deal.
You know, relationships that we've gained through the years.
It’s just sad we might lose all that,” Ewing said.
On July 16, Colorado Parks and Wildlife will close public access to Adobe Creek and Thurston Reservoir, located in Prowers County, following the termination of a 25-year lease agreement with the Fort Lyon Canal Company, which operates a canal that feeds the reservoirs and owns the water in both bodies, as well as the land around Thurston.
CPW declared a public fish salvage on the reservoirs that started June 24 and will go through July 15.
The news has sent shockwaves through southeastern Colorado communities that have little access to outdoor recreation, especially any involving water.
Ewing worries about the economic impact it will have on Bent, Kiowa and Crowley counties, where people are “coming in and out buying gas, ice and food.”
Jason Swann, founder of Rising Routes, a nonprofit focused on outdoor equity, worries the closures will block recreation to too many anglers and boaters as other southeastern Colorado reservoirs are already stressed by drought.
“John Martin is partially restricted, Nee Noshe is drying up, Nee Gronda no longer has a fishery, and now Adobe Creek and Thurston are closing,” he said in an email.
“It's not about just the loss of Adobe Creek and Thurston Reservoirs — it's the impact on an entire region's outdoor access over the course of just a few years.”
CPW and the Fort Lyon Canal Company’s inability to forge a new lease has left people like Ewing confused, upset and looking for new camping and fishing opportunities.
He and his wife are exploring Nebraska and Kansas.
“It impacts us all,” he said.
“I can’t understand why they can't come together.”
Who offered whom what?
News of the closure became public June 24, when CPW announced it along with an invitation to licensed anglers to catch fish at Adobe Creek, under relaxed rules and with no size limits, through July 15.
The closures came up again at a meeting CPW hosted at the community center in Las Animas on June 26.
Todd Marriot, Lamar area wildlife manager, said CPW started negotiations for a new lease with the Fort Lyon Canal Company around a year ago knowing the old lease was about to expire.
That lease, for three reservoirs including Horse Creek Reservoir in Bent and Otero counties, was for $352,000 over 25 years paid with revenue from hunting and fishing licenses.
Payments cost the state about $14,000 per year for Adobe Creek, Thurston and Horse Creek reservoirs, although the total was paid in a lump sum in 2001.
During the meeting there was some discrepancy in CPW and the Fort Lyon Canal Company’s description of how much the new lease would cost and which side presented the first offer to whom.
Frank McGee, CPW southeast regional manager, said the canal company presented an offer of a 25-year lease costing the state around $600,000, a $248,000 increase from the current lease, adjusted for inflation.
When CPW countered with an offer similar to what Fort Lyon was proposing, McGee said, the company, “upon further reflection, ” decided their own offer wasn't adequate.
An audience member at the June 26 Las Animas community meeting was confused by the back and forth and asked for clarity.
“They sent you a proposal, and then they said, ‘No, we're not going to honor this.
We now want to renegotiate it.’
Is that what happened?”
“Well, the other thing was these weren’t formal offers that were binding,“ McGee answered.
“So did they come back with a higher number?”
the audience member asked.
“No,” McGee answered.
Curtis Sniff, an attorney and superintendent of the Fort Lyon Canal Company, told the audience CPW came to them with its own offer, based on a lease for two of the three reservoirs.
The new number was just shy of $500,000, but it couldn’t be approved until CPW appraised the Adobe Creek and Thurston reservoirs.
“So it wasn't that they accepted $600,000 or rejected the $600,000,” Sniff said.
“It was all of these surveys have to be done, all of these appraisals have to be done, and there was no time for that because our shareholders on the canal are struggling.”
The Fort Lyon Canal Company’s financial burden
By struggling, Sniff meant the 265 shareholders who get water for agriculture from the Fort Lyon Canal have been under financial pressure since they borrowed $9 million to improve the Adobe Dam several years ago.
The Fort Lyon Canal Company is a mutual ditch corporation supplying irrigation water to about 94,000 acres between La Junta and Lamar.
Its shareholders primarily consist of local agricultural producers and large private landholders, with major corporate owners like Arkansas River Farms.
The payment on the loan is $273,000 a year for 40 years, Sniff said, “so if you divide that out, our average shareholder is paying over $1,000 a year just to make the payment.”
Meanwhile CPW’s last annual payment on the expiring lease paid each shareholder about 15 cents per share, he said.
Under the terms being negotiated, one of the proposed offers would pay shareholders just 3 cents more per share.
The dam improvement doubled the capacity of the reservoir, which was established for irrigation.
As backroom negotiations go back and forth, anglers, campers and other recreationists flock to Adobe Creek Reservoir —also called Blue Lake— on the Adobe Creek Reservoir State Wildlife Area for fun, relaxation, rest and relief from the blazing Eastern Plains heat.
The reservoir boasts some of the best warm-water fishing in the state.
CPW stocks it with sport fish including catfish, crappie, saugeye and walleye
During CPW’s latest annual creel survey at Adobe Creek Reservoir in 2025 state workers checked the licenses of just over 4,000 anglers, one indication of how popular the body of water is, Marriott said.
“The other thing you have to take in consideration,” he added, “is, pulling some quick numbers from hatcheries, on average, we're putting over $40,000 worth into stocking that lake every year.
And when you add in man hours and equipment hours and things like that, it all kind of adds up.”
To which Swann, the Rising Routes founder, asks: What about the value of equity and giving the public a place to get wet?
Let the people go fishing
Swann describes what he does on his LinkedIn page as “Expanding Access to Outdoor Spaces to Shape a Future Where Belonging is Woven into Every Trail, Summit, and Shoreline.”
In an email to The Colorado Sun, he said when he learned about the reservoir shutdowns, “the news wasn’t a surprise to me, which is what makes it so painful.”
Rising Routes’ data also reflects what rural residents have long decried, he said.
“The sense that 'if you're not on the Front Range, you don't exist in Colorado.'
The Eastern Plains represent 14% of our survey respondents but face compounding disadvantages that the rest of the state doesn't have to reckon with in the same way.”
Swann thinks CPW, whose mandate is to provide sustainable outdoor recreational opportunities that inspire current and future generations, should keep Adobe Creek and Thurston reservoirs open.
So does McGee, who says CPW and the Fort Lyon Canal Company continue to discuss new lease options.
The sides met last week and will meet again Tuesday.
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