Officials: La Jara Reservoir not for sale

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CPW photos Beautiful year-round, the La Jara Reservoir and surrounding lands are not for sale, State Wildlife officers said, putting a recent rumor to rest

LA JARA– Speculation that one of the Southern San Luis Valley’s most popular attractions may soon be on the auction block was quashed Tuesday by two state agency officials.


“The La Jara property is not for sale,” said Kristin Kemp, outreach and communication officer with the Land Board.


According to discussions held at a Conejos County Commissioners meeting on January 30, the
Colorado State Land Board was considering selling the 55,000-acre La Jara Wildlife Area, which  includes the popular La Jara Reservoir.


Kemp and Cory Chick, regional manager with the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), who is a San Luis Valley native and is based in Durango, said it’s absolutely “not true.” He said it “blew up” his email Tuesday morning though, following which he contacted the Department of
Natural Resources for Colorado who he believes in turn contacted the State Land Board. Chick said the State Land Board had studied the possibility of converting the area to a state park in recent years but decided against it based on its distance from populated areas. He went on to say that CPW has not had any discussions with the Land Board about managing that area and “I think we’d be the first ones they’d talk to.”


On Jan.30, Conejos Commission Chairman Mitchell Jarvies asked the board to approve the agenda with the addition of “discussing the La Jara Reservoir and State Land Board,” according to the minutes.


Jarvies stated that he had been contacted by someone who “said that it hasn’t been (made) public but the State Land Board wants to sell La Jara Reservoir.”


“Right now they are trying to sell to the big players-private individuals; that is who they are marketing to,” Jarvies said, according to the minutes. “They are very concerned that if that were to happen someone would close the La Jara Reservoir or become privatized and basically lock the gate and that would be it.”


The minutes go on to mention a “small piece that was state land by the Rio Grande” in Costilla County. “It went up for sale and the CPW (Colorado Parks and Wildlife) doesn’t have money and they can’t own land, but they found money to purchase that and Costilla County took ownership with an MOU that the CPW would run it.”


Jarvies went on to speculate if something similar could happen with the La Jara parcel, having the county own it with a similar MOU with CPW. MOU is a memorandum of understanding.
“That would protect our grazing rights up there, fishing and hunting and wood hauling which are things that local people do,” the minutes state. “That would become a 55,000-acre grant which is tax base for us, but many people use that.”


Jarvies said he was bringing it up for discussion “because someone would have to take ownership of it.”


Commissioner Steve McCarroll said the road would have to stay open because it is the only access to the Forest Service.


Tressesa Martinez, county administrator, asked if anyone could purchase it and Jarvies said, “yes it seems like that is what they are marketing to.” Martinez added that “there would probably be money through GOCO- open space.”


According to the minutes, there was apparently a brief discussion on water rights.


County Attorney Nick Sarmiento said he would email the State Land Board “to see what is going on.”
According to Kemp, the La Jara property was acquired from the federal government at statehood in 1876 (plus some land-for-land-exchanges in the past couple of decades) as state trust land to be managed by the State Land Board and used to earn income for trust benefciaries, public schools.
“Since 2017, the Land Board and CPW -- our sister agency under the Department of Natural Resources — have been in the nascent stages of exploring CPW’s ability to possibly take ownership of the property,” Kemp said in an email statement. “Our agencies have been considering the possibility that the ideal owner of La Jara might be a public agency whose mission is more directly aligned with wildlife management and public use.”


“The Colorado State Land Board owns and stewards 2.8 million acres of land, and we lease these assets to help fund Colorado public schools,” Kemp continued. “We have earned $1.7 billion for Colorado public schools since 2008. We are very proud to be the primary funding for the Colorado Department of Education’s Building Excellent Today Program (BEST).”


BEST has provided capital construction grants to 524 schools serving 225,000 students since the program’s inception in 2008. Conejos County has been awarded 9 BEST grants, including grants to build the new South Conejos RE-10 and Sanford 6J preK-12 schools.


Kemp said the Land Board rarely acquires or disposes of land and “if/when we do, it is a lengthy and public process."