It all started to happen with the hippie movement from California moved into the mountains in the State of Colorado....and it has morphed into some New York shysters coming to Colorado and selling the water off the farmers land in SE Colorado to Aurora, Colorado Springs and other Front Range towns... I saw recently where the shysters were buying up more land in SE Colorado... The farmers that did not sell out ...which were very few....lease their water shares to the cities..and that is a very lucrative thing to do....but, apparently keep enough of their water rights to keep their farm going too....