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Melissa Bailey

Once 'paradise,' parched Colorado valley grapples with arsenic in water

Farming in a 20-year drought is "hard for us," says John Mestas, at his cattle ranch in Colorado's San Luis Valley. Rising levels of arsenic in the water supply are linked to the drought. (Melissa Bailey/KFF Health News)

When John Mestas' ancestors moved to Colorado over 100 years ago to raise sheep in the San Luis Valley, they "hit paradise," he says.

"There was so much water, they thought it would never end," Mestas says of the agricultural region at the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

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