Ag water interests meet at summit

By Larry Dreiling

Nearly 200 persons interested in the future of water and agriculture in Colorado filled the Jefferson County Fairgrounds Exhibit Hall at Golden for the 2007 Colorado Ag Water Summit.

The summit was organized and presented by the Colorado Ag Water Alliance, the water committee of the Colorado Ag Council and Jefferson County Cooperative Extension.

While the gathering of academics, agribusiness leaders, and officials from government and production groups formed no conclusions at the summit, plenty of input was collected to help officials develop better regulatory frameworks and aid producers in making better choices regarding their use of one of the state's most valuable resources.

One of the things the alliance is doing is sponsoring the development of a "white paper" to help the media, the Colorado General Assembly, interest groups and citizens understand the role agricultural conservation measures can play in addressing the state's future water supply needs.

Presenting a rough draft of the report, scheduled for release sometime early next year, were Dr. Reagan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Resources Institute at Colorado State University and Rick Brown, section chief for intrastate water management and development at the Colorado Water Conservation Board and manager of the Statewide Water Supply Initiative.

Defining ag water's role

Brown told the group he is convinced agriculture will play a major role in meeting the future water needs of the state.

"Defining what that role is, I think, is what we're wanting to work with you on and how much consensus can we get around that role," Brown said.

Expected population growth, particularly along the Front Range, likely is going to divert some of the 11.4 million acre-feet of water annually from agricultural use to municipal and industrial (M&I) use.

Currently, Fort Range watersheds are seeing increased M&I use, with the South Platte basin diverting 77 percent of its water to agriculture usage and the Arkansas diverting about 87 percent of its water to agricultural usage. This is down from the 90th percentile along each basin many years ago. Overall, about 1.1 million acre-feet of water are diverted to M&I use.

"As it gets more difficult to develop water projects, one would expect more water (rights) transfers to meet that need," Brown said. "Keep in mind about 75 percent of the headwaters of this state must leave to satisfy downstream compacts."

Uncertain times

The question for Colorado ag is: How does everyone make decisions about water in the face of uncertainty?

"We have regulatory issues, compacts we have to deal with. There's endangered species and climate variability issues. There are assumptions on demands, growth and its timing and location. There's energy development," Brown said. "We have a little uncertainty of our future hydrology. That makes providers who want to develop future additional water projects uneasy about future water development.

"Instead they're looking to agriculture as a source of supply."

This means the state will have to find a balance between drying up agricultural acreage or developing trans-basin agreements to help eastern Colorado agriculture continue while keeping West Slope development viable.

"This means asking what role agriculture will play in looking at how drying up of irrigated acres can be done in a way that is beneficial to agriculture and to the whole state," Brown said.

The issue of supply availability for the East Slope involves resolution of key issues important to the West Slope, Brown said.

"The Black Canyon/Aspinall operations; endangered species issues along the Colorado, Gunnison, Yampa and San Juan basins; wild and scenic considerations along the four tributaries of the Colorado River are all significant regulatory issues," Brown said.

"Also, how do we go about addressing future growth in areas with no reliable supplies of water? If Colorado cannot resolve these issues, additional reallocation of water out of agriculture will occur, both on the East and West Slopes."

An integrated approach

Water supply options to meet future needs will likely be a mixture of conservation, reuse, agricultural transfers, new water supply development and storage.

"Multi-purpose projects may be the most successful," Brown said. "An integrated approach will be best headlined by water conservation and efficiency. While it's not a panacea, every little bit matters. Conservation ought to be done because it's the right thing to do. It affects the farm, the state and the whole watershed."

Waskom, for his part, offered his share of the white paper draft that discusses ag water conservation challenges and opportunities. Waskom said the white paper is intended to be a statement from Colorado agriculture describing agricultural water use, water conservation and efficiency measures, legal and engineering considerations and basin opportunities and limitations. The white paper will then offer the alliance's conclusions and recommendations.

"The question right off the bat we have to face is can we do ag water conservation," Waskom asked, "is it possible? The answer is yes. We conserve water all the time. There are issues where individual producers for unfortunate reasons have to use less water in a single year.

"The one thing we have to remember is there is no free lunch. As we save water, ag has to pay through reduced yields, higher risk and lost opportunities. Can we save water? Yes. Can we do it for purposes of municipal transfers? That's a whole other question."

Water use efficiency

Waskom showed a series of charts depicting how the South Platte River basin's irrigation area had changed from 900,000 acres under irrigation in 1956, to a peak of 1.1 million acres in irrigation in 1976 to just 840,000 acres under irrigation in 2005.

"We've lost about 15 percent of the irrigated acres over the years due to drought and growth," Waskom said. "It's significant, but most of the acres were flood irrigated. Still, irrigated agriculture still exists in eastern Colorado."

Why? Because of the growth in center pivot irrigation, which has supplanted flood irrigation.

"Have we done some conservation along the South Platte? You bet we have," Waskom said.

Waskom reminded the producers in the crowd to weigh the issue of water use efficiency against the concept of consumptive use.

"Water use efficiency is the ratio of water applied compared to water consumed by evapotranspiration. Irrigation efficiency may be improved, while crop consumptive use remains unchanged," Waskom said.

"Conserved crop consumptive use occurs when irrigated acres are decreased, you switch to cool season crops or crops with a shorter growing season, deficit irrigation is practiced and evaporative losses from the field surface are reduced as a result of conservation tillage, mulching, and or drip irrigation."

Consumptive use

Waskom offered irrigation efficiency measures such as conversion of flood irrigation to gated pipe, surge, sprinkler, or drip irrigation; irrigation scheduling; use of pressurized pipe; land leveling to increase irrigation uniformity; use of furrow dikes and contour farming; water metering; tail water recovery and use of polyacrylamide (PAM) in ditches and furrows.

Reduced consumptive use techniques include lower water use cropping systems such as:

--Acreage fallowing;

--Planting shorter season and cool season crops;

--Use of limited and/or deficit irrigation;

--Removal of pivot end guns and acreage reduction;

--Control of deep-rooted plants that obtain water from a permanent ground supply or from the water table (phreatophytes), and;

--Conservation tillage.

Waskom asked several questions about the future of agriculture in Colorado, all were connected to water.

"We must ask: Is preserving agriculture in Colorado a goal? If yes, what is agriculture willing to do to help achieve the goal? Is new water development preferable to agricultural transfers? Should agricultural water use continue in all areas that are currently irrigated?" Waskom asked.

The questions in Waskom's mind continued as he discussed options for irrigated agriculture.

"We have to ask: What are the priority agricultural areas? Why are these priority areas? Are there critical agricultural shortages and where? Should alternatives be developed to address agricultural shortages? How can agricultural water conservation and efficiency be advanced in Colorado?"

For future consideration

To finish, Waskom tagged several things for what he called "future consideration," particularly in the area of agricultural water transfers.

"Urban and agricultural water transfer partnerships are possible, but are challenging to both parties," Waskom said. "Understand the terms of the contact or agreement, the ownership, the institutional organization. Multiple methods are feasible."

Other future policy considerations Waskom offers in the draft white paper include these points:

--Each agricultural operation and basin is unique and has site-specific water and risk management considerations. As such, mandatory approaches to regulating irrigation efficiency are not in the best interest of sustaining a viable irrigated agriculture in Colorado.

--Incentives for on-farm implementation of conservation measures should be considered and evaluated in the context of compacts and basin hydrology.

--Incentives for landowner control of phreatophytes, given salvaged water limitations, should be developed.

--To help create incentives for implementing water conservation measures, the cost of water conservation measures should be borne by the beneficiaries of the conserved water.

--It must be recognized that if irrigation water conservation measures are implemented, in some areas there will be a periodic need for salinity leaching to maintain productivity.

--There is a need for clearer statutory definitions of saved, salvaged and conserved water.

--There is an opportunity for statutory clarification of the legality to transfer conserved consumptive use water.

--If legislation is enacted, the state will need to develop administrative means to track and allocate conserved water and ensure compliance.

--There is a need for irrigation water conservation demonstration and pilot projects in each basin.

--The state should conduct an in depth basin-by-basin analysis of the opportunities for agricultural water conservation.

"We want to make sure that as we go forward that we're on the same page on definitions, the possibilities and risks, the challenges of ag water conservation," Waskom said. "What we really want to do with this paper is be communicating between ourselves and with the public so we can work together."

Larry Dreiling can be reached by phone at 785-628-1117 or by e-mail at ldreiling@aol.com.

12/31/07
3 Star CO\6-B

Date: 12/26/07

	Web hpj.com

Copyright/Privacy
Copyright 1995-2008.  High Plains Publishers, Inc.  All rights reserved.  Any republishing of these pages, including electronic reproduction of the editorial archives or classified advertising, is strictly prohibited. If you have questions or comments you can reach us at High Plains Journal 1500 E. Wyatt Earp Blvd., P.O. Box 760, Dodge City, KS 67801 or call 1-800-452-7171. Email: webmaster@hpj.com