From The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Dennis Webb):
Eckert alfalfa grower Paul Kehmeier has driven across large, parched swaths of eastern Colorado where agricultural water rights apparently have been sold for municipal use.
He doesn’t want Eckert to look like that, so a few years back he and his father got involved with exploring alternatives under which agriculture can temporarily transfer water for other uses rather than resorting to the permanent, “buy-and-dry” approach to meeting water supply demands in Colorado.
Kehmeier has incorporated methods such as splitting irrigation seasons or starting irrigation later in the year, and received financial compensation in return, taking advantage of funding available to explore the feasibility of such voluntary efforts in boosting overall water supplies.
He’s found that his alfalfa can withstand the changes in irrigation that result from such measures.
“So alfalfa is well-suited to it. I nominate alfalfa for this duty,” Kehmeier wryly observed Thursday during the annual Upper Colorado River Basin Water Forum put on by Colorado Mesa University’s Ruth Powell Hutchins Water Center.
Kehmeier participated in an $11 million pilot conservation program launched by the Bureau of Reclamation and several major municipal water providers to test various agriculture and municipal conservation projects in the Colorado River Basin. He’s interested in taking advantage of future opportunities to release water downstream rather than irrigate. But he also warned of shortcomings that need to be addressed, such as the laborious eight-month process it took him to get a signed contract.
“I don’t think the average farmer is going to go through that kind of hassle to lease a little bit of water,” he said.
He also suggested that such a program could be made more user-friendly for agricultural interests if it was administered through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which has local offices and already administers the Conservation Reserve Program, under which farmers are paid to leave fields fallow. The pilot water conservation program is being administered in the Upper Colorado Basin by the Upper Colorado River Commission. It’s been extended through next year to fund another round of projects.
While the program doesn’t specifically send conserved water to Lake Powell, its goal is to look at ways to boost storage levels of that reservoir so the reservoir can be used to keep meeting Upper Colorado Basin water delivery obligations to downstream states, especially in times of drought.
In Colorado, water-transfer approaches are being explored by a working group on water banking, made up of the Colorado River District, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, The Nature Conservancy and others. Water banking is a conceptual idea for addressing the risks of water shortages through payments to water rights holders to curtail use, with the saved water being stored or held in account elsewhere, Aaron Derwingson of The Nature Conservancy said.
The working group has been involved in some of the pilot water conservation projects, and in ongoing field studies in partnership with Colorado State University, to test the ability of farms to reduce irrigation levels and later be able to return to normal levels of production. Derwingson indicated the results so far have been promising, particularly when it comes to split-season irrigation. They’ve also shown the importance of managing fields while they’re fallow to control weeds, prevent wind erosion and ensure the fields look well-managed from a community perspective, he said.
Another approach that’s being piloted involves transitioning to organic operations, with water saved during the transition and a resulting crop that can be sold at a higher price.
The next step for the working group is to try such measures at a larger scale with a project next year in the Grand Valley involving 10 farmers, 1,250 acres and 3,200 acre feet of water. The program will cost $1 million for payments to farmers and other costs including program administration and infrastructure improvements.
“It’s a significant step up from where we’ve been in the past and I think a good model for where we can go in the future,” he said.
Ultimately, he said, water banking can’t just involve agriculture.
“It must involve everyone that relies on water in the Colorado River Basin,” he said. “Everyone really shares in that risk (of a shortage) and so everyone’s got be involved in the solution.”
Brett Bovee of Westwater Research has done a financial analysis of lease-based water transfer alternatives to buy-and-dry on the Front Range. He said incentives or subsidies may be needed to induce such approaches by municipal water providers, as well as an exploration of ways to reduce costs.
“Leasing water in the long term looks to be more costly (than permanent acquisition of water rights). If it is, you have to address that to get people interested,” he said.
It also would help to focus on trying to get involvement in leasing programs by water entities that are water-stressed and have limited supply options, he said. That could help build an initial comfort level in the idea and lead to more widespread use.
James Eklund, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, said it will be important to learn from the pilot projects and water banking efforts.
Otherwise, he warned of “the unintended consequences of just letting inertia build to the point where monied, Front Range interests are going to want to just buy senior water rights on the West Slope and solve the (water supply) problem that way.”