Colorado River users continue to discuss conservation in drought-stricken year

BOULDER, Colo. (CN) — For many farmers who draw water from the Imperial Irrigation District in southern California, the practice of intentionally letting cropland sit without seed, or “fallowing” is a dirty “f” word they don’t want to think about.

“Fallowing is an ‘f’ word, we believe the land should be growing,” Tina Shields, the district’s water department manager, told attendees at the 46th Annual Colorado Law Conference on Natural Resources at the Wolf Law School at University of Colorado Boulder on Thursday.

Shields said farmers don’t want to call their water conservation program fallowing. Instead the district calls it “deficit irrigation” a program that earned the support of more than 200 farmers by offering fair compensation for the temporary sacrifice.

Established in 1911, the Imperial Irrigation District holds senior water rights and has access to 3.1 million acre-feet from the Colorado River each year. With great water use also comes great water savings. Last year, Shields said the Imperial Irrigation District conserved 725,000 acre-feet of water through the “mini-fallowing”**** program along with other efficiency upgrades. Some of that water helped quench thirst in San Diego and San Francisco, while the rest remained upriver to refill dwindling reserves in Lake Mead.

Forty million people living in the southwest U.S. and Mexico depend on the Colorado River, including 30 Native American tribes. In addition to generating power for 2.5 million people, more than half of the river’s water nourishes 5.7 million acres of crops — about a tenth of which are fed by the Imperial Irrigation District.

But as more people depend on Colorado River water for survival, drought, climate change and overuse threaten delivery of a sustainable supply.

Earlier this year, state negotiators failed to reach new operational guidelines to divvy up a Colorado River’s dwindling supply by a February deadline. Amid continued conversations about the future river compact, and the U.S. Department of the Interior developing its own solution, the Colorado conference organizers directed speakers to focus on “searching for solutions in the face of uncertainty” along the Colorado River.

The prompt led several speakers to highlight innovative ways they’ve been helping their own water districts use less water — a topic as perennial as the snowpack.

Located south of Phoenix, the Gila River Community estimates it cut water loss in half by encasing irrigation channels in concrete and upgrading aging infrastructure with modern water pumps that actually recapture and recycle water back into the system.

Although the Gila River Indian Community has been irrigating the region for more than 4,000 years producing “the bread basket of the west,” upstream overuse has shrunk the amount of water that makes it to the tribe.

In fact, the tribe’s canals are currently dry.

“We lost all of our Gila water last Saturday for the fifth time,” said David DeJong, director for the Gila River Indian Community’s natural resources department.

The most innovative addition to the system has been the construction of two sets of solar panels built over irrigation canals, generating power from above and protecting the water below from evaporation.

“It’s hard to be the river people, with the river being central to life when there isn’t a flowing river,” DeJong said. “The community’s vision is to restore Keli Akimel, the river.”

Although countless engineering firms market irrigation solutions that promise more efficient use of water, Scott Campell, senior strategic consultant for the Freshwater Trust said the real problem is figuring out the most efficient use of funds.

Using the Uncompahgre River in southwestern Colorado as an example, Campbell demonstrated how modeling can help managers decide which canals to line and where to build new water pumps.

Instead of a $1 billion overhaul, Campbell said $185 million allows the district to line 40 miles of canal with concrete — cutting 50% of water loss — along with implementing infrastructure upgrades across 6,000-acres of farmland and a supporting a five-year conservation project.

“There is a viable pathway to conserve hundreds of thousands of acre feet,” Campbell said. “We’re not saying we’re going to solve all of our problems for $150,000, but we can solve a lot of them. You can work with less and get higher yield outcomes.”

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