WATER MANAGEMENT
States where drought is rampant, forest fires continue to flare up and all of us are feeling the effects of the pandemic. All of this is to say, water conservation and the continued access to healthy, secure and reliable water is critical.
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Stepping back to look at the big picture, while grocery store clerks, health care workers, first responders and others have rightly been deemed essential workers and lauded for their important work, the efforts of irrigators throughout the United States have gone largely unnoticed and underappreciated. Farmers and ranchers — particularly those who make efficient use of water part of their businesses — are the true unsung heroes of this moment.
On behalf of the Walton Family Foundation, I have the honor of leading our Colorado River Initiative within the Environment Program, where we are working to ensure a healthy Colorado River Basin for the benefit of the environment and communities. We work closely with irrigators, conservation organizations, water leaders, tribes and others to find solutions to the most challenging water management issues facing the West.
HARD ST HARDEST-WORKING RIVER NG RIVER
By volume, the Colorado River is ranked 37th in the country, but it punches well above its weight in terms of importance.
irrigationtoday.org
year ago, there was not one part of Colorado that was in a drought. Today could not be more different, with the entire state of Colorado experiencing the effects of some degree of drought. This is a microcosm for the entire Western United
The Colorado River serves approximately 40 million people and irrigates over five million acres of land, and it has sometimes been described as the hardest-working river in the world. It has carved out majestic landscapes such as the Grand Canyon, and many of its tributaries provide vital habitat for fish, birds and wildlife. The Colorado River serves cities from Denver to Los Angeles, through a variety of transmountain diversions.
In the face of climate change and massive population growth, the Colorado River continually is asked to do more, with less. Farmers and ranchers understand this, because it’s vital to their livelihoods. They are leading the way in showing us how we can better manage our water resources in ways that can benefit the river basin — and their bottom lines. We can help irrigators solve increasingly severe water management challenges.
THE THE I IMPOR ANCE OF GOOD D PORTANCE OF GOOD DATA
The Walton Family Foundation has supported a variety of different projects and programs that explore how we can work with irrigators to better manage our water resources. One of the most recent and exciting developments has been a project called OpenET, which is using best available science and publicly available data to fill the biggest data gap in water management in the West. OpenET will launch in 2021 and provide easily accessible, satellite-based evapotranspiration data to help farmers and water managers understand how much water crops are using to grow, and it will accelerate innovation and conservation in water management. A
collaborative effort between NASA, the Desert Research Institute, Environmental Defense Fund, Google and others, the platform will provide field-scale ET estimates for the entire Western United States, with data available as far back as 1985. The steering committee for this project includes several agricultural leaders from the Western United States.
ET includes both evaporation from the land and transpiration from plants, and ET estimates can serve as a good metric for consumptive water use. The ability to easily access accurate information on ET is central to advancing the use of data-driven irrigation management strategies, expanding incentive-driven conservation programs, providing proper credit for investments in agricultural water conservation and reducing transaction costs for water markets. OpenET will empower irrigators and water managers across the West to build a more accurate understanding of their water budgets, resulting in a more resilient system for agriculture, people and wildlife. The platform will also help level the playing field and build a shared basis for decision- making by providing all water users and water managers with the same access to transparent and timely data.
To read more about the OpenET platform, visit:
www.OpenETdata.org.
FLEXIBLE W TER MANAGEM NT TOO LE WATER MANAGEMENT TOOLS
We must find better, more effective ways of deploying the tools at our disposal, which is why we also support projects and programs that improve, increase and demonstrate the benefits of flexible
Fall 2020 | Irrigation TODAY 7
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