WATER MANAGEMENT After
Before and after photos of infrastructure improvements to a critical portion of the Canyon Canal below
the Roller Dam. Photo credit: Mark Harris
Before
water management — including the upper Colorado River system conservation pilot program, the state of Colorado’s Alternative to Agricultural Transfer Mechanisms Program and other demand management demonstration projects.
THE COLORADO RIVER SERVES APPROXIMATELY 40 MILLION PEOPLE AND IRRIGATES OVER FIVE MILLION ACRES OF LAND.
The goal of these projects and programs is to reduce the use of “buy and dry” methods to serve other sectors’ growing demands for water. Farmers and ranchers have led in the development and application of tools that can conserve consumptive use (e.g., crop switching, deficit irrigation, split-season crops) through incentives while keeping the water rights with the land. Early work on these methods is also demonstrating that the benefits of these programs can extend well beyond the confines of water conservation.
STACK NG BENEFI ACKING BENEFITS
One example of how water conservation projects can succeed at stacking benefits is a project we supported in Western Colorado. The Grand Valley Water Users’ Association ran a two-year program
8 Irrigation TODAY | Fall 2020
where irrigators, who were interested in conserving water in return for compensation, submitted proposals.
The 22 irrigators who participated in the Conserved Consumptive Use Pilot Project (CCUPP) all found some economic advantages to their participation in the program. The agronomic uses and benefits varied, from fallowing to deficit irrigation and split-season irrigation. Some benefits included the use of temporarily fallowed ground to: 1) spread accumulated feedlot manure; 2) control weeds; 3) improve or change rotational plans; 4) evaluate and improve soil health; and 5) investigate implementation of limited irrigation cropping systems into livestock operations.
While the chosen irrigators who reduced their consumptive use, through a variety of methods, received payment for their reductions in consumptive use, some of the funding of this program supported much- needed infrastructure improvements for the association. Thus, even if an irrigator did not participate in the program,
they benefited from the improvements to the diversion structure and canal. The conserved water did not run through the canal, but instead ran through the association’s hydropower plant, generating hydropower. After the conserved water ran through the hydropower plant, it then ran into the “15-mile reach,” a stretch of the Colorado River that had been designated as critical habitat for four endangered fish, providing additional flows for these endangered fish. The conserved water then ran down through a stretch of Colorado River that is used by rafting companies for recreational economic benefits. Finally, the conserved water
Irrigated land in the Grand Valley alongside a
fallowed field, which was participating in the CCUPP. Photo credit: Mark Harris
irrigationtoday.org
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