Upper and lower states in the Colorado River Basin have until next summer to decide how they will share the responsibility of managing a resource growing ever more scarce in the West: water.
This impacts all of us. Of all water used in Utah, 27% of it comes from the Colorado River. The Colorado River supplies 40 million people with drinking water, generates hydroelectricity to power 2.3 million homes, and irrigates nearly 5.5 million acres of land.
The Colorado River is the lifeblood of agriculture across the Western and Southwestern United States. Agriculture accounts for 70% of the river’s water usage, but the river’s flow continues to ebb, and money set aside to help conserve water from the Colorado might not make it to the farmers it’s supposed to help. The Biden administration set aside more than $4 billion as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in part to pay farmers to draw less water from the river, so there will be enough water to continue the flow downstream, but the new presidential administration halted those payments.
At the time of this publication, some of the IRA funds have been released, which National Farmers Union President Rob Larew called “a welcome first step in ensuring USDA honors its commitments to farmers and rural communities.” He went on to say, “America’s family farmers and ranchers are facing a year of economic uncertainty, exacerbated by the uncertainty of the administration’s pause on federal funding and staff dismissals.” American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall testified before the U.S. Senate that tariffs could also exacerbate the economic plights of farmers.
Between the chaos in Washington, D.C., the inability for lower and upper basin states to come to an agreement, and the ever-present threat of drought and a climate in crisis, the future of the Colorado River has never felt more uncertain.
With the current guidelines set to expire, Upper Basin states (Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico) and the Lower Basin states (California, Arizona, Nevada) must agree on how to manage the two biggest reservoirs in the U.S., Lake Powell and Lake Mead, as well as how to (and who should) shoulder the burden of reducing water usage. If they don’t reach an agreement, the federal government (or the Supreme Court) could make the decision for them.
States and cities are taking some independent actions to conserve water in the meantime. “Water is scarce and it’s so very, very limited and continues to become more and more limited,” says Hannah Freeze, UDAF’s Water Optimization Program Manager. “And it’s not just Utah. It’s everywhere in the West. And so to be able to be better with the very precious resource that we have, it is worthwhile to incentivize our producers.”
Utah’s Agriculture Water Optimization Program started off the 2019 legislative session with an allocation from legislators of $3 million to help agricultural producers optimize their water use. And so it was kind of a small program. The program has now received upwards of $276 million in funding from the legislature. In short, it’s a grant program that incentivizes farmers to upgrade their irrigation systems to more efficient water-wise systems. Freeze explains, “So we’ll pay for 50% of the irrigation system improvement to incentivize the producers to take advantage of new technology and new systems and have an opportunity to upgrade their irrigation.”
So far, the program is set to fund 542 projects across the state, to the tune of about $114 million, but already completed projects total just about $41 million to those producers, “So we have a lot of projects in the queue,” says Freeze, and she says they receive more requests every time the program opens to new applications. Thus far, “We’re able to award about roughly 50% of all the applications we receive,” she says.
At the time of this writing, a bill in the Utah State Legislature would only require that grant recipients pony up 25% of costs, rather than 50%. The bill would also allow funds from the Agricultural Water Optimization Account to be directed toward research as well as projects. Some have noted, however, that optimization projects might not always result in more water for bodies like the Colorado River. Some water saved through optimization projects could be used to expand farming operations or grow more thirsty crops.
Saving water to save water is not the whole story. “As Utah continues to grow as projected, we have to have a vibrant agricultural community to feed those people,” says Freeze. “And so investing in agriculture is an investment in the future of Utah to be able to have the capacity to meet the demands of an increasing population.”
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