Films like How the West was Won, teach viewers conquering the West was, and still is, about taming the landscape and the people in it. However, the true winning of the West is about maintaining access to clean, fresh water.
The Imperial Irrigation District (IID) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) just reached such an agreement for water from the Colorado River. To preserve water levels in lakes Powell and Mead without negatively impacting the Salton Sea, the Bureau approved a water use reduction plan proposal from IID that would incentivize farmers to temporarily fallow fields in its service area.
Under the plan, there are three avenues district irrigators can follow to help reduce water use through 2026 – On-Farm Efficiency Conservation Program (OFECP) or Simplified OFECP, Deficit Irrigation Program (DIP), and Farm Unit Fallowing Program (FUFP) – to help reduce river water use. According to IID’s proposal, the OFECP has a maximum acreage participation of 65,000 acres and a water savings of 50,000 acre-feet. The DIP has a maximum acreage participation of 180,000 acres with a water savings of up to 226,000 acre-feet. The FUFP can save 172,250 acre-feet in water spread over a maximum of 34,450 acres. Each of the three programs offers different forms of water conservation and all are voluntary for water users to participate in.
The proposal aims to save between 250,000 and 300,000 acre-feet of water annually from 2024 through 2026, or a total of between 800,000 and 900,000 acre-feet. The DIP and FUFP offer irrigators payments for “water conservation volume” saved by opting in to each program. The most recent water rate schedule lists the cost of “general agricultural” use water delivered at $20/acre-foot but there is no regulation outlining how many acre-feet an irrigator can use during the growing season. According to the Bureau’s plan outline, farmers who sign up to participate in the DIP or FUFP options can be paid $330, $365, or $400 an acre-foot for signing a one-, two-, or three-year agreement respectively. Eligibility for the various rate plans may have changed given how late into 2024 the agreement between the IID and the Bureau was approved.
To put that targeted conservation number in perspective, an acre-foot is equivalent to 326,000 gallons of water, or an acre of land being covered in water one foot deep; enough to provide all the water for 2.5 households for an entire year. So, if the IID and the Bureau can achieve their goal of conserving about 850,000 acre-feet of water annually, approximately 2.1 million homes worth of water saved each year through 2026.
Among the crops targeted by the conservation programs is alfalfa. The University of California Cooperative Extension notes the Imperial Valley region requires a minimum of 4 acre-feet of water to support a healthy alfalfa crop. If a grower typically uses 5 acre-feet of water for their annual alfalfa crop, a cost of $100 at the published water delivery rate, and signed a one-year agreement to cut that irrigation rate by 1 acre-foot, the $330 payment would effectively pay for three years of irrigation in the future. Certainly, the billing structure is more complex than that, but it is clear from the information available, the IID and the Bureau are trying to make the incentive structure attractive enough to get area growers to buy in.
Ultimately, programs based on volunteer participation backstopped with a monetary incentive are worthwhile. Too often farmers are “compelled” by state and federal agencies to do something in the name of conservation or the public good with little reward for their sacrifice. In this instance, irrigators can do both. They can serve the public good by temporarily shutting off their water and they can off-set the potential damage to that crop with a monetary incentive.
Pam Lewison is the Director of Agriculture Research at the Washington Policy Center and a Pacific Research Institute fellow. She co-owns and operates a family farm in Eastern Washington state.
