Utah will pay farmers for not having tap water

Editor’s Note • This article is published via the Colorado River Collaborativea solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University.

Coby Hunt’s field near the southeastern Utah town of Green River would normally be knee-deep in alfalfa.

This year, however, it was barren – pale gray soil cracking under the late summer sun. The only green things were the spindly remnants of random plants that somehow survived without watering.

It wasn’t a pretty sight for Hunt. “It hurts,” he said, looking at the deserted field. “But there’s an advantage to looking like that, right?”

This advantage is that he gives the water that he could have used to irrigate his land to the nearby Green River, which flows into the increasingly polluted Colorado River.

“There are only so many pieces of the pie you can take out before there is no pie left,” he said. “Every little bit you can save means more.”

Across Utah, farmers are experimenting with ways to reduce their water use as agriculture, drought and population growth converge to put pressure on the state’s limited water resources. Some are currently installing more efficient irrigation technology. Others are Testing unconventional crops. In Hunt’s case, he is taking some of his farmland completely out of use – for a time and for a price.

For the past two years, Hunt has participated in one Federal program This pays farmers to temporarily leave their fields empty and lease the water they save to the government. This is something that has been going on for years across the Colorado River Basin.

Now Utah is launching its version of that initiative. The new multimillion-dollar plan incentivizes conservation and aims to better track the amount of water saved in hopes of gaining recognition in future deals on the Colorado River.

“Some… farmers don’t like it.”

The practice of leaving a field unused for a season is called lying fallowand Hunt acknowledged it’s not for everyone. “Some farmers don’t like it,” he said. “In fact, they don’t like me because I leased my water.”

Many don’t want the government involved in their business, he said, or fear that if they show they can survive without water, the government could permanently cut them off. For farmers who grow other crops, e.g Green River’s famous melonsHe said it might not make financial sense to sit out a year and lose your customer base.

“But for me, if I can help with the problem – for example the drought – then that’s a good thing,” he said.

Hunt usually grows feed for the livestock he raises, so he still had plenty to do while this 30-acre field sits empty. Being fallow just meant he had to buy hay somewhere else.

He is also happy with the water savings. His water right would normally allow him to use six acres of water a year, he said — enough to cover Hunt and the acre he has over his head. Since its fields are among the last upstream of Lake Powell, it’s easy to imagine how much water it stores as it makes its way to the reservoir.

That’s why farmers like Hunt are critical to Utah’s new effort to conserve more water in the Colorado River Demand Management Pilot Program. What’s new is how water savings are tracked and documented.

“Ultimately our goal is to create some sort of savings account in Lake Powell or other reservoirs,” said Lily Bosworth, an engineer at Colorado River Authority of Utahwho manages the pilot.

If the state then needs to send additional water downstream to meet its future Colorado River obligations, Bosworth said it could draw from that Lake Powell savings account instead of forcing users to cut back. Utah is still in the process of ensuring that the water saved by the program can be recognized at both the regional and federal levels, she said.

Utah is investing $4.4 million in the pilot over the next two years. Applications open Mid-December, and the first round of farmers is scheduled to begin conservation by the spring irrigation season.

“Nature conservation is a sensible use”

Bosworth said the main benefit to farmers, besides payment, is that they retain their water rights, thereby avoiding the water right “use it or lose it” Situations that have discouraged some from canning in the past. A new one Country code in 2023 opened the opportunity for farmers to apply to the Department of Water Rights to designate a portion of their water rights as conservation rights.

Utah’s demand management program will track this water downstream in two ways.

One is to use regulations to distribute the water saved, Bosworth said. The state could enforce a water discharge target amount and intervene to prevent other water rights holders from using that water between the field where it was conserved and the reservoir into which the state wishes to discharge it.

The other option would be to set the time when the saved water enters the system. The state could store it in an upstream reservoir and then release it as a pulse crop after the irrigation season ends. In theory, this would mean that there would be less chance that another water right holder would use it before it reached its destination.

The program may require additional measurement tools along the river to track stored water and ensure it flows downstream.

Utah’s investment represents a major change, Bosworth said. “Recognizing that conservation is good use is a pretty big deal to me. This is a big shift in thinking about how we look at water in Utah and the West.”

Of course, Utah’s demand management program is taking place during this time tense negotiations between the seven basin states over how to divide the shrinking Colorado River.

“While I definitely think it is innovative and a step in the right direction – for example, the Upper Basin should take on demand management – ​​I am not sure it will have an immediate impact on post-2026 negotiations,” Elizabeth said Koebele, attorney associate professor at the University of Nevada Reno who studied water policy.

Utah will be the first Upper Basin state to incentivize and pursue water conservation in this way, Koebele said, and therefore could serve as a model for Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico.

If all four start demand management programs, they say it could improve the Upper Basin’s negotiating position with the Lower Basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona. However, she does not believe this will happen, at least not before the current river agreements expire in 2026.

There’s an inherent tension between saying “we can’t reduce our water use” and saying “we can save more,” Koebele said, and Utah and its neighbors generally still resist future water cuts.

“It scares me when the rest of the Upper Basin states say, ‘We’re not going to play,'” she said.

Finally, Koebele said that this led to a “compact call“Where the lower basin states force the upper basin to limit their water use. If Utah has a little more water in its reservoir savings account, that could improve the state’s situation, she said, but reaching this unprecedented point in river negotiations would be risky.

“We can find out.”

As the West gets hotter And Tumble dryerIt’s also unclear whether paying farmers not to farm is the best solution in the long term.

“We’re seeing this drying trend that’s undeniable in the Colorado River Basin,” Koebele said. “In my view, we will never raise enough money to permanently compensate everyone for nature conservation.”

Particularly with the impending change in the presidential administration, much of the federal money that has been used to pay farmers for austerity measures in recent years will no longer be available could dry out. However, the demand management strategy can help manage short-term droughts and buy some time, Koebele said.

Just north of his fallow field, Hunt stood on a platform overlooking the wide, rushing Green River.

Compared to most waterways in this parched part of southeastern Utah, it’s a giant. The town where his fields are located receives only 6.5 inches of rainfall each year.

“The river is definitely our lifeline,” he said, pointing to where his irrigation canal flows out of the river. “Without them we would be nothing.”

Despite the hurdles facing the Colorado River, he hopes what’s happening in his territory can go some way toward finding a solution to keep the water flowing.

“How can we make it work for everyone? “How can we make people downstream happy?” he asked. “You still need farmers to farm to feed everyone.”

“It’s a delicate matter. But I think if we all work together we can do it.”

This story was produced as part of the Colorado River Collaboration. KSL-TV photographer Mark Wetzel contributed to this story.