Agriculture across the West is being hung out to dry after being faced with limited or zero water allocations, thanks to worsening drought conditions.
As of early April, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported 90 percent of the nine western states are in moderate drought, and about 35 percent are experiencing some form of extreme or exceptional drought.
Colorado River Basin
The Department of the Interior is considering holding back nearly a half-million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot is 325,851 gallons) that was due to be released from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, a 6.5 percent reduction. As of April 8, the elevation level in Lake Powell was 3,522 feet.
“Without implementing these robust actions, Lake Powell elevations are projected to drop below key infrastructure levels later this year,” read a fact sheet from the Upper Colorado River Commission. “These include elevations at which Glen Canyon Dam releases could only be accomplished through the river outlet works.”
Tanya Trujillo, assistant Interior secretary for water and science, penned a letter to the seven Colorado River Basin states on April 8 and said the decision would help keep Lake Powell from falling below the minimum elevation level to generate electricity at Glen Canyon Dam.
Trujillo said there could be major impacts to the dam’s operations and infrastructure if the reservoir fell below the minimum power pool level of 3,490 feet. It would raise into question the ability to deliver water to Arizona, California and Nevada.
Trujillo gave water officials in the seven states two weeks to comment on the potential cutback. The cutback would take place in the 2022 water year, which runs until September.
“This reality reinforces the need for pool states, and all units in the pool, to prioritize work to further conserve and reduce the use of Colorado River water to stabilize the system’s reservoirs,” Trujillo wrote.
In response, Colorado River Commissioner Becky Mitchell said in a statement: “While we support the assistant secretary’s proposal, we also acknowledge that this is a temporary solution and that it is incumbent on all who rely on the Colorado River to develop longer-term solutions that address the imbalance between supply and demand in the Basin.”
Klamath Basin
On April 11, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) announced that with the initial Klamath Project water supply allocation in the third consecutive year of drought conditions, the bureau will be releasing only 50,000 acre-feet of water for limited irrigation.
“Unauthorized diversions of water will result in reductions to the Klamath Project water allocation, and appropriate legal action will be pursued,” BOR said.
The bureau is allocating $20 million in immediate aid to the Klamath Project through the Klamath Project Drought Response Agency for the 2022 irrigation season, and an additional $5 million in technical assistance is being made available for Klamath Basin Tribes.
“The Klamath Basin is experiencing prolonged and extreme drought conditions that we have not seen since the 1930s,” said BOR Deputy Commissioner David Palumbo.
The Klamath Water Users Association said the water allocation is less than 15 percent of what producers need, and there is adequate water to provide irrigation from Upper Klamath Lake to the Klamath Project.
“This federal policy comes on the heels of the federal government’s 2021 approach, when the government afforded zero water through Project facilities for irrigation for the first time in the 118-year history of the Project,” the association said in a statement. “The announced 2022 supply is the second-worst ever.”
Central Valley Project
The Central Valley Project in California provides an annual average of 5 million acre-feet of water for farms, 600,000 acre-feet of water for municipal and industrial uses (enough to provide water for about 2.5 million people), and water for wildlife refuges and maintaining water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Earlier this year, the BOR announced the initial water supply allocations for Central Valley Project contractors would be zero for water districts north and south of the Delta, and municipal and industrial users would receive 25 percent of their historical water use.
On April 1, BOR announced that due to critically dry hydrological conditions, water supply allocations will be reduced to public health and safety only. The announcement comes after the first three months of the year were the driest in California’s history.
“We’ll fallow a lot of row crop ground, we’ll pump some well water, we’ll purchase water through the district’s supplemental pool and probably purchase a little bit of water on the open market,” Fresno County farmer Ryan Ferguson, who farms trees and row crops in Lemoore, told California Farm Bureau’s Ag Alert.
“Supplemental water brought in by the district is really expensive water. You can’t afford to farm a whole crop on it, but it’s part of your water portfolio.”
Ferguson is also president of the Westlands Water District, the largest ag water district in the state.
“We’re just in a tough situation right now. We’ve been dealt a really tough hand of cards,” Ferguson said.
In late March, the Department of the Interior announced the BOR will invest $420 million for rural water construction projects in fiscal year 2022. The agency said projects include pipeline connections, water treatment plants and intakes, pump systems, reservoir construction and other efforts.
Funding for the projects is authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. There are several rural water projects under construction and one more authorized project authorized for the funding across six states: Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota.
The project receiving the most funding is in New Mexico, which will receive $160 million to construct a transmission pipeline to provide water supplies to 70,000 people. — Anna Miller, WLJ managing editor
