Urban populations that continue to grow, a drought that is projected to go on indefinitely and record-low water levels at Lake Mead that slash the amount of time that the Imperial Irrigation District has to pay back its overrun of Colorado River water is forcing the district to not just implement water conservation measures, but to rethink the way it apportions water.
The IID Board of Directors discussed just such a plan this week at its meeting.
The water conservation methods at the IID’s disposal have been discussed many times at public meetings.
The fallowing program offers irrigators financial incentives to take a productive field out of production for a period of time. As stipulated under the Quantification Settlement Agreement, the fallowing program will end in 2018.
The on-farm water conservation program pays irrigators to install water efficiency measures in the fields, like drip-irrigation systems. The IID is evaluating proposals for the next round of the program.
Additionally, the district is preparing to implement a system conservation program that entails the installation of electronic data acquisition systems on the IID’s water infrastructure. Should it work as designed, the district will be able to accurately measure the amount of water being delivered.
Taken as a whole, these measures help make the IID more efficient and help it meet its obligations to the river, from transfers to payback of overruns. They do not address overruns, the district’s consumption of water that exceeds its approved order. Officials speculate that the overrun for 2012 could reach 150,000 acre-feet of water.
To that end, the IID is revisiting its equitable distribution plan, a program it approved in 2007 but never implemented. The EDP will likely undergo a number of revisions to reflect current conditions, but it is, in essence, a mechanism by which the district apportions water on an annual basis with the intent of reducing or eliminating overruns.
“Apportionment isn’t so we can pay back the river. It’s so we can account for water,” said IID General Manager Kevin Kelley. “We see it as the responsible thing to do.”
Staff Writer Antoine Abou-Diwan can be reached at 760-337-3454 or aabou-diwan@ivpressonline.com
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