Water groups to talk fallowing program

Yuma Mesa reps, CAP eye deal as shortages loom

A Yuma-area irrigation district is planning to meet this week with representatives of Central Arizona Project about the possibility of entering into a compensated program for the fallowing of farmland.

The water conserved would not be transferred for use in other parts of the state but kept in Lake Mead, after the most recent hydrology forecast from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation found the risk of severe shortages on the Colorado River is even higher than previously thought.

Yuma Mesa representatives and others will soon be meeting with CAP water policy leaders in Phoenix.

During a meeting on Wednesday, the three members of the Yuma Mesa Irrigation and Drainage District Board agreed to submit a proposal to CAP via a letter drafted during a closed portion of the meeting.

Cliff Neal, a water resource and policy consultant for the district, said that CAP appears eager to discuss such a fallowing program, particularly within the statewide Drought Contingency Plan that a steering committee and numerous subcommittees are trying to put together.

“The chances for shortages are increasing, the chances for extreme shortages are increasing, and in my opinion the urgency to get a DCP completed is ratcheting up, rather than going down. So I don’t know if you think that’s good news or not,” he said.

The Yuma Mesa board earlier this year had explored the idea of pursuing a transfer with CAP or other water providers, in which the river water it’s not using would be pur-

chased and delivered to customers in the central part of the state. Its currently unused allocation is about 75,000 acre feet per year.

More recently, the district has been pursuing a “compensated conservation” deal, where farmers who voluntarily cut back on deliveries so the water can be kept behind the dam are paid.

The DCP, while still being drafted, is including funding to compensate users who volunteer for delivery cutbacks.

“There seems to be some optimism that money can come to light,” Neal said.

Neal said he and the district’s attorney, Jason Moyes, had been talking via telephone to CAP General Manager Ted Cooke about a compensated conservation plan.

“He understands it’ll be some work and there are some initial roadblocks that may need to be overcome, but he thinks it can be a valuable part of the DCP,” he said.

The CAP provides Colorado River water to Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties through an extensive canal system. It is the umbrella over several other agencies, including the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District, which searches for additional water supplies.

Drought conditions over the past two decades have pushed the river’s supplies to the brink, and the elevation of Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border is used to determine whether a shortage needs to be declared in the lower Colorado River basin, leading to mandatory cuts in deliveries to users.

Who gets cut, and by how much, depends on the severity of the shortage. Arizona will take the first and steepest cuts, and the first users to be affected will be agricultural users in Pinal County.

Extraordinarily low snowpack in the upper basin states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have led to more dire forecasts of the lake plunging below the 1075-foot elevation which triggers shortages, unveiled at the Oct. 10 Drought Contingency Plan steering committee meeting.

Wade Noble, a water rights attorney for several Yuma-area irrigation districts, is on the committee, and the BOR is projecting a Tier 1 shortage is likely in 2019.

“The hydrology is now forecasting (for) 2024, 25, 26 the probabilities of a tier 2 shortage, depending on what scenario you review, is now 50, 60, 70 percent probable. A tier 3 shortage in the same time frame is getting significantly higher, in the 30 percent range, and that merits the type of action that Yuma Mesa proposes,” he said.

Yuma County users, including the Cocopah Indian Tribe, the city of Yuma and the six irrigation districts, have among the most senior rights to the river in Arizona, because they were the first to be established, around the time it became a state in 1912.

Under current agreements their mandatory cuts would come with more severe shortages, but letting it get to that point would mean there have already been significant cutbacks affecting life and commerce in Arizona.

Yuma Mesa shares its annual allotment of about 250,000 acre-feet of water with two other districts to the north, Yuma Irrigation and Drainage District and North Gila Valley Irrigation and Drainage District, said Yuma Mesa General Manager Pat Morgan.

Approximately 75,000 acre-feet of that water is not being used each year, Morgan said.

Growers in the Yuma Mesa district would take the additional step of taking some of its land out of production for a set period, leaving additional water which can be conserved in Lake Mead.

The Yuma and North Gila Valley districts would have to consent before Yuma Mesa reaches a conservation agreement with CAP, said Noble, who represents both. “Those two districts are conceptually willing to support a system conservation plan which does not include a transfer of water to the Central Arizona District, Central Arizona Water Conservation District, or other users offriver,” he said.

He said the two northern districts are not currently considering any “compensated system conservation plans,” or fallowing programs.

During the Yuma Mesa board meeting, Neal said the details of any conservation plan involving CAP and the Drought Contingency Plan must be worked out in the open, as much as possible.

“I think it’s important to be transparent, not try to do a deal in the dark. It sounds to me that’s been of some concern in the past.”