It's time to invest in our water infrastructure
More than three-fourths of Oregon was in some stage of drought entering May — and forecasters expect it to stay that way into the summer.
By Dan Keppen and Julie O’Shea
At a time when Western water projects typically begin diversions, allowing delivery canals to charge and bringing essential water supplies to the headgates of thousands of farmers and ranchers, crushing drought conditions are leaving millions of acres of productive farm and ranch land without water this spring.
More than three-fourths of Oregon was in some stage of drought entering May — and forecasters expect it to stay that way into the summer. Farmers in recent weeks have witnessed dust storms in Oregon and blowing dust in eastern Washington, and river flows have dropped well below normal. The challenge isn’t limited to just the Pacific Northwest: farmers, ranchers, and river systems throughout the West are going to be hit hard by this year’s drought.
Perhaps the only silver lining is that the solution to create a resilient water supply for food, farms and fish already exists. However, the drought underscores the urgent need to take immediate action to help better manage impacts to water resources from drought, and to accelerate the pace and scale at which we are modernizing irrigation systems throughout the West.
First, we must invest in Western water infrastructure. A suite of new water supply enhancement projects and demand management programs can help alleviate the stress on our existing Western water supplies.
We must also invest in technology. We must manage our water supplies better — more efficiently and effectively. We can use technology to improve modeling and better predict weather patterns, snowpack, and runoff forecasting. New technology can also help us better manage water to improve efficiencies.
We need to improve regulatory processes at the federal level to expedite permitting and get win-win projects to construction within a reasonable period of time, at a reasonable cost.
Finally, there are opportunities to create collaborative partnerships between federal, state and local entities who are also interested in finding solutions to our water-climate problems. These solutions can be reached using adaptive strategies that can work on the ground.
New water infrastructure projects can help mitigate the impacts of climate-driven hydrologic changes on water supplies. At the same time, they can support Western farms, ranches, rural communities, and rivers.
For example, in Wallowa County, the West Side Irrigation and Water Ditch Company provides water to 1,900 acres of irrigated land for farmers and ranchers near the community of Lostine. Farmers Conservation Alliance, with funding from Energy Trust of Oregon, is supporting the ditch company in its efforts to pipe their aging irrigation canal. Modernizing its water delivery system will eliminate water losses, saving 1,600 acre-feet each irrigation season, reduce operational costs and make agricultural water supplies more reliable. A modern system creates opportunities to return water in stream to support threatened fish, generate in-conduit hydropower with surplus pressure in the piped system, and provide pressurized water next to the forest to support wildland firefighters. This kind of win-win-win situation can be repeated throughout the West.
Congress has helped this past year by including provisions for the Bureau of Reclamation in the massive appropriations package passed last December. The creation of an aging infrastructure account in Treasury for loans to local water users will help fund and affordably finance improvements and rehab of our aging facilities, some of which are over a century old.
Other new authorities will broaden WaterSMART grants, create a new collaborative program for snowpack monitoring and runoff forecasting, and improve the use of federal facilities for aquifer recharge. All of these new programs will be very helpful in managing impacts to water resources from climate change in the West.
But we have more to accomplish in this Congress. Congress needs to reauthorize the WIIN Act so that irrigators can partner on new federal and non-federal water storage and groundwater recharge projects.
This includes extending provisions in the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016. Funding must be provided to the aging federal infrastructure account created last year.
In addition, the Administration should look to streamline permitting processes to allow multi-benefit projects to move to construction more efficiently. To successfully adapt we have to be able to move quickly.
We believe that investments in improving water conservation, water recycling, watershed management, conveyance, desalination, water transfers, groundwater storage, and surface water storage are all needed for a diversified, resilient, and successful water management portfolio.
We are not alone on this platform.
A national coalition of more than 200 ag, urban and water organizations sent letters to the White House and congressional leaders in early January. They too want Congress to address aging Western water infrastructure, now. The coalition includes organizations from 15 states. The groups represent nearly one-third of all agricultural production in the country, and tens of millions of urban and rural water users.
Americans nationwide have access to fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains and beef throughout the year. That’s largely because of Western producers and the projects that provide water to these farmers and ranchers.
Federal investment in a diversified water management portfolio is essential to agriculture, the environment, and rural communities in Oregon, to the West, and to the national interest. Such a portfolio must be included as essential infrastructure in the next infrastructure or recovery package considered by Congress.
Dan Keppen is Executive Director of the Family Farm Alliance.
Julie O'Shea is Executive Director of Farmers Conservation Alliance.
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