Irrigation Leader April 2016

Volume 7 Issue 4 April 2016

Balancing a Balloon on a Pin: Talking Water Conservation With C.E. Williams of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District

The Groundwater Issue

By Kris Polly

T

his issue of Irrigation Leader focuses on groundwater: how it is managed in different states as well as some innovative programs and technologies for its conservation. Mr. C.E. Williams, general manager of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District in Texas, tells us about his district’s efforts to manage and sustain its supplies for as long as possible. “You need to get your conservation programs implemented and moving forward. Time is clicking and working against you,” is his advice to other groundwater managers. Mr. Lyndon Vogt, general manager of the Central Platte Natural Resources District in Nebraska, discusses his district’s efforts to develop a market for leasing groundwater. This electronic market is an interesting experiment because it only allows buyers and sellers that are already certified for groundwater use within the district’s boundaries to participate. Mr. Paul Jewell, commissioner of District 1 in Kittitas County, Washington, shares the history and development of a different water market and banking system in the Yakima River basin. General Manager Tim Boese of the Equus Bed Groundwater Management District No. 2 in Kansas describes his district’s unique situation. Finally, Mr. Randy Ray, general manager of the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District, has some of the best advice for any water professional, “Open communication. You have to be able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Don’t take for granted what you think the other person’s needs are. If you know what they need, a lot of times you can come up with some resolution.”

Regarding technology, I urge you to read about Dragon-Line, which combines the two most efficient advances in irrigation technology, center pivot and drip line. This is one of the more innovative technologies in recent years, with the potential for dramatic groundwater conservation.

Kris Polly is editor-in-chief of Irrigation Leader magazine and president of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at Kris.Polly@waterstrategies.com.

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Irrigation Leader

APRIL 2016

C O N T E N T S 2 The Groundwater Issue

By Kris Polly

VOLUME 7

ISSUE 4

Irrigation Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by Water Strategies LLC 4 E Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief John Crotty, Senior Writer Robin Pursley, Graphic Designer Capital Copyediting LLC, Copyeditor SUBMISSIONS: Irrigation Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact John Crotty at (202) 698-0690 or john.crotty@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISING: Irrigation Leader accepts one-quarter, half-page, and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or Irrigation.Leader@waterstrategies.com.

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For address corrections or additions, please contact our office at Irrigation.Leader@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2016 Water Strategies LLC. Irrigation Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Irrigation Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Irrigation Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Irrigation Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

COVER PHOTO: C.E. Williams, general manager of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District.

Irrigation Leader

4 Balancing a Balloon on a Pin:

Talking Water Conservation With C.E. Williams of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District

10 Virtual Groundwater Leasing: Central Platte Natural Resources District’s Groundwater Exchange Program

By Lyndon Vogt

12 Groundwater Banking in Kittitas County

By Paul Jewell

DISTRICT FOCUS 16 Equus Beds Groundwater Management District No. 2

By Tim Boese

MANAGER'S PROFILE 18 Randy Ray, Central Colorado Water Conservancy District

INNOVATORS 26 Measurable Water Savings With the Dragon‑Line Mobile Drip System

30 Bringing Irrigation District Management to the Cloud

34 Extending the Life of Water Delivery Systems: Standard Polymers Lining and Coating Solutions

INTERNATIONAL 36 Talking Irrigation in India With Justin Harter

39 CLASSIFIEDS 3

Balancing a Balloon on a Pin: Talking

Water Conservation With C.E. Williams of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District

Mr. Williams in front of a PGCD-financed drip system.

T

he Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District (PGCD) serves all of five and parts of four north Texas counties, covering 6,309 square miles. PGCD provides programs and services to conserve, preserve, and recharge water supplies in the Texas Panhandle.

Agriculture and oil and gas production are the economic engines of the panhandle region, and wheat, corn, sorghum, and cotton dominate crop production. Traditionally, farmers furrow irrigated. In the 1980s, they began to adopt centerpivot irrigation. Today, pivot irrigation dominates farming in the region, and drip irrigation is coming into play.

There is a diversity of water use within PGCD: 5 percent oil and gas, 30 percent municipal and industrial, and 65 percent irrigated agriculture. Water use in the district is supplied almost exclusively by groundwater from the Ogallala aquifer and three smaller aquifers. There are also two limited surface water sources: Lakes Meredith and Greenbelt.

PGCD sets conservation rules for all its water users and runs programs in line with those rules. Agricultural water conservation, metering, rainwater harvesting, and precipitation enhancement programs all contribute to sustaining the health of the Ogallala aquifer.

C.E. Williams has managed PGCD for 26 years, leading the district to expand its boundaries and institute necessary 4

conservation practices to help ensure water supplies for future generations. Prior to joining the district, he farmed in the panhandle. Irrigation Leader’s editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, spoke with Mr. Williams about groundwater management at PGCD and the district’s water conservation efforts.

Kris Polly: How does the district manage groundwater within its boundaries?

C.E. Williams: We manage groundwater based on contiguous acres of a particular property. We go by section, block, and survey. Land description doesn’t change; ownership changes. It is easier to track water using legal descriptions rather than ownership.

PGCD adopted this approach back in the mid-1990s because municipal, industrial, and agricultural uses were intertwined in Carson County. What you saw in the irrigated agriculture arena was a couple of wells per section running 90 to 130 days a year; on the municipal side, they were running four wells per section pumping 200 days per year.

We had to change our philosophy from gallons-perminute production to annual production per acre owned allowable to level the playing field for agricultural and Irrigation Leader

municipal water users and to implement conservation measures. Now we allow production rates of 1 acre-foot per surface-acre owned per continuous boundary annually. Not only does this encourage conservation, but it also prevents a rush to the pump.

This helps preserve additional pumping for future use, which is important to the municipal people. They can expand those well fields as their population grows. We are seeing that growth in Lubbock and Amarillo, but like most places, many of our smaller towns are standing steady or declining.

We went to this depletion management methodology to manage the aquifer and achieve conservation. We allow a 1.25 percent decline per year. If that level is exceeded, the land is put into a study area for a couple of years. If the decline continues, we may put the land into a conservation area where the board may require production reductions for compliance.

We have had the program in place since 2004; it has worked well, and we feel it has been time tested. We have had general acceptance, and we haven’t been to the courthouse since it was instituted.

Kris Polly: What is your biggest challenge as a groundwater conservation manager?

C.E. Williams: Groundwater depletion. We are trying to make it last as long as we can. It has been tough. In Texas, groundwater is a private property right. You are balancing all of this like a balloon on a pin: You don’t want to be too restrictive or you will infringe on those property rights, but you have to consider the preservation of water for future generations. Balancing all of that is a real challenge.

Kris Polly: What other kinds of conservation programs do you have in place?

C.E. Williams: Our agricultural water conservation program encourages people through low-interest loans to move from center-pivot to furrow irrigation or from center-pivot to drip irrigation. We’ve been doing that for about 15 years. We obtain money from the Texas Water Development Board at a low interest rate and pass the savings on to the individual farmers.

It has been a real success moving those areas from furrow to sprinkler in a timely manner. Now almost all the furrow irrigation is under center pivot. You will see a 30 percent increase in water efficiency and even a little more when you go from pivot to drip.

Panhandle farmers generally use drip to grow cotton in the weaker water areas. Cotton is probably the most efficient converter of water: An acre-foot of water Irrigation Leader

Mr. Williams with his son and grandson, who farm 6,500 irrigated acres in Carson County.

generally returns the most product per acre. Drip famers are having phenomenal yield increases, and I think a lot of it comes from putting the water subsurface and leaving the leaves dry. Cotton likes it hot and dry. Our farmers are consistently getting 4 bales of cotton per acre, whereas 10 years ago, 2 bales per acre was a good yield. It also helps that the cost of drip is becoming more reasonable.

PGCD also runs a successful metering program. We cost share meter installation on existing wells and have required meters on all new wells since 2004. The good, progressive farmers use that information to know how much water they have pumped, which helps them make informed decisions on water use.

There are always a few stragglers who make us more regulatory than I would care to be. Whether you are doing speed limits or managing water, those kinds of issues are always there: You have the rules for the 5 to 10 percent of noncompliers.

Kris Polly: How does recharge factor into stabilizing the aquifer?

C.E. Williams: Recharging the Ogallala aquifer in the Texas Panhandle is tough. We have done some modifications of playa lakes to encourage recharge. The Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas did a study of recharge in the panhandle. At the beginning of the two-year project, we measured 2/10 of an inch an acre-foot of recharge, and by the end, we were only able to bump that number up to 3/10 of an inch. It is just tough.

The sad truth to all this is that it is like a bank account that you are taking dollar bills out of and putting pennies back in. There is an end to the road, and we all know it.

Kris Polly: Why is recharge so difficult in your area?

C.E. Williams: I think a lot of it has to do with soil texture and depth to water. Our depth to water in some 5

places is up to 350 feet or more, although we do have spots that are a lot less. It takes a lot of time for water to percolate down. If you had asked me before we did that study where we got the most recharge from, I would have thought it was the grasslands. However, grass soaks up the moisture before it gets past the roots, and in this part of the world, the irrigated crops take up as much moisture as you can give them. The study showed that most of the recharge happens on fallow dryland fields.

Kris Polly: So recharge is not really a viable option to address groundwater declines over the long term?

C.E. Williams: It’s just not. We’ve drilled recharge wells, but the turbidity in the water seals them up. They’ll take water for a little while, but it’s not very long before you run into problems with the injection wells sealing off.

Kris Polly: What role does reuse play in the region’s water supplies?

C.E. Williams: There is some water reuse in the city of Amarillo: It goes through the city’s system and wastewater treatment plant, to the cooling towers at the power plant, and then is used for a third time to water salt-tolerant grass. They are getting three uses out of that water, but its origin is also mostly groundwater.

Municipal water is currently about 25 percent lake water blend from Lake Meredith. At one point, it was all surface water, and then the conjunctive use project initially had a blend of about 60 or 70 percent surface water to groundwater. However, due to drought and other factors, we have not been able to supply that much surface water.

At the height of the drought, it was all groundwater.

Kris Polly: Have there been any efforts to bring in additional surface water supplies to the region?

C.E. Williams: Back in the 1960s, they tried to pass a Mississippi River water importation bill. It failed, but it almost passed. I wish it had passed, because today I don’t think a project of that scale could get through all the environmental hoops, much less overcome the cost.

Kris Polly: Where would you like to see the district in 10 years?

C.E. Williams: The one thing that I personally would like to see more than anything else is moving the yardstick on the value of agriculture water production to production per acre-foot of water used rather than production per acre.

In this area, water is your limiting factor. We ought to be 6

looking at how much water it takes to produce a particular product. Once we make that paradigm shift, we will better understand what we need to do to make adjustments going forward and make the best use of our water.

We are starting to get good information on that now.

We’ve done some on-farm studies on crop production and water use, and I think the scale is starting to change.

Production per acre has been the norm, but your limiting factor ought to be the scale to look at. If land were limited, production per acre would be the right way; however, that is not issue here.

Economics drives agriculture. We saw significant agricultural expansion from 2008 to 2013 because of high commodity prices as well as corresponding increases in water use. That has slowed a lot because of the decline in commodity prices.

Kris Polly: What advice do you have for other district managers about managing limited groundwater resources?

C.E. Williams: You need to get your conservation programs implemented and moving forward. Time is clicking on and working against you.

I grew up on a farm here in Carson County, and my granddad drilled the third irrigation well in the county back in the early 1950s. There have been some areas that were once irrigated that have come out of irrigation production now. The drop off of irrigated agriculture has been significant at different points in time. We had a big one in the late 1980s, which again was mostly price driven.

First-hand knowledge of what goes on the farm has really served me well here. I understand how the farmers think, because I was one of them for several years. That has helped me to understand the farmers’ train of thought and how to make this all work for everyone.

You have to be able to communicate with your constituents. There has to be a certain amount of trust among all the water users and the district. Before I got here, there was quite a bit of animosity between the city people and the rural people. We have tried to balance it for everyone since I have been here. It has been a real challenge, but in my opinion, we have accomplished it in most instances.

Back in 1990, when I came into the district, it was a glorified single-county district. As time went on, people saw the need for conservation, and we expanded. By talking to people it became apparent to me that you had to get your county leaders and city leaders on board to understand what you are doing. They are the ones who local people look to for leadership on these types of issues.

We spent a lot of time explaining to those people what the district was doing, and as a result, the district grew.

Irrigation Leader

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Virtual Groundwater Leasing:

Central Platte Natural Resources District’s Groundwater Exchange Program

By Lyndon Vogt

A

t the end of March, the Central Platte Natural Resources District (CPNRD) facilitated the creation of a new market for leased groundwater for irrigation. For a five-day period in March, CPNRD’s Groundwater Exchange Program enabled producers to temporarily lease groundwater use certified by the district to willing buyers on a web-based marketplace.

The goal of the program is to promote water efficiency.

Our producers are always looking to maximize how and when they use their water. The program put together those farmers who have an abundance of groundwater for the upcoming year with those seeking to maximize their growing potential but are in need of extra supply.

CPNRD cannot add an additional consumptive use on the Platte River or have a negative effect on its flow. So the program includes the potential benefit of augmenting Platte River flows. The Platte River Recovery Implementation Program is a verified buyer and can purchase additional stream flows for the river.

The CPNRD board of directors voted to develop the program in September 2015. The board saw it as an opportunity to put water to its most beneficial use and to let the market decide the value of water, whether for irrigation or instream flow.

With the help of the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources and NERA Economic Consulting, CPNRD developed an algorithm to best match buyers and sellers based on information—price, the location of water, and depletion to the river—provided by the market participants.

Rules of the Road

For the purposes of the program, a seller is anyone with a certified groundwater use on irrigated acres within CPNRD, and a buyer is anyone seeking to augment already-certified groundwater use or to increase stream flow for the 2016 irrigation season. For this first year of the program, we capped the number of participants at 50.

A month before the opening of the market, CPNRD preapproved all the potential buyers and sellers by verifying the water rights to be sold or bought. The district also provided the market participants with an identification number for the bidding process. After the preapproval process, the district held a training session so market participants could learn about how the market would actually work and practice how to bid.

10

The bid window opened on March 21 and closed March 25. During that time, verified buyers and sellers submitted their bids. Each bid was tied to a specific location.

Bidders entered their desired dollar per acre for that location.

The bid is valid and binding for 45 days after the close of the bid window.

CPNRD facilitates market payments. It pays successful sellers by check 30 days after the producer receives notification that its bid was a winning bid, or once approval for the payment from the board is obtained, whichever comes first.

Successful buyers must pay CPNRD by check no later than 15 calendar days after the producer receives notification that its bid is a winning bid.

Results

CPNRD issued bid identification numbers for 40 different sections of land. Six buyers came to the virtual market, three looking for irrigation water and three for instream flow. It was a buyer’s market. While we are still assessing the merits of the market, we do know that producers appear to be willing to bring water to the exchange and that the algorithm to match willing sellers and buyers works within our rules. The board will decide whether to try another run at it in November.

Lyndon Vogt is the general manager of the Central Platte Natural Resources District.

You can reach him at vogt@cpnrd.org.

For more information on the Groundwater Exchange Program, visit http://cpnrd.org/ groundwater-exchange-program/.

Irrigation Leader

Groundwater Banking in Kittitas

County

By Paul Jewell

R

apid population growth and limited water supplies have produced an innovative and practical solution to depleted groundwater supplies in Kittitas County in central Washington State.

Kittitas County is home of the headwaters of the Yakima River basin, which is one of the only adjudicated basins in all of Washington State. Irrigation has been a part of the basin for more than a century. Today, the county is home to more than 40,000 residents and is one of the fastest-growing counties in Washington. By the mid-2000s, developers began subdividing large A scene along the Teanaway River, which flows into the Yakima River near Cle Elum. plots of land, leading to lawsuits and State Department of Commerce sued the county over the increased contention over water. plan, alleging, among other things, that the county failed

Litigation in an Overappropriated Basin

Under Washington State’s groundwater code, certain uses are exempt from groundwater permitting requirements, including an unlimited amount of water for stock, irrigation water for up to ½ acre of noncommercial lawn or garden, industrial use of up to 5,000 gallons per day, and domestic use of up to 5,000 gallons per day.

Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, developers were dividing large parcels in the unincorporated areas of the county into smaller parcels and, in turn, dividing those smaller parcels even further to build lots. In many cases, developers would designate small subsets of a larger project as individual limited liability companies and daisy chain them together, thereby capturing all the adjoining small lots within the bounds of the permitting exemption.

In the 2002 case, Department of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn, LLC, the state supreme court held that the domestic use exemption applied to the total groundwater use of residential development regardless of the number of lots.

In 2006, Kittitas County revised its comprehensive plan. Several citizen advocacy groups and the Washington

12

to protect its groundwater resources as required by the state’s Growth Management Act. In Kittitas County v.

Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board [EWGMHB], the state supreme court eventually ruled in favor of the advocacy groups.

Shortly thereafter, a new advocacy group, Aqua Permanente, which included members from the groups who sued the county under the Growth Management Act, filed a petition with the Department of Ecology (Ecology) to withdraw all groundwater in Kittitas County from further appropriation. Ecology was required by law to and entered into negotiations with the county.

Unfortunately, the negotiations were unsuccessful, and Ecology adopted a withdrawal rule in roughly half of the county on July 17, 2009. The results of the rule were immediate. Nearly half the county was prohibited from drilling a new well and using groundwater. The value of impacted property dropped 50 percent, and the county’s taxable land value base decreased by more than $30 million.

The rule, however, did provide for the use of groundwater if that use was mitigated in time and in place Irrigation Leader

A map of the county provided by Kittitas County.

with a senior water right. Unfortunately, at the time the rule was imposed there was no reasonable method for most landowners to obtain appropriate in‑place mitigation to meet the requirements.

At the time all of this was taking place, the U.S. Geological Survey was conducting a study of the interaction of surface water and groundwater in the Yakima River basin. The study was required by a settlement agreement between Ecology and the Yakima Nation, which had sued Ecology over the issuance of new groundwater permits in the basin in the 1990s. Ecology had agreed to stop issuing permits and funded a study, published in summer 2012, that showed, in many cases, direct continuity between the basin’s groundwater and surface water resources.

It was a perfect storm.

These were the circumstances under which water banks in Kittitas County were born.

From the Private Markets . . .

The county didn’t jump into the water business right away. It tried several different maneuvers to get the rule lifted—all without success. However, about a year after the state imposed the withdrawal rule, Ecology authorized and facilitated the development of a water bank that was sponsored by the Suncadia Resort—a master plan resort right in the heart of where the withdrawal occurred. In accordance with its development requirements, Suncadia acquired enough water rights not only for its own use, but also for the development induced by the project. So, the resort had a pool of water in excess of what was needed

Irrigation Leader

for full build‑out.

Through Ecology’s water rights trust program, Suncadia put its excess water in trust, keeping it in-stream. In turn, developers who purchased mitigation water from Suncadia could drill wells that were in continuity with the river based on historic point of diversion and quantity of water purchased. They were able to offset their withdrawals with a portion Suncadia’s water rights.

Kittitas County monitored and assisted with the creation of the water bank, but saw problems with it. First of all, the county was dealing with clear cases of monopoly. The area of the county where the rule was imposed has over 130 distinct watersheds. In most cases, especially at the outset, there was only a single provider of mitigation available in a watershed. Landowners had no choice but to pay whatever that water bank demanded, and we began to see a wide variance in pricing even though mitigation packages themselves were nearly identical.

A developer in one river valley sought to acquire sufficient water rights to develop a large subdivision in a floodplain. The county denied its application, so the developer created a water bank with the water rights it had acquired for the project. The new bank, which was the only bank serving that area, set the rate for domestic water consumption at $15,000 per house—more than twice the highest rate in other areas of the county at the time.

Fortunately, another bank started on the same river and set its price at $4,000, causing a concomitant drop in price.

However, this result has not happened in other areas.

We also became aware of a pricing disparity between clients of the very same water bank. In response, we advocated for state regulations—to treat the water bank like a utility—but we were not successful. Our belief was, and remains, that water is a necessary component of public health, safety, and welfare and should not become a commodity that ultimately lands in the hands of the highest bidder. It is without a doubt a moral and ethical question when what is being considered is simple domestic use of water for basic hygiene, human consumption, and other in-home use.

Land development corporations owned most of the early water banks. As such, we were also concerned that the decisionmaking authority of elected officials would be superseded in cases where the county approved a competing land development but the water bank did not approve the issuance of mitigation water to support the development. It is as if the water bank, an unelected 13

private interest, would have de facto authority over land use actions in the county even where a clear conflict of interest existed.

. . . to the Public Ones

As the county watched this unfold, we decided that it was in the interest of the public health, safety, and welfare of our residents to get involved. Kittitas County began the process of creating its own water bank to operate at cost recovery. The county worked in conjunction with Ecology and the very same citizen advocacy groups that sued us in Kittitas v. EWGMHB. Prior to that case, many local governments in Washington State felt that water regulation was Ecology’s responsibility and that local governments lacked sufficient authority to regulate water. The ruling in Kittitas v.

EWGMHB changed that.

The court ruled that the Groundwater Management Act requires counties to provide for the protection of the ground and surface resources within in their bounds. As part of the 2014 settlement agreement that came out of Kittitas v. EWGMHB, Ecology agreed to assist the county with its own municipally owned and operated water bank—the first in Washington State.

Immediately after signing the settlement agreement, the county purchased four existing water banks. The county is now offering and selling mitigation through the water banks it acquired.

What We Are Selling

Under the advisement of a citizen board formed during the formation of the water bank, and understanding the sensitivities surrounding private and public competition, the county settled on the sale of two water mitigation packages: (1) where outdoor irrigation water is available, 275 gallons per day for in‑home use, and (2) where outdoor irrigation water is not available, 275 gallons per day for indoor use and enough water for use up to 500 square feet of lawn or garden. If a homeowner wants more, the only option is to buy mitigation water from one of the private mitigation banks.

There are limitations. The county water bank does not sell mitigation water for new land development or new parcel creation. It will only sell water if the developer is applying for a building permit.

The county only considers the public health, safety, and welfare in its banking decision; it has left other areas of the marketplace open to those private developers and water banks.

Benefit to Irrigators

Irrigation districts throughout the Yakima River

14

basin are junior surface water rights holders. During a drought, those districts have their surface water allocations curtailed; yet, domestic water users can continue to pump groundwater.

The county water bank ensures that every new water user has a senior water right that is counted as part of the allocation and does not impact the junior rights‑holding irrigation districts. The county not only requires new groundwater users to purchase mitigation water before they start pumping, but it also acquires water to offset the new consumptive use to keep irrigators whole.

Keeping irrigators whole does lead to one of our big worries: a call by one of the large junior irrigators on junior domestic groundwater users. We saw that exact scenario back in the early 2000s when Roza Irrigation District made a call on the town of Roslyn. During the drought, the town was pumping groundwater for its municipal supply. However, the city’s right was junior to Roza’s. Since Roza’s allocation was curtailed, it sued, and the court ordered Roslyn to stop using its water.

Fortunately, Suncadia leased some of its water to the town to prevent a catastrophe.

The event sent a clear message that domestic pumpers were at risk. The county water bank shaped how it sells mitigation with that very scenario in mind.

Looking Ahead

The county continues to work on the water banking process. We are streamlining it and making it faster and cheaper for our residents. That is really our goal. We want the water to go as far as possible to the most people at the cheapest price, so we can manage our resource efficiently and make it as accessible as possible for all income brackets.

In some instances, we are processing and issuing mitigation water faster and cheaper than the private banks.

We recently executed a purchase and sale agreement to acquire another 600 acre-feet of consumptive use water.

That will actually fulfill more than 50 percent of what we estimate is the need to offset the consumptive use of current users, providing those users with some protection from potential curtailment as well. It also more than doubles our portfolio for new uses and extends our development window out, based on our current estimates, 40 years or longer. We are truly looking long term.

Paul Jewell is Kittitas County Commissioner, District 1.

You can reach Mr. Jewell at paul.jewell@co.kittitas.wa.us.

Irrigation Leader

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District Focus 16

Equus Beds Groundwater Management District No. 2 ecause of the Ogallala aquifer, most people know of the challenges and travails of irrigated agriculture in western Kansas. However, what they do not realize is that the state varies widely in both hydrology and climate. Kansas’s groundwater management districts reflect that diversity.

Equus Beds Groundwater Management District No. 2 is located on the eastern edge of the High Plains aquifer—we are not considered to be part of the Ogallala aquifer, which is located in western Kansas. By and large, the Equus Beds aquifer is relatively healthy and not experiencing significant declines. And while we are not pumping out fossil water like they are in the western part of the state, we do experience slight declines in parts of the aquifer. The recharge rate to the aquifer is higher than in the western part of the state, and the water table is much shallower, with some areas having depths of less than 10 feet to water. The aquifer is the sole source of fresh water for most water users in south‑central Kansas.

Wichita. While most of the city of Wichita is not located within the district, its well field is. Wichita’s wells date back to the 1950s, and the city has mostly senior water rights totaling 40,000 acre-feet per year from 55 wells.

The city has a 66‑inch pipeline that runs from the well field to a treatment plant in the city. The city then blends that with the surface water from Cheney Reservoir, and it goes into its distribution system.

Irrigators within Equus Beds mainly grow corn and soybeans, most of which are irrigated by center pivot.

More recently, growers have installed subsurface drip irrigation. We ran a program from 2010 through 2014 through the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Agricultural Water Enhancement Program to promote and provide financial assistance for the conversion of flood irrigation to center pivot and subsurface drip. The result was the conversion of more than 7,000 irrigated acres to more efficient irrigation methods. The soil type and water quality in the district are fairly favorable for subsurface drip. We have been pleased with the general move to more high-efficiency water application.

About the District The Equus Beds Groundwater Management District No. 2 is located in south‑central Kansas and serves agricultural, municipal, and industrial water users across nearly 900,000 acres. Irrigated agriculture is 60 percent of our water use on an annual basis, municipal is 25 percent, and industrial is around 15 percent. There are approximately 2,000 permitted wells in the district: 1,600 for irrigation; 200 for municipal; and the rest for industrial, stock watering, and recreation. Equus Beds is charged with the management of the aquifer.

Equus Beds has a very large municipal base compared with the other groundwater management districts in Kansas. More than 500,000 people in the district rely on the aquifer for their drinking water, including the city of

Management Rules of the Road In Kansas, all water permits are approved by the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources. Every permit sets limits and conditions, designating use, annual quantity, pumping rate, and place of use. Metering and water use reporting are required for all nondomestic wells statewide. Kansas is very much a leader in that regard. Those data are essential for groundwater management.

Equus Beds formed in 1975 to manage groundwater supplies within its boundaries under two fundamental management principles: (1) safe yield, which limits groundwater withdraws to annual groundwater recharge, and (2) groundwater quality, which seeks to maintain the naturally occurring water quality of the aquifer. To

By Tim Boese

B

Irrigation Leader

that end, the district designates special management areas, which address challenges such as oil field brine contamination and water level declines. We look at new permits and change applications a little differently in those areas.

All water permitting in the district goes through the groundwater management district to the state. If someone files an application with the state, it goes to the district for review. The district makes a recommendation back to the state for approval, denial, or modification. We make sure the permit is consistent with our management program, rules, and regulations. The state agrees with the district 99.9 percent of the time.

Water Quality Water quality, not water quantity, is our biggest challenge.

We have oil field brine contamination, nitrate issues, natural salinity, and some volatile organic compound contamination from industrial and grain storage activities. Because of the shallow water table, it is easily contaminated. There are also legacy issues. Much of the oil field brine is due to bad disposal practices in the 1930s and 1940s.

Remediation on those contaminants is expensive and hard to implement. We are monitoring the oil field brine contamination with the intent to tackle it in the short term.

Oil field brine remediation is a very expensive operation: You can pump it out and dispose of it in a deep-injection well, clean it up, or find a user of the contaminated water to get it out of the system. There might be potential industrial or municipal users that could take it, clean it up, and use it.

the aquifer several miles away. The second phase involved a direct intake from the Little Arkansas River during high flows. The city treats that water to a drinking water standard and injects it back into the aquifer.

There are two purposes: (1) to recharge the aquifer in and around Wichita’s well field where water levels had been declining and to slow an oil field brine contamination plume near the well field and (2) to gain recharge credits that will allow it to pump at a later date. Through the end of 2014, the city has put in about 5,000 acre-feet. While it is not a lot of water in the great scheme of things, the city is still optimizing the program.

Financing While there are a lot of potential water projects out there, there is not a lot of money. We are funded through a special assessment based on appropriation quantity. We can also assess land, but we are capped by law at 5 cents an acre and $1 per acre‑foot. Right now, Equus Beds assesses the maximum allowed by law. That allows the district to provide Measuring Sustainability to Facilitate Use The district is working with the Kansas Geological Society core services but does not allow it to undertake some of those on developing a sustainability model. It is long overdue. We are bigger projects. That will have to be addressed, not only in looking at sustainable yield down to a very small scale. We will this district but also statewide. be able to take that information and determine more accurate The Value of Local Management recharge rates.

Our strength is in local management based on climate, While most of the groundwater districts in the state are hydrology, and water use. At the state level, we will have to closed to new appropriation, we are still open. We evaluate address the groundwater declines in western Kansas, the applications based on a recharge rate that ensures safe yield, water quality issues in central Kansas, and the surface water but we really need to refine that number. The sustainability reservoir storage and water quality in eastern Kansas. At the model will help us develop a regulatory framework for new same time, while addressing those issues, it is important that applications and management. Currently, we use 6 inches the state recognizes the importance of local management to of recharge for most of the district, which is 20 percent of make sure we do not have one-size-fits-all policies or rules. our normal rainfall. We have lowered the recharge rate for Kansas is diverse in terms of hydrology and climate. We want safe‑yield calculations in certain areas of the district based on water level data review, but more work is needed. It is not hard to make sure that any solution to these issues is appropriate, effective, and site specific. In that regard, to understand that our recharge rate is not uniform across the Kansas’s groundwater management district, so we need to get that right. districts have an important role to play.

Active Recharge Tim Boese has been with Equus Beds The city of Wichita runs an aquifer storage and recovery Groundwater Management District project to build flexibility into its water supplies. The first phase involved banked storage along the Little Arkansas River. No. 2 since 1992 and has served as During high flows, the river comes up and the surface water general manager since 2006. You can naturally infiltrates into the river bank and aquifer adjacent to reach Mr. Boese at (316) 835-2225. the river, at which point the city pumps it and recharges it into Irrigation Leader

17

Manager’s Profile

Randy Ray, Central Colorado Water Conservancy District

18

T

he Central Colorado Water Conservancy District (CCWCD) develops, manages, and protects water resources in northeastern Colorado.

Located along the South Platte River basin, downstream of Denver and about halfway to the state line of Nebraska, the district provides water augmentation and decree administration for 1,100 wells across two subdistricts: the Groundwater Management Subdistrict, formed in 1973, and the Well Augmentation Subdistrict, formed in 2004. The CCWCD manages a diverse portfolio of programs, from water quality testing to education outreach to water recharge.

The CCWCD supplies water via water allotment contracts for agricultural irrigation spanning 100,000 acres.

From vegetable farms that grow lettuce, cabbage, and carrots to acres of alfalfa and corn used for feed on dairy, feedlot, and poultry farms, growers within the CCWCD produce a varied and growing selection of agricultural products.

At the helm of the CCWCD is Randy Ray, who started as an intern with the district after graduating from Colorado State University in the early 1990s and became general manager in 2011. Having grown up on a dairy farm in the district, Mr. Ray knows a thing or two about irrigated agriculture along the South Platte River.

Irrigation Leader’s senior writer, John Crotty, spoke with Mr. Ray about groundwater managing in Colorado, building a diverse supply portfolio, and looking for ways to conjunctively manage surface and groundwater resources.

Randy Ray: In the CCWCD’s Groundwater Management Subdistrict (GMS) augmentation plan, there are 875 wells. In 2002, we filed an application to have those 875 wells in a plan of augmentation that included replacement supplies of several thousand acre-feet of senior water rights, long-term municipal leases, and alluvial groundwater recharge projects as replacement supply.

The entire process took three years. Since the decrees and metering of wells were required in about 2005, the GMS has allocated members to pump about 50 percent of their historical allotment, or about 33,290 acre-feet of consumptive use. The wells are managed by contract with the groundwater users; there are currently 515 contracts in the GMS. In 2004, the CCWCD filed a plan for the 440 wells of the Well Augmentation Subdistrict (WAS). With 60 or 70 objectors to the plan, settlement terms were not adequate for the WAS board of directors. The board directed counsel to proceed with trial. Two years and $1 million later, the district ended up with a decree in June 2006. For the WAS, there were wins and losses from the trial. One unfortunate loss was the inability to operate the wells in the WAS plan for seven years. Today, there are 164 wells in the WAS that are pumping at a 55 percent quota, or an allocation of 8,388 acre-feet of consumptive use.

John Crotty: How does the CCWCD manage groundwater?

John Crotty: What does a quota mean for pumpers, and how does the CCWCD calculate it?

Randy Ray: The groundwater we manage is alluvial, so it is tied either to a tributary of the South Platte River or the river itself. If a well extracts water from that alluvial aquifer, at some point in time there will be depletion in the stream. We allocate and manage groundwater use by augmenting supply in the river at the time, place, and location of depletion, as directed by our court-approved decrees. Irrigators in the district may obtain new well permits, provided the applicant has an augmentation plan that can look several years into the future to ensure that the water use of senior surface water right holders are not diminished.

The state of Colorado grants and issues well permits.

Typically, the person or entity that wants to drill the well acquires an augmentation supply through a contract with the CCWCD or another entity. For new augmentation plans, the applicant must go to water court and file notice of the plan in his or her respective

Randy Ray: For irrigated farms with senior water rights, we looked at the irrigated acreage on that farm and the historical average yield of the senior water rights. We know that the balance of the irrigation water requirement was made up from the well. So a 100 percent quota would have been 100 percent of the average pumping required to meet the full crop on those acres. If you had a farm requirement of 200 acre-feet, and historically your senior shares delivered 100 acre-feet of consumptive use, then the district grants a 100 percent contract quota with 100 acre-feet.

Today, we can only allow them to pump 50 and 55 percent of the historical.

water division. If a third party suspects that the planned use of the well may injure another water right, the third party can file a statement of opposition. The water court makes a ruling in about 18 to 30 months in simpler cases.

John Crotty: How do those rules apply to the CCWCD’s subdistricts?

John Crotty: How do you go about getting them to that full percentage?

Randy Ray: Well, everything takes money. We have presented four different questions to our tax constituents

since 2002. We have been given the authority to borrow up to $90 million, and those earlier bonds are a year or two away from being paid off. Our constituents approved another bond in 2012 for $60 million to acquire senior water rights from willing sellers, develop slurry-lined gravel pit storage, participate in the Chatfield Reservoir Reallocation Project, and develop additional alluvial groundwater recharge projects.

When the snow melts off the Rockies this time of the year, the river is flush and there is no demand. When that happens, the CCWCD is able to divert water for storage and recharge.

In the storage example, that water is reintroduced to the South Platte River when there are senior rights calling for water, and in the recharge example, the water diverted in the spring arrives as a subsurface return flow to the river. If there is a call, a credit from the recharge is accounted against the member well pumping.

Back in the 1980s, the CCWCD started using bentonite slurry walls to line mined gravel pit reservoirs to convert them to a sealed vessel for water storage. In 1988, we got a water right for a pit on the Cache La Poudre River, which is a tributary on the South Platte. We use those lined gravel pits for the augmentation plans, and we have about 15,000 acrefeet of slurry-lined storage today. We are negotiating and building some more. We are hoping to have another 5,000 acre-feet lined up pretty soon.

We also have $28 million dedicated to Chatfield Reservoir, a flood control reservoir built in the early 1970s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Built after the 1965 flood, which was devastating to the Denver metro area and eastern Colorado, it is a mainstem dam on the South Platte. The Water Resources Development Act of 2007 reallocated 20,600 acre-feet for storage. Today, the CCWCD owns roughly 20 percent of the reallocation. Of the eight participating districts, we are the only agricultural district.

Design of mitigation projects are underway, and we anticipate being able to store water in 2019. There is no requirement to raise the dam or modify the outlet. All the work is to mitigate 500-plus acres of lost habitat and to modify and replace recreational facilities at Chatfield State Park. It is the highest grossing park in the state and has just under 2 million visits per year.

We also lease reusable effluent from wastewater treatment plants from the Denver metro area. We use that water supply as a credit against well depletions.

Our portfolio is very diverse.

The Colorado constitution charges water users to make the most beneficial use of water. During these wetter years, a lot of water has left our state and flowed into Nebraska over and above compact requirements. There will be a lot of people wringing their hands when the dry years come again.

Nebraska manages water in the alluvial aquifer differently than we do. Colorado keeps its alluvial aquifer brim full.

Return flows feed the river and take care of the senior rights holders. Our groundwater users would like to see a little different approach so that we use storage of the aquifer in dry years instead of leaving those wells turned off. It has been an uphill battle.

We have residents that are upset because groundwater levels between Greeley and Denver are higher than they have ever been recorded in history. It is creating agricultural property damage and flooding out basements, primarily in the small town of Gilcrest, south of Greeley.

As part of the process for the development of the state water plan, the state formed roundtables for the various river basins in the state. The South Platte basin roundtable formed a groundwater technical committee to see what kind of pilot projects could resolve high groundwater issues and operate within the current law. We developed a pilot project near the town of Gilcrest to pump more groundwater and reduce surface water to the farms. We’ll try that out this irrigation season. Colorado State University will do some monitoring and follow the cones of depression from the well pumping, and we will gather some data.

John Crotty: What is the CCWCD’s most pressing challenge?

Randy Ray: Open communication. You have to be able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Don’t take for granted what you think the other person’s needs are.

If you know what they need, a lot of times you can come up with some resolution. Generally speaking, I learned that from my predecessor, Tom Cech. In the past, there were deep disagreements between the surface water users and groundwater pumpers. It could get ugly. But those relationships, generally speaking, have mended, and they are seeing eye to eye.

Randy Ray: Growth in the state of Colorado is one of the most pressing challenges. The state’s population is anticipated to double by 2050. Roughly 80 percent of that will be in the South Platte basin. There will be more and more demand for water, and we will do more and more development of supplies to compete for the limited water supply as the growth continues.

John Crotty: Where would you like to see Colorado’s groundwater management in the next 10 years?

Randy Ray: I would like to see a shift toward conjunctive management of alluvial groundwater and surface water rights. Our vegetable supply producers need a constant and reliable supply of water; if they can’t guarantee a supply of a certain tonnage to a grocer, they lose their contract.

Irrigation supply coming from groundwater will be more and more important. Food safety laws are requiring bacterial testing, so converting those irrigators to groundwater will be important.

John Crotty: Finally, what advice do you have for other managers seeking to facilitate good relationships between groundwater and surface water users?

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The Innovators 26

Measurable Water Savings With the Dragon-Line Mobile Drip System

S

aying your irrigation system maximizes water efficiencies is one thing; proving it is another.

Several recent studies conducted by Kansas State University are indicating that mobile drip irrigation systems save water and have the potential to improve yields. For growers who pump from the Ogallala aquifer, where groundwater levels are declining, that is great news: They can irrigate with less water to produce higher yields.

Precision Mobile Drip Irrigation (PMDI) systems, manufactured by Netafim, bring together the watersaving efficiencies of drip irrigation with the scope and span of center-pivot irrigation. A PMDI system runs drip hoses off center-pivot nozzles and drags those hoses along the ground to provide direct watering of a crop. The Dragon-Line has been instrumental in the refinement of PMDI technology.

Monty Teeter, chief executive officer of Teeter Irrigation for almost 40 years and now distributor of the Dragon-Line system, has been concerned about water efficiency for a long time. A native of southwestern Kansas, he understands the challenges facing the people who rely on the Ogallala aquifer: “If you take the approximate 8,000 pivots running every day in our area, and if we were losing 15 to 50 percent of all the water being pumped out of the aquifer due

to evaporation or wind loss each year, despite all the efforts to conserve it as we know today, it would be staggering. It doesn’t make any sense! I believe that we can increase the efficiency by saving a large percent of this loss with the use of Dragon-Line, because we deliver all the water directly to the soil without puddling, run off, wind loss, evaporation, and wetting the crop or residue.”

Needless to say, irrigated agriculture is the cornerstone of the economy of southwestern Kansas.

Mr. Teeter emphasizes, “It is a big deal, and it all revolves around one common denominator—water.

Agriculture is a billion-dollar-plus industry supporting hundreds of thousand jobs.”

The Value of Independent Research

Since he started using PMDI on his own farm back in 2013, Mr. Teeter has seen a 20–50 percent yield increase and more moisture profile in the soil (compared with conventional center-pivot systems).

“I also saw a difference in the crops—they tasseled 10 days sooner and were generally healthier with less insect infestation.”

While those results were promising, Mr. Teeter recognized the value of research on the product. “It didn’t matter what kind of yields I showed on my

Irrigation Leader

own farm. Without documented research, I wouldn’t be able to promote this product to help other people. I knew that Dragon-Line needed to have university backing and testing to quantify the water savings.”

He reached out to researchers at Kansas State University, Southwest Research and Extension Center, and invited them to visit his farm and learn more about the DragonLine. Dr. Isayah Kisekka, who is in charge of the Kansas State University research farm in Garden City, put a package together and offered to test the Dragon-Line.

The Kansas State University Study

Last year, researchers from Kansas State University, under a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, began to investigate the efficacy of PMDI relative to conventional (low-elevation, spray-application) center-pivot irrigation. Dr. Kisekka stated that the ultimate goal of the study is to maximize how much economic yield they get per acreinch of water applied. Teeter Irrigation donated a Valley center pivot with a Dragon-Line system for the purposes of the study.

Researchers placed moisture probes and water metering devices on a four-tower pivot system. Replicating both 600-gallon-per-minute use and 300-gallon-per-minute use for PMDI and conventional (low-energy, sprinkler-application) center-pivot irrigation applied to corn on the university’s test plot over an irrigation season, the study showed (1) the average daily soil water evaporation for drip was 1.0 millimeter per day and for sprinkler was 1.6 millimeters per day, (2) there was no statistically significant difference in yield between the two, and (3) the soil water at the end of the irrigation season for low-well capacity was significantly higher under PMDI than under sprinkler.

Dr. Kisekka already sees the benefits of PMDI. “One of the potential advantages that I see with this technology is the ability to minimize loss from evaporation, both wind and canopy.” He also thinks that there is a great potential in fertigation.

Notes From the Field

While pleased with the study’s initial findings, Mr. Teeter believes there are valuable differences in yield attributable to the PMDI of Dragon-Line. While not statistically significant for the purposes of the study, the Dragon-Line did show a nearly 25-bushel-peracre increase over conventional center-pivot irrigation methods on crops watered at 300 gallons per minute. In addition, Dragon-Lineirrigated corn watered at 300 gallons per minute produced within 4 percent of the yield of conventionally irrigated corn at 600 gallons per minute and a savings of 6 inches of watering.

Mr. Teeter notes the difference, “On my farm, it takes 72 days to put 6 inches of water on a field of 125 acres at 200 gallons per minute. It is huge deal! What is happening with our mobile drip irrigation system is that we bank water rather than evaporate water.

We turn that savings into yield.” According to Mr. Teeter, that 25– bushel difference has the potential to pay for a Dragon-Line system in the field plus the potential to save water going forward.

Transforming Center-Pivot Irrigation Through Drip Technology

After that first Kansas State engagement, Dragon-Line has developed other relationships with universities to facilitate subsequent studies on the product. PDMI, through the Dragon-Line, is now being studied at the University of Nebraska; Colorado State University; Texas A&M; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, in Bushland, Texas.

The fact that customers keep coming back to Mr. Teeter for the Dragon-Line says a lot about the product and the commitment of the region’s growers to water sustainability. The continued research on its benefits should help spread the word. Mr. Teeter is both hopeful and resolute. “We haven’t had anyone who has tried a Dragon-Line not buy additional systems. Here in southwestern Kansas, our livelihoods depend on making every drop count. That is what we are doing.”

Dr. Isayah Kisekka monitoring the Dragon-Line at the Kansas State University Southwest Research and Extension Center test plot.

Irrigation Leader

For more information about the Dragon-Line, contact Mr. Monty Teeter at montyt@teeterii.com or visit http://www.DragonLine.net.

27

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The Innovators 30

Bringing Irrigation District Management to the Cloud

F

or more than three years, WaterMaster has provided irrigation districts with cloud-based water accounting, invoicing, water order and delivery tracking, and reporting.

Origins

WaterMaster’s parent company, Advanced Control Systems (ACS), has been in business since 1992. It started out providing service work for computerand numeric-controlled machinery and equipment.

Over the years, in response to customer needs and requests, ACS has grown into an engineering and consulting company providing software solutions and control programming for manufacturing, water and wastewater, and irrigation automation.

The idea for WaterMaster’s cloud-based irrigation account solutions was born out of ACS’s work with the Vale Oregon Irrigation District. ACS, which had provided SCADA controls to the district in the

past, worked with the district to automate gates at a reservoir three hours away from the district office.

Prior to automation, office staff would call the dam tender and request the needed amount of water for the canal. The tender would go out, turn on the hydraulics at the dam, open up the gates, and then drive her ATV—with her little dog in tow—half a mile down the creek to take measurement. She would then go back and make another adjustment. All together, it was a two-hour process repeated a few times a day.

When the dam tender retired, the district reached out to ACS to find an automated solution. ACS installed some controllers to provide a cellular connection to the dam. According to Curt Landreth, ACS president, “It enabled district operators to sit in their office three hours away and control the gates from their computer screen or phone.” The solution was total computer control.

In working with Vale Oregon Irrigation District,

Irrigation Leader

ACS learned about the district’s antiquated billing system for irrigators—the DOS-based system would crank out invoices for some 475 customers, requiring repeated modifications to get them right.

In addition, the district’s ditch riders were still taking orders on paper and providing usage updates only once a month. The solution: Mr. Landreth and his team at ACS wrote software to enable the district to interface with QuickBooks. The invoicing process was reduced from days to minutes, and a week and a half ’s worth of water order data and report entry turned into two days’ worth. WaterMaster was born.

The Service

Today, WaterMaster offers six modules: • BillTrack—manages accounts and produces customizable invoices with payment tracking.

• WaterRights—tracks a district’s water rights and properties with legal descriptions and irrigable acreage.

• DitchRider—enables the district manager to track gate activity and flow rates and view real-time demand for a district’s water distribution at any time.

• RideKick—enables ditch riders to track, create, and receive water orders in the field via an iPad app.

• District Groups—helps districts assign members to a division, consolidate administrative fees, and allocate votes based on multiple factors.

WaterMaster is state-of-the-art, cloud-based software hosted on the WaterMaster servers, which are protected by bank-grade 256-bit SSL encryption and backed up daily.

How It Works

WaterMaster works with a district to migrate as much historic data as is reasonable into its system. The goal is to be able to present existing data in a recognizable and comprehensive way to the district. From there, a district can use the WaterMaster application to do billing, charge fees, turn water on and off, and track water certificates and historical certificate transactions.

Ditch rider data collection is completely automated.

Ditch riders can enter data directly into an iPad app,

Irrigation Leader

A screenshot of the Ditchrider module.

which automatically synchronizes and updates into the WaterMaster database. As soon as an order is submitted through the app, it is in the database and added to the demand calculations needed by district management.

Ditch riders often work in areas without phone or cell service. WaterMaster has addressed that issue by enabling ditch riders to take orders and record the adjustment of each headgate or diversion point without cell service; the information will synchronize with the system once the ditch rider returns to cell service or WiFi. When the information synchronizes, the app lets the customer and the district office know exactly how much water was ordered and delivered on a particular day.

Tyke Trogdon, WaterMaster’s western states regional director, says that it only takes about five minutes for one of his customers, Farmers Irrigation District in Hood River, Oregon, which serves 1,800 patrons, to generate all its invoices. Mr. Trogdon sees long-term benefits for irrigation districts. “We are saving our customers hundreds of hours in time, and we are improving the accuracy 31

of their water accounting. Our system prevents the distribution of water to a customer beyond his allotment, which is just one of many ways WaterMaster aids in water conservation.”

Costs

According to Mr. Landreth, “Each module is about the cost of a cell phone each month. For that kind of monthly fee, you get all of the interaction without all the hassles of maintaining servers or software—there is no need to upgrade, pay maintenance fees, or purchase tech support.

Also, there is no contract. If your district does not like our service, then you can stop paying us.”

A cloud-based account system poses unique challenges.

Mr. Trogdon noted that some potential customers and their board members do not always understand what exactly they would be buying. “We migrate a district’s data into our system—we don’t install anything on your computer. [A district] may not feel like it is getting anything. You pay monthly for use of the app, but there is nothing physical to associate with it.”

But the features that cause those concerns are also the system’s greatest strengths. For Mr. Landreth, “The lack of a physical product is the benefit of a cloud-based system.

You do not have to maintain software or have hightech computers or an IT department. All you need is an Internet connection.”

Connecting With Irrigators

Mr. Trogdon is proud that WaterMaster supports organizations that support the irrigation districts, such as the Oregon Water Resources Congress, the Idaho Water Users Association, and the Family Farm Alliance.

For Mr. Landreth, working with irrigators has been a fun process. “There has been a big learning curve in understanding the intricate details of the irrigation industry. You will never meet more salt-of-the-earth people than those in the irrigation industry.”

For more information about WaterMaster, visit www.mywatermaster.com or call Tyke Trogdon at (208) 362-5858.

Tyke Trogdon testing a WaterMaster module.

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Irrigation Leader

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The Innovators

Extending the Life of Water Delivery Systems: Standard Polymers Lining and Coating Solutions Headquartered in Burlington, Iowa, Standard Polymers is an industrial coating and linings representative that specializes in American-made industrial polymer materials for protection against steel corrosion and concrete erosion. Standard Polymers provides engineering consulting services, industrial coatings contractors, and industrial facilities personnel in 11 states.

Founded in 1989 as Preferred Products Corporation, the company has honed its industrial coatings and linings expertise across a number of industries, including food and beverage, power, and wastewater. Part of the company’s service portfolio includes water delivery systems. Today as Standard Polymers, the company has the same values, employees, and reputation it provided as Preferred Products Corporation.

In 2012, the company began its participation in a siphonlining project for the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District (CNPPID) in central Nebraska. CNPPID embarked on a multiphase project to clean and line the steel inverted siphons, dating back 70 years, on a couple of its canals. The first phase of the project involved coating a siphon 1.3 miles long and 78 inches in diameter; the second phase covered a 2,063-foot, 80-inch-diameter pipe; and the most recent phase involved 1,200 feet of 84-inch-diameter pipe.

CNPPID hired an industrial coating contractor to line the inner surface of the siphons with polyurethane hybrid.

The contractor cleaned and blasted the siphon walls before applying the lining. According to Standard Polymers Sales Representative Levi Banes, the 100-millimeter polyurethane application protects the siphon from corrosion and reduces hydraulic friction within the siphon, facilitating the siphon’s flow capacity and decreasing reservoir demands.

Standard Polymers provided quality assurance and control for the project, verifying performance of the coating and providing onsite support for coating application. According to Mr. Banes, the lining can add an additional 25 to 30 years to the life of the CNPPID siphons.

Since the completion of the CNPPID project back in 2014, Standard Polymers has continued to work with irrigation districts in Nebraska, helping to line concrete drains, canals, and elevated flumes. With 15 to 20 percent of its work dedicated to water systems, Standard Polymers looks to expand its footprint in the irrigation market.

For more information about Standard Polymers’ lining and coating services, please contact Levi Banes at (319) 237-1900.

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Irrigation Leader

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International

Talking Irrigation in India With Justin Harter

I

n late January, the World Bank hosted an international workshop, Integrated Water Management for Irrigation Networks and Flood Management—International Best Practices, in Lucknow, India. Lucknow is the capital city of the state of Uttar Pradesh, which, with a population of 200 million, is the most populous in the country. Uttar Pradesh is located in northern India, just south of the Nepalese border. It relies on the monsoon season between June and September for most of its annual rainfall.

Although the residents of Uttar Pradesh have been flood irrigating for thousands of years, the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department (UPID) was organized in 1823.

Today, the department delivers water originating in the Himalayas through 46,600 miles of canals and laterals to serve 23 million square miles and generating hydropower for the region. Local growers produce a significant amount of India’s grains and vegetables.

The state irrigation department faces many challenges familiar to irrigators in the United States, including urbanization, aging infrastructure, canal system inefficiencies, environmental concerns, and climate change.

In addition, during monsoon season, Uttar Pradesh’s major rivers—the Ganges, the Yamuna, the Ghagra, the Gomti, the Gandak, the Sone, and the Sarda—flood large sections of the state and cause loss of crops, property, and life.

The World Bank organized the workshop for the UPID to “gather best available practices in the field across the world to craft a roadmap for modernizing the UPID for effective management of its vast canal network, [as well as] increase efficiency in irrigation and thereby

36

productivity.”

Justin Harter, general manager of the Naches– Selah Irrigation District (NSID) and president of the Washington State Water Resources Association, traveled to Lucknow to talk about improving water efficiencies in a district that dates back more than 100 years. He discussed his efforts to lead the modernization of NSID, overhauling 90‑year-old wooden pipes and flumes and automating the district’s canal system with Rubicon gates.

Irrigation Leader’s senior writer, John Crotty, spoke with Mr. Harter about his experience.

John Crotty: How did you get connected to the workshop?

Justin Harter: Rubicon Water was my connection.

The World Bank invests heavily in India’s infrastructure and was putting on the workshop.

Rubicon was a part of it and reached out to me in December of last year about giving a presentation.

While it was short notice—requiring expedited service to get a passport—to make the trip, everything fell into place.

John Crotty: What was the purpose of the workshop and what topics were covered?

Justin Harter: The World Bank was bringing together a group of experts to talk about canal efficiencies, and automation was a small part of the workshop. The World Bank was looking at regional and basin-wide water management, including Irrigation Leader

irrigation supply, on behalf of the state irrigation department. The conference addressed large-scale, area-wide projects down to more focused projects like mine.

Presenters from the Netherlands and Spain covered their respective country’s overall water management. There was also a lot of discussion on forecasting rain, snowpack, and runoff. There were also presenters from other parts of India.

I focused my talk on making the most of limited resources and still being able to improve. I began my talk broadly to give people a sense of where Washington State is, and what irrigation is like in the Yakima and Columbia basin projects. I also talked about precipitation in the Yakima Valley and the need for irrigation in our arid climate.

John Crotty: What kind of feedback did you get from the audience?

Justin Harter: People appreciated hearing about the district’s ability to make the most of limited resources. As I talked, I got immediate feedback in the form of people in the audience taking screenshots of my presentation slides with their cell phones.

John Crotty: Do you feel that attending the workshop connected you to the world irrigation and agricultural community?

Justin Harter: Yes. I knew from early on in my career that India, Egypt, and Rome were irrigation pioneers. There were canals and flood irrigation in India before the British, but the British helped put together the modern water department in the country. What I found interesting, and what ties the UPID to irrigation in the United States, was that the engineers that helped build the UPID system moved on to California years later and influenced the development of early projects there.

John Crotty: While you were only there for a few days, what stood out?

Justin Harter: Well, at the workshop, I learned that India has the most irrigated acres of any country in the world. In the short time I was on the ground, I could see firsthand how the state’s irrigation facilities were intermixed with the urban area—there were fields of saffron right next to apartment complexes. And, at a more personal level, I saw real extremes: There was a lot that was modern and like the United States, but there is also extreme poverty and other aspects of life that have changed little over the centuries.

Introductions at the Integrated Water for Irrigation Networks and Flood Management workshop.

Irrigation Leader

37

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CLASSIFIED LISTINGS

TECHNICIAN/PROJECT OPERATIONS POSITION The Upper Republican Natural Resources District (URNRD) is accepting applications for a Water Resources Technician/Project Operator. This is a fulltime position with duties including field collection and compilation of information related to water quantity and quality, and oversight of a stream flow enhancement project.

The position also includes: Inspecting combined irrigation/fertilizer application systems; measuring groundwater levels; collecting water usage from irrigation wells; maintaining irrigation flow meters; and collecting and testing water samples. The duties are an important aspect of the URNRD’s efforts to responsibly manage water and other natural resources within a three-county region of southwest Nebraska.

The successful candidate will also provide general maintenance and oversight of lands and infrastructure that comprise a stream flow enhancement project designed to aid compliance with an interstate water compact.

A bachelor’s degree is preferred but not required.

Knowledge of and experience with irrigation systems, general maintenance skills, and an ability to work independently are preferred. The starting salary range is $40,000-$60,000, but negotiable based on qualifications and experience. Paid holidays, vacation and sick leave, medical, vision, dental insurance, and retirement available. Applications will be taken until a successful candidate is found. The URNRD is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Contact the Upper Republican NRD for a job application and full job description at 511 E 5th St, Imperial, NE 69033 or download from www.urnrd.org. For additional information please contact the District at (308) 882-5173

Irrigation Leader

WATER RESOURCES MANAGER/ ASSISTANT MANAGER POSITION The Upper Republican Natural Resources District is accepting applications for a Water Resources Manager/ Assistant Manager position. This is a fulltime position, with responsibilities including development, implementation, and supervision of the District’s Groundwater (quality and quantity) and Integrated Management Plans, Rules, and Regulations. This position also includes: overseeing the water quality and quantity monitoring networks; collecting and interpreting ground and surface water and soil data; providing technical support for review and interpretation of studies on geology, ground and surface water; preparation of reports; and updates and presentations to the NRD board/committees and general public. The Upper Republican NRD has broad statutory authorities to manage water and other natural resources in a three-county region of southwest Nebraska.

Bachelor’s degree in natural sciences/resources, agricultural, hydrology, geology or agricultural/biological systems engineering is preferred. Knowledge of and experience with geographic information systems (GIS) and database management preferred. The starting salary range is $50,000-$75,000, but negotiable based on qualifications/experience. Paid holidays, vacation & sick leave, medical, vision, dental insurance, and retirement available. Applications will be taken until a successful candidate is found. The URNRD is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Contact the Upper Republican NRD for a job application and full job description at 511 E 5th St., Imperial, NE 69033 or download from www.urnrd.org. For additional information please contact the District at (308) 882-5173.

For information on posting to the Classified Listings, please e-mail Irrigation.Leader@waterstrategies.com 39

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