Erling A. Juel of Greenfields Irrigation District: Building Big Sky Hydropower to Fund Maintenance Needs

The mighty 2,200-cubic-foot-per-second jet of water seen in this picture vividly shows the potential hydropower energy available to be harnessed at the base of Gibson Dam. Its maximum discharge is 3,050 cubic feet per second at full pool. GID has plans to develop this year-round hydropower potential.

Greenfields Irrigation District (GID), based in Fairfield, Montana, serves 550 water users on more than 83,000 irrigated acres. In this interview, District Manager Erling A. Juel talks about GID’s plans to build several hydropower plants and to use the revenue generated to fund a backlog of repair and replacement projects, to modernize its system, and to conserve water.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Erling Juel: I was born and raised in Montana and have lived here my whole life, except for an 8-year stint in Alaska attending graduate school and starting my engineering career. I worked in the private sector as a geotechnical engineer and was the president and CEO of a regional engineering firm before retiring in 2015. As an encore career, I have been working for GID for the last 7 years. It’s been both an honor and a challenge. While I have worked for many irrigation districts in the past as an engineering consultant, managing one is quite different.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about GID’s history and current services.

Erling Juel: GID is a Bureau of Reclamation project located in north-central Montana. Our district covers about 133,000 acres, about 83,000 of which are irrigated.

This potential 3-megawatt hydropower site is situated on the Pishkun Supply Canal, which has a steady 1,300-cubic-foot-per-second flow for 4 months of the year. The Pishkun Supply Canal is the main canal that conveys GID’s diverted water from the Sun River to the Pishkun Reregulation Reservoir for rerelease to GID’s water users.

We have hundreds of miles of main canals and laterals, including drains. The district is 100 years old, and our water rights date back to 1905. Our main grain crops are malting barley and winter wheat. Another big portion of our production is hay, grass, and irrigated pasture for livestock production, and our producers also grow several other miscellaneous crops, such as canola, dill, mint, and peas. GID’s users comprise approximately 550 individual landowners and water users.

Irrigation Leader: To what extent is your district affected by drought?

Erling Juel: Persistent drought conditions tend to shorten our irrigation season. Because of our size, we operate from stored water collected during each spring runoff. Drought reduces the water available for storage. Once our available storage is depleted, our irrigation season is essentially done for the year. Also, GID is responsible for the day-to-day flows in the Sun River. By managing the releases from two of our three reservoirs, GID helps ensure that the water rights of downstream water users are satisfied. Obviously, during a dry year with only occasional precipitation events, there is a lot of pressure on the river, and theoretically, this means less water for GID water users.

We are also affected by climate change, which is causing earlier and more intense runoff patterns. Our reservoirs were built based on hydrologic and climatic data from over 100 years ago. In the past, the river runoff pattern extended over a longer time period, and as we used the stored water, it was slowly replenished with gradual snowmelt and runoff. Now, with more abrupt runoff cycles, our reservoirs fill quickly, and the additional runoff is lost down the river because we are unable to use it or store it.

Irrigation Leader: Have you considered building additional storage?

Erling Juel: Yes, definitely. It’s on the to-do list. Our primary storage unit is situated on the Sun River and does not lend itself to storage modifications. The other two reservoirs are off-stream, and with one, there is an opportunity to make storage enhancements. The increased storage would be equivalent to two additional weeks of irrigation for GID’s producers. This would be critical during dry seasons or persistent drought cycles. During normal years, this additional storage would allow GID to supplement the instream flows of the Sun River during the summer months when the local fisheries are being stressed due to low flows and high temperatures. Although we have a plan and a

GID crews unload the first of several pieces of 11-foot-diameter penstock to be used for the 3-megawatt hydropower sites at Arnold Coulee Drop and Pishkun Inlet Drop and the 1-megawatt site at A-Drop. GID has successfully procured WaterSMART Water Efficiency and Energy Grant funding for the Arnold Coulee site and now is pursuing funding for the other sites from the same program. After the original Johnson Drop structure failed catastrophically in 2017, it was replaced by a 79-inch penstock and intake structure, making the site hydropower-ready. GID is pursuing WaterSMART Water Efficiency and Energy Grant funding to complete a 0.8 megawatt turbine/generator at the site.

strategy to bolster our drought resiliency with more storage, we currently lack sufficient financial resources to move this objective to the top of the to-do list.

Irrigation Leader: Is aging infrastructure an issue for GID? Have you been doing any recent updates or rehabilitation work?

Erling Juel: This is the biggest issue confronting the district and my biggest challenge. The majority of our more-than100-year-old infrastructure was built during a relatively short time frame, and my fear is that it will fall apart in a short time frame. We are now starting to see the accelerated failures of some critical infrastructure components. Rehabilitation work must be done during the irrigation off-season, when the weather is not necessarily conducive to carrying out cast-in-place concrete construction and earthwork. The challenges of winter construction drive costs up. Sometimes, we must break a big project into phases so that the work can be completed in time for spring irrigation. Another challenge is that a lot of our infrastructure is in remote areas along the Rocky Mountain front, and the difficulty of access and logistics also drives costs up.

The time and money it will take to replace these major structures is a huge burden for the district. The number of funding opportunities is limited, and we cannot finance the aging infrastructure replacement program and district modernization effort on the backs of the GID producers. In conjunction with the GID board, we have developed a plan that will allow the district to be self-reliant and to self-fund the necessary overhaul of infrastructure and operations. GID currently earns revenue as the 10 percent owner of a 14-megawatt (MW) hydroelectric power generation facility situated on our canal system. Several years ago, we looked at similar opportunities for developing hydropower generation at other locations on our system. We currently have a 3 MW site under development that will be online in spring 2024. A second 3 MW site is planned to be developed on the heels of the first and will go online in 2025. We are in the final stages of completing the lease of power privilege process with Reclamation. We have completed 8.4 miles of 69-kilovolt transmission line with the construction of another 8.6 miles to start in August. The complete build-out will include seven hydropower sites with an aggregate capacity of nearly 34 MW. The revenue stream that is produced will be used to accelerate the repair and replacement of our aging infrastructure, as well as the overhaul and modernization of our operations.

Irrigation Leader: Which elements of that power infrastructure will you own?

Erling Juel: It is the goal of the district to have 100 percent ownership of the hydropower generating plants. GID would also be fully responsible for the operations and maintenance duties.

Irrigation Leader: Would you tell us about your pursuit of WaterSMART grants from Reclamation?

Erling Juel: Over the last 10 years, GID has had the fortune to be an active participant in Reclamation’s WaterSMART

GID purchased 360,000 linear feet of ACSR 556 transmission conductor from the canceled Keystone Pipeline Project, which will be repurposed on approximately 20 miles of 69-kilovolt line to serve several of the hydropower sites GID has in development. GID also purchased 360 75-foot transmission poles from the same source.

grant program. We currently have three such grants. We are finishing a SCADA upgrade program for which we were awarded $75,000. Also, we just received a $75,000 grant award to convert a ditch to a pipeline. In spring 2021, GID was awarded a $2 million grant for the Arnold Coulee Drop hydropower facility, which is the first hydropower development site I discussed earlier.

Irrigation Leader: What are the other top issues in your district today?

Erling Juel: In addition to replacing our aging infrastructure, we need to achieve a complete overhaul and modernization of district operations. Reclamation designed and laid out the district over 100 years ago to support a rotational, floodhead style of irrigation. However, today, over 70 percent of GID producers use pivots and other sprinklers to irrigate. As such, their water demands are a lot different than they were when the system was originally designed. We need to not only replace infrastructure that is falling apart but to modernize and to improve how we manage and deliver water. These enhanced water management practices will yield tremendous water conservation benefits. One way to think about this dilemma is that if Reclamation were building the district today, our system would look totally different. GID needs to keep moving in that direction. It’s a huge challenge. We must establish a plan for what the district will look like after it is completely overhauled and modernized, and then we must prepare a plan for how GID is going to implement that strategy. As the demands on a finite water resource continue to mount, we need to embrace methods of irrigating more ground with less water.

Irrigation Leader: Is there anything you would like to add?

Erling Juel: As with many other irrigation districts, our biggest challenge is how to replace aging infrastructure and complete a modernization overhaul without bankrupting the producers. Thankfully, we are blessed with favorable topography that offers opportunities for hydropower development as well as a board of commissioners with the vision to make the necessary commitment. This future revenue stream is crucial for keeping the district viable for future generations of GID producers. Hopefully, we have enough time to get the projects online before we seriously need the revenue. IL

Erling A. Juel, PE, is the district manager of Greenfields Irrigation District. He can be contacted at erling@gid-mt.com.