SALT LAKE CITY — More money is headed to farmers in the Colorado River Basin, paying them to not grow as many crops and send the water they save downstream.
During a special meeting on Monday, the Colorado River Authority of Utah's board voted to approve almost $895,000 in funds to some agriculture producers under the "Demand Management Pilot Program." It is estimated the funds would save as much as 2,500-acre feet of water. This is the second year of the program, which has spent nearly $5 million total.
"Add them all up, it’d just be under 20,000 acre feet of conserved, consumptive use," Marc Stilson, an engineer with the authority, said during a presentation on the program.
The authority's board approved the latest round of projects, but Colorado River Authority of Utah Executive Director Amy Haas acknowledged it is not as much as she would have liked because of the dry conditions they are in.
"It was a particularly difficult year on the Duchesne River and we ended up getting less than a quarter of what we anticipated we would get," she said, adding: "Mother Nature decides. So that’s an illustration of the fact that we are susceptible and our program is susceptible to hydrologic shortage."
Politically, the program can be seen as a goodwill gesture by the state of Utah as negotiations continue over the future of the Colorado River. The seven states along the river are trying to strike a deal over management to avoid federal and court intervention. The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million people in the West, but all states are facing more demands for water with less of it.
Governor Spencer Cox has been a supporter of the Demand Management Program. His latest budget proposal to the Utah State Legislature allocated another $5 million to the program in an effort to make the pilot project permanent.
This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University. See all of our stories about how Utahns are impacted by the Colorado River at greatsaltlakenews.org/coloradoriver
