How You Reduce Water Use Matters

Guess I have to hit this issue again because no action seems to be on anyone's planning calendar as of yet. 

The issue is the design of the Federal EQIP and AWEP programs which are supposed to be, in part, helping producers and states conserve water use.  They are doing OK - at least the way we're using them in Kansas, but they could be even better.

No one doubts the positive relationship between water application and crop production. Every Ag school in the nation produces crop production curves showing the normal yield associated with each additional inch of water made available to the crop - either by irrigation or by nature.  And all the curves look more or less the same - a steeper curve for the first 60-70% of the crop ET, then a flattening curve until it actually starts dropping when too much water is applied.  A grain crop production curve from Elsie, NE is provided above - click to enlarge.  Every crop in every climate has such a production curve.

If this is the case, it makes perfect sense that any decision to reduce water use in ag should reduce the least efficient water use from several users rather than the full water use from any user(s).  In other words, reducing 20% of water from 5 users will be the same amount of water reduction as reducing 1 water user fully (as long as they're all using the same amount) - but the former approach will yield more production at the end of the year than the latter.  This is because every inch of the reduced water in the first approach was being applied at the top of the production curve - when the crop's yield response is at its lowest.  There are actually other reasons such an approach is better economically, but not enough space to go into these now.  

Right now, EQIP and AWEP are only available to conserve water through the set aside of full water rights.  This, of course, is not as efficient a reduction of water use than if we could have more people involved in the reductions as suggested in the first approach.  I'll continue to work on NRCS to promote this relatively minor tweak in their programs.  I'd appreciate any help I can get because thus far they don't seem to be all that interested in this idea.

Again, we can conserve the same amount of water either way, but with more producers saving smaller amounts of water, our production levels are not reduced as much, and this is quite a bit better for the local economy.

NW KS GMD 4 AWEP - March 4 Deadline

NRCS and Three Groundwater Management Districts Partner through Agricultural Water Enhancement Program

Application Cutoff Date March 4, 2011

Eric B. Banks, State Conservationists for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Kansas, announced recently that irrigators in northwest and southcentral Kansas in designated priority areas are once again eligible to conserve water and improve water quality on agricultural working lands through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Water Enhancement Program (AWEP). Through AWEP, the USDA will leverage additional resources and services from conservation partners. USDA NRCS administers the program and enters into agreements with conservation partners to help landowners plan and implement conservation practices in priority areas established through the agreements.

“Three Kansas groundwater management districts (GMDs) partnered with other local agencies and organizations to submit AWEP proposals that were approved,” said Banks. The GMDs began partnering with NRCS through AWEP in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010. Producers in the project areas have until March 4, 2011, to apply for this program at their local NRCS office.

Project areas are shown on a map at http://www.ks.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/awep :

Northwest Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 4 (GMD No. 4) was funded for a three-year period receiving almost $2.7 million in FY 2010. Six designated agricultural areas are eligible to directly conserve groundwater. To address the aquifer overdraft concern, NRCS and the GMD No. 4 seek to convert irrigated to dryland cropland acres in portions of Cheyenne, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas Counties.

I can't stress enough, if you are in one of the GMD 4 HPAs and are interested in transitioning irrigated acres to conserve the groundwater, get with the GMD office of your local NRCS.

AWEP Update

The dust is starting to settle and as of today we have 15 AWEP contracts signed to set aside 2,324 irrigated acres for the next 6 years - within 5 of our 6 designated high priority areas.  One of these contracts is requesting a waiver from NRCS headquarters which may or may not be approved, so worst case scenario is 14 contracts involving 2,010 irrigated acres.

We have cooperated with the Kansas Water Transition Assistance Program (WTAP) and the NW Kansas Groundwater Conservation Foundation whose programs will be providing the balance of the funding needed to permanently retire the irrigated acres - for at least a subset of the 14-15 AWEP contracts who are so inclined.  The WTAP application sign-up period will be October 1 - November 15.  This program is a competitive bid process to permanently retire one's water right. With AWEP already providing a majority of the cost necessary to convert irrigated acres to dry land production, our applicants should compete fairly well.  WTAP and the Conservation Foundation programs are also a multi-year efforts, so we should be able to phase these programs together for a bit longer.

The 30 or so unfunded AWEP applications this year will automatically move into next years program (the second year of a 3-year program) which could be an additional $2.666 million made available.  We'll have to wait and see how Congress responds.  We hope next year's WTAP program and the Conservation Foundation will also provide appropriate funding so we can continue the permanent retirements which represent the true conservation we sought from the outset.

As I've always said, the surest way to conserve water is to not pump it.  And not pumping it also makes water management a lot easier!

Fed Program Changes?

I recently asked a host of entities (NRCS, KWO, DWR, SCC, GMDs, etc.) to begin a Kansas dialog on the potential benefits of tweaking EQIP and AWEP so that these 2 programs can be applied toward reducing consumptive water use (conserving water) AND minimizing any economic impacts as the water conservation is happening.

Both programs are now recognizing the much greater water conservation benefits of transitioning irrigated acres to dryland production – thus truly conserving 100% of the historic consumptive water use. To this end, the program developers are to be commended. But both programs have been focusing on complete water right set asides or conversions in order to qualify.

New economic and hydrologic modeling is convincingly showing that reducing the least efficient portion of water use from a number of irrigation systems will have less economic impact on a region than reducing the same amount of water use completely from fewer systems. These two approaches have the same hydrologic results, but different economic impacts.

GMD 4 is wondering if it is time to consider approaching USDA, NRCS and perhaps others in asking that water conservation programs such as EQIP and AWEP take fuller advantage of the modeling results to lower the economic impacts of their water conservation benefits? To do this, these programs will need to allow for partial consumptive water use reductions from a larger number of participants. This means that EQIP and AWEP are going to need changes accordingly. Are these issues important enough to start developing?

GMD 4 welcomes any comments, ideas or suggestions regarding an open dialog on this issue. Perhaps a specific set of AWEP rules should also be discussed as operating AWEP under EQIP rules has brought to light a few glitches – at least what we consider glitches.  Anyone else tracking these issues as well?

Oh, I sent the email request on July 7, and have not heard a word yet from anyone.  I hope they're still mulling it over.

AWEP - Conservation Log - Day 27

I am amazed yet again at the veritable speed at which this program is coming together.  We have finalized the majority of decision-points related to implementing our conservation proposal of transitioning irrigated acres out of irrigation, and are now seriously servicing the questions of potential applicants.  And there is a lot of interest and a lot of questions.  There is also a program eligibility change which I corrected in my July 19 Blog article (previous entry below).

We are confident that we can retire 2,000 irrigated acres within our 6 high priority areas in our first program year.  Keep in mind, these acres will be non-irrigated for 6 years only.  We are also hoping to leverage the state's Water Transition Assistance Program (WTAP) with this effort to permanently retire perhaps 800 of these acres in year 1. 

With 2 more years of AWEP funding available (pending Congressional funding and local participation) we'll eventually retire from 6,000 to 7,000 acres for the 6 years.  This activity should catch the attention and interest of the Kansas Legislature to fund WTAP sufficiently over the same 3-year period so we can continue making permanent conversions by leveraging the two programs.  If it doesn't, I can only conclude that our Legislature is actually disinterested in reducing groundwater use - regardless of what they pontificate otherwise.  Yes, I'm throwing the gauntlet down and challenging the Kansas Legislature to step up.  (Yeah, I'll bet they're really worried now.)

No seriously, I think we've put together a pretty responsible program to convert irrigated acres in our most critical areas - exactly what our state water plans says needs to be done - with the heavy lifting being done by the NRCS' AWEP program.  To not support this effort with state funds will be "penny wise and pound foolish" as Ben Franklin would say. We'll see.  

AWEP - Conservation Log: Day 19:

A bit more detail has come out on how the Partnership program is going to operate in our 6 HPA's.  Any irrigator within our 6 areas can now visit their local NRCS office and make application - again, to receive 5 years of payments per acre in lieu of not irrigating for 6 years.  The annual payments will be based on ones benchmark acres - average acres irrigated per year between 2005 and 2009.  Moreover, the benchmark acres must equal or exceed 66% 45%* of the authorized irrigated acres and must have been watered at least 2 of these 5 years.  Finally, the acres must have received at least 6 acre-inches of water applied.  These are the eligibility criteria.

All the eligible applications will then be ranked.  If your irrigated acres are from 70% 60%* to 79.9% of the authorized acres, you'll get additional points.  If from 80% to 89.9%, more points, and if more than 90%, more points yet.

If you applied from 8 - 12 13 acre-inches of water per acre (average over all years irrigated) you'll receive additional points.  If you applied more than 12 13 acre-inches per acre you'll receive more points.

Finally, if you had submitted an eligible Kansas Water Transition Assistance Program (WTAP) application  in the last go-around and were not accepted, you get additional points.

As you can see, this program is seeking to convert the acres that have been irrigated the most - hence will result in the most groundwater conservation.  I won't apologize for this although water users who have seriously reduced their water use over the past 5 years will tend to not fare as well - especially if they have eliminated acres to do so. 

A common question is what will happen to the water rights?  Being in a designated HPA, the water rights will be protected from non-use issues for the entire time and will be completely usable after the 6th year.  However, our intent remains to permanently convert the irrigated acres enrolled.  We will be seeking other programs to make this happen.  Bottom line:  If you are keenly interested in a permanent retirement, don't ignore this program just because it's temporary. 

Others ask about overlapped water rights. Overlapped water rights must be all enrolled to ensure water conservation.  Also, enrolling part of a single water right will not be allowed.

We've received calls or visits from folks in every HPA as of just a few minutes ago, so there appears to be sufficient interest.  We hope it continues.

NOTE:  * corrections are updates to the program rules that have been made after the original date of this post.  Blog corrections made by WAB on 07/27/2010

A Log of Our AWEP Experience

Over the next year I'll try to capture my experiences with the AWEP award we received earlier this month from NRCS.  For those who do not know, AWEP stands for Agricultural Water Enhancement Program.  It is a fairly new initiative within NRCS that was created in the 2008 Farm Bill.  It is actually part of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which we'll discuss in a bit.  AWEP is a voluntary conservation initiative that provides financial and technical assistance to ag producers to implement ag water enhancement activities on land for the purposes of conserving surface and groundwater and improving water quality.

On July 2 it was announced that our proposal (from a partnership between GMD4, 4 county conservation districts, a county Farm Bureau group, and the Kansas Water Office) was awarded, and that in FY 2010 $2.666 million was being made available toward our plan - a 3-year, $9 million effort to permanently convert irrigated acres in our six high priority areas (HPAs) to non-irrigation uses - thus saving 100% of the groundwater irrigation use on these acres.

It must be noted here that we proposed to permanently convert acres with program payments between $1350 and $2250 per acre - depending on how much historic water had been used on them.  The acres with the most water used, would receive the highest payments.  Our proposed payment levels were based on just over 100 actual bid offerings from producers under a competitively bid water rights retirement program offered by Kansas last year. When awarded, we assumed that the entire program was approved.  This turned out NOT to be the case.

Remember that AWEP is implemented under the EQIP program - an on-going effort already with it's own rules.  Turns out that EQIP can only pay on the producer's lost income for adopting the conservation practice (converting irrigated acres to dry land production) and for only 5 years.  It was unlikely that any irrigator was going to give up irrigation forever for just 5, annual, lost income payments. Under these constraints, we requested that the award be changed to a 6-year irrigation set-aside for the same 5, annual, lost income payments.  NRCS approved. 

The temporary suspension of irrigation in our HPAs would help, but we were disappointed that permanent conversions would not be possible.  The fact is we were close to being disgusted that NRCS was good with paying $1100 an acre to not irrigate for 6 years, but not OK with paying $200 to $800 more an acre to conserve the water forever - all because of an EQIP rule.  To add insult to injury, NRCS also imposed an unbelievably short timeframe on this first year - setting an August 13, 2010 deadline for all producer applications. Recall, the program just got announced yesterday.

However, after more thought, we were wrong think that permanent conversions were out of reach and that AWEP was useless to us.  We now are embracing the AWEP award as a significant first step to this very goal - it'll just take another program or two to make it happen, and we have 5 years to craft whatever it is that we need.  And actually, since permanent conversions are off the table, the August 13 deadline is also not near as daunting.

In my next entry, I'll cover the details of our AWEP program and outline how we're expecting to work it with other programs to make these conservation efforts permanent.  As always, questions can be directed to me.

Some Essential Elements of Water Conservation

Where funds are limited to do a set amount of work, it seems that priority setting should be an elemental and valuable undertaking.  In the case of water conservation, examples of priority setting perhaps may be:  1) anywhere a federal, state or local regulation or policy or court order exists to conserve water, lessen use, slow depletion, or however else a mandated or policy goal may be worded, that area should be prioritized over all other areas where no such goal, order or policy roadmap exists; 2) any area that is completely closed to new appropriation or development of water should be prioritized over all other areas that have no such restriction on new water development;  3) any area that is proposing a permanent reduction of water use should be prioritized over any area contemplating temporary reductions (unless there is a resultant price reduction for the temporary reductions which yield a proportional or less cost); and 4) those efforts reducing real, actual water use should be prioritized over efforts reducing unused (paper) water rights or phantom water use.

Summing up, conservation program funds should go first to anyone proposing, as a court ordered mandate or a state or local order or policy decision, to permanently reduce real, actual water use in areas formally closed to new water development.  This is where the most conservation will occur.  It's mostly a matter of common sense.  If you're really interested in water conservation, what good does it do to reduce water use where anyone can subsequently develop new uses?  Why reduce phantom water use or water rights - whether you pay for the reduction or not? 

These points should be considered carefully as we all look to next year's offering of the Agricultural Water Enhancement Program (AWEP) by NRCS.  AWEP is part of the 2008 Farm Bill authorized to assist ag producers in implementing agricultural water activities on agricultural land for the purposes of conserving surface and groundwater.  One of its stated goals is to help producers meet state and local regulations or the interstate compact compliance mandates of the courts relative to water conservation.  A careful look at last year's program, which doled out $57 million dollars for such conservation efforts, doesn't seem to fit much of my common sense priorities.  I'm hoping the 2010 program will do better.

AWEP Misses the Conservation Mark

A week or so ago NRCS announced that the Agricultural Water Enhancement Program (AWEP) approved 63 conservation proposals in 21 states committing just over $57 million. AWEP is supposed to provide financial and technical assistance to farmers and ranchers to improve water conditions on their land to protect and preserve U.S. water resources - or so the press release states.

Many of the approved proposals are going to improve irrigation efficiency. We already know that this more often than not leads to slightly higher consumptive water use - even if total pumpage decreases. Some of the largest proposals are in states that do not control new development, so even if some conservation were to occur, what's to stop new development from offsetting what our tax dollars pay to conserve? Many of the approved proposals are not in any of the eight designated priority areas.

The good news seems to be that 3 or 4 of the approved proposals actually plan to return irrigated land to dry land production - a very good conservation effort. However, the press release does not tell us if these are permanent or temporary conversions, or, if the payments are based on actual used water or a combination of used water and "paper" water rights. These details need to be known to accurately assess the conservation we'll really get from these efforts.

Based on these realities, AWEP is almost assured of spending a lot of money for not as much long term conservation as we could have had. We're also aware of at least 3 proposals that did not get approved which were for permanent conversions of irrigated land to dryland, based on actual historical use, in administratively closed areas (no new water rights allowed) and within one of the designated high priority areas. Yet somehow these proposals did not compete well.

There should be a serious accounting called for on this program before next year's increased allotment of $76 million gets doled out.