FY 2012 WTAP Signup Open Now

Konza Prairie

The Kansas Water Transition and Assistance Program (WTAP) has just opened another year by announcing the FY 2012 signup period of October 1 - November 15, 2011.  This program is for persons in specified areas of the state (including the six, GMD 4 high priority areas) who are looking into retiring their water rights for a payment.

This program is based on past usage, so one's historical reported water use is important in determining the eligible acres that can receive payments under the program.  The historical reported water use is the reported AF of water diverted under the water right during the years 2005-2010 (inclusive) - eliminating the high and low year and averaging the remaining 4 years.  These are the AF that will have a retirement bid placed on them - not exceeding $2000.00 per AF.  The applicants are ranked by bid price and acccepted as long as the funding holds out.  This year, the program has about $820,000.00 available.

WTAP can be used even with an EQIP or AWEP contract from NRCS.  In fact, either of these two federal programs should allow a person to reduce his or her bid for WTAP and thus compete better for the limited WTAP funds.  If you are in a GMD 4 HPA, or Prairie Dog Creek, or Rattlesnake Creek and are interested in this program, contact the Division of Conservation in Topeka, or your appropriate GMD office to work up the numbers - you may want to take a look at them in order to finally decide.  There is actually much more to this program, but all the details can't be covered in this short post.

BTW, WTAP is a pilot program and if not retained by the 2012 Legislature, it will sunset after this final year.  The best way to keep it active is to use it.  Questions?  Let me know.

2012 Farm Bill Field Hearing - Wichita, KS

Kudos for Senators Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) for conducting their second 2012 Farm Bill field hearing in Wichita, KS last week.  I can't stress how much help a well designed farm bill could be for water conservation efforts in water stressed areas.

Historically the farm bill has been blamed for promoting fencerow-to-fencerow corn production due to it's design and implementation, which of course, does little for curbing water use in irrigated ag areas.  So, we were thinking that a farm bill that would promote less water intensive cropping choices - especially in water stressed or enhanced management areas - could conserve water at no additional program cost.  This is apparently a very difficult thing to do, but we asked again, anyway. 

We also asked for a crop insurance program that would insure limited irrigation operations.  This would actually reduce liability and be less expensive than the current program.  It'd allow irrigators to implement a water conserving, limited irrigation plan on land that had been fully irrigated, but also receive a critical level of crop insurance discounted proportionately with the expected yield goals of their limited irrigation plan.  This could save a lot of water as well, so we asked for it.

We also asked that NRCS EQIP and AWEP programs support partial water use set asides - allowing producers to enroll the least efficient portions of their irrigation operations rather than the entire irrigated acreages.  The water conservation would be the same, at reduced program costs, while returning a higher economic return for the producer. 

These are just three ways that the current fam bill could reduce program costs while resulting in water conservation.  We'd hope they'd only be offered in closed areas (where no new appropriations are being approved) and where the post program water use could be monitored enough to insure a true water savings.  We'll see.

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!

The Other Aspects of Conservation

Water conservation is pretty well supported and many people are working to make better use of water where supplies are limited.  Government programs are pouring millions of dollars into water use efficiency improvements - including the irrigated ag sectors.  It comes as little surprise to me that my efforts have been coming up seriously short to convince programs that irrigation efficiency improvements don't really conserve water very much at all - as this position is counter-intuitive at best.  Maybe I'm simply not articulate enough.

However, the fact that these efforts have been going on in areas that have not yet prevented new water resources development remains astounding to me.  What good does it do in an area of limited supply to conserve water and then allow more to be developed for new uses?  Nothing is gained except the added social and economic stress that is going to make real conservation just that much more difficult a few years down the road.

In my mind, the Kansas Water Transition and Assistance Program (WTAP) had the perfect design.  It paid a direct incentive per acre-foot of consumptive water use to permanently retire the water right and convert the irrigated acres to dry land production.  It was only available in areas where no new water rights were available and was based on actual historic water use.  No paper water rights were involved.

The next program in any limited supply area that professes to be conserving water should be asked a few hard questions.  Ask if real or paper water is involved.  Ask if new water is available that will compromise any conservation gains.  Ask if pumped water or actual consumptive water use is being conserved.  Only when all three of these conditions are met is there any real water savings.