Utah is launching a plan to pay farmers to leave some of their irrigation water in the Colorado River system.
The Colorado River Authority of Utah board has approved the first round of applicants for the state’s new Demand Management Pilot Program. It includes more than a dozen projects along Colorado River tributaries in eastern and southeastern Utah.
The program will use up to $4.2 million of state money to compensate farmers who temporarily forgo using some of their water in 2025 and 2026. The practice of leaving a field unplanted and unwatered is known as fallowing. This allows water that would have normally been sprayed on crops to flow downstream instead. Utah leaders hope quantifying the water those projects save will help the state avoid mandatory cutbacks as it looks toward a renegotiated Colorado River agreement in 2026.
The benefit for farmers, Authority engineer Lily Bosworth said, is they retain their water rights and they will be paid the agreed price even if an especially dry year results in less actual water than expected.
“We are accepting that risk, essentially, for the participants,” she said. “So, we will compensate the participants for taking the actions that they committed to, and we'll get the water that we get for that year.”
The potential upside for Utah could make it worth the risk, though.
The Authority estimates the approved projects will save more than 22,000 acre-feet of water for the river by the end of next year. One acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of ground a foot deep in water, and roughly enough to supply two households for a year.
The pilot project is the first in the river’s Upper Basin to incentivize and track water conservation in this way. That means one big outcome will be testing how tracking saved water works in practice, Bosworth said. For example, she hopes it will help the state find out how much water is lost to evaporationand other factors as it travels across the southern Utah desert to Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir.
“There are some gain and loss studies in the Colorado River Basin in Utah, but this is something that we have to collect data to really understand.”
Her team is working with the U.S. Geological Survey to place temporary stream gauges along the route of the river to better understand how to ensure that water makes it to its destination.
The projects were already required to submit paperwork with the Utah Division of Water Rights to flag a portion of their water rights as conservation, a necessary step to document the saved water as it moves downstream and for Utah to get credit for that conservation. But that process can take months.
The delay means at least some of the water saved in 2025 won’t be tracked in the same way it will be in 2026, Bosworth said, “but we hope to measure as best we can and learn how to use measurement during this first year of the pilot program.”
If any projects don’t have that paperwork — called a change application — finalized by next year, then their participation will be terminated going forward.
Still, the fact that all the paperwork and measurement devices aren’t finalized yet concerned board member Zach Renstrom, who manages the Washington County Water Conservancy District.
“I have a fundamental belief that before we paid out the money, the change applications should have been completed,” he said. “Because right now, if they don't use the water, then it just goes to the next water right holder.”
The lone no vote at the March 13 meeting, Renstrom said he understands the logic of those who voted to move forward with the program before everything is in place since it’s a pilot. With a price tag in the millions, however, he would have liked to see the launch delayed until the program could track the saved water as it intended.
“Some people are interpreting this as I'm against the program. I'm not. I just thought it was a little bit premature.”
The plan the board approved leaves more than $700,000 in the program’s budget, which allows Utah to potentially add new applicants in 2026 that aren’t part of the pilot this year.
