Spearheading Regional Water Management Improvements

By Kris Polly

In our cover story this month, we interview Sara Fox, a senior water planner at the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission’s Water Planning Bureau. The commission has been intimately involved in the state’s recent renovation of its regional water security planning, mandated by the 2023 Water Security Planning Act. Ms. Fox walks us through the many stages of public consultation, planning, and implementation that are involved in this important process.

Then, we speak with Brad Wind, a longtime veteran of Colorado water utility Northern Water who today serves as its general manager. Northern Water operates the majority of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado–Big Thompson project, which brings an average of 215,000 acre-feet of water per year from the western side of the Continental Divide to its service area in north-central Colorado. To continue serving this growing region, Northern Water is working on two vast system improvement projects, the Windy Gap Firming Project and the Northern Integrated Supply Project, both of which involve significant water storage.

Next, we speak to the team from the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency on California’s Central Coast. Founded to control and alleviate groundwater overdraft and saltwater intrusion, the agency is working to bring its management activities to the next level of sophistication with the comprehensive deployment of McCrometer flow meters and the thorough use of the digital data they generate.

Another digitalization process has gone on at central Washington’s South Columbia Basin Irrigation District, which has adopted Assura Software’s solutions to create modules for purchase orders, management tasks, board meetings, damage claims, and permits. Terrie Larson, the district’s executive assistant, and Hamish Howard, the CEO and managing director of Assura, explain how the software works and how it has improved operations at the district.

Goanna Ag provides crop management technologies that integrate a variety of inputs, including canopy temperature, soil moisture, weather, and satellite imagery, to provide actionable recommendations about when to irrigate—and when not to. Derek Brazda, Goanna Ag’s vice president of U.S. sales and operations, tells us more about the technology and the water savings it can deliver.

We speak with Paul Conti, an aquatics specialist at Alligare, about Aqualine 6.3, a versatile new addition to the aquatic chemical company’s lineup of products. Aqualine can provide either broadspectrum control or selective species management and integrates well with mechanical and biological plant control methods.

Finally, we speak with Elvy Barton, the senior manager of water and forest sustainability at the Salt River Project (SRP), about the utility’s major efforts to protect watersheds from the effects of wildfire through forest thinning projects, some of them supported by major companies as part of their water stewardship commitments. While these efforts help irrigators by protecting water supply at its origin, SRP’s community-based irrigation efficiency projects improve water use on the demand side, too.

Sometimes, system improvement means building enormous pipelines and reservoirs capable of moving and storing thousands of acre-feet of water. Other times, it means installing many small meters and monitors that add up to systemwide digitalization. And sometimes it means adopting technological solutions that will save a minute here and a minute there—adding up to many hundreds of hours across an organization. In all these ways, irrigation districts are improving their infrastructure and operations and equipping themselves to face tomorrow’s challenges.

Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Irrigation Leader magazine and the president of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.