C150069 Benefits & Potential Roles Report

• Contract/PO #: C150069
• Contractor Name: Colorado State University
• Contract Type: MOU
• Water District: 0
• Loan Projects - Doc Type: Report

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directly in any meaningful way. By comparison, in Utah, the state has aggressively financed
pressurization of irrigation systems for agricultural production and landscape use as a "development
package." Loans are provided by the state to ensure that not only are new water needs met, but that the
development is clearly designed to conserve more water in agricultural applications as well. Mutual
irrigation companies are converting, on an as-needed basis, part of their traditional irrigation systems to
serve residential development, in addition to crop irrigation. In the process, conserved water from the
pressurization of agricultural water deliveries has improved water availability under drought conditions.

An example is Washington County, Utah, where the local conservancy district is providing
assistance to rural farming communities to pressurize their water deliveries to municipal and agricultural
users at the same time. Thus, municipalities are working together with farmers to ensure that the needs of
both are being met in the transition from older open ditch systems to pressurized piped underground water
systems. Substantial water is conserved in the process, protecting both the municipal and agricultural
water users from drought. Although preference is given to municipal uses during drought, the
pressurization of agricultural water deliveries greatly increases the likelihood that water will continue to
be available for crops in such years. In addition, farmers have a better chance to have water to irrigate
later in the season than if they were still using the traditional open ditch systems (Figures 25-26).4

Elsewhere, in Idaho, mutual ditch companies and irrigation districts are realizing added revenue
from secondary water supply to operate and improve their entire irrigation systems. In the process, there
has been improved cooperation between irrigation companies and municipalities in managing drought,
and also in cooperating with each other on a day-to-day basis. Special ordinances and policies have been
developed to ensure that agricultural water suppliers are indemnified from possible liabilities associated
with operating facilities in urban corridors. Improved agricultural water deliveries have been secured in
the process.5

Colorado's "Missing Link" in Water Policy?

Meanwhile, in Colorado, although state resources have generally been available to agricultural
water suppliers to install pressurized piped systems, these resources have often not been tapped to their
full extent. Ditch companies are not realizing the potential benefits of pressurization, infrastructure
improvements, and overall system modernization. They are the "missing link" in the development of
secondary water supply systems in the state. It is believed that this condition exists primarily because
there has not been adequate publicizing of the potential role of agricultural water suppliers in this type of
service, and perhaps a lack of awareness or lack of oversight on the potential limitations of other
strategies currently in vogue. Most of all, there appears to be a lack of awareness of how these systems
can strengthen the position of irrigated agriculture in the state and prolong the ability of agricultural water
suppliers to provide water service to farms. Development of secondary supply is occurring in Colorado at
the present time but mostly through local conditions, happenstance and some residential real estate market
factors.

The current players in the development of pressurized secondary systems in Colorado are
municipalities and "stand-alone" housing subdivision development systems, although municipalities and
rural domestic water suppliers are somewhat reluctant to provide this kind of water service.6 Meanwhile,
many of the systems currently being installed in Colorado, particularly in the rapidly growing areas such
as the Colorado Front Range, are thought to have questionable durability in the long run without a proven
water purveyor to manage them. The current study has found that mutual ditch companies and irrigation
districts have much to gain by being the "management umbrella" for pressurized non-potable supply in
the state. Most certainly, local water users, both agricultural and residential-commercial, have much to
gain by the entry of canal companies and irrigation districts into pressurized secondary water service,

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