29a ‎(2)‎

• Board Meeting Date: 11/19/2008
• Description: CF Section - Referred Non-Reimbursable Investments - Alternative Agricultural Water Transfer Methods - Statewide Competitive grant Program
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

This legislation provided for the appropriation of $1,500,000 from the CWCB construction fund
for the Board to develop and implement a competitive grant program to advance various
agricultural transfer methods as alternatives to perman ent agricultural dry - up in the South Platte
and Arkansas river basins, including but not limited to, interruptible water supply agreements,
long - term agricultural land fallowing, water banks, reduced consumptive use through efficiency
or cropping while mai ntaining historic return flows, and purchase by end users with leaseback
under defined conditions. One major goal of the grant program was to effectively advance a
- the - jects
that will yield usable and transferable information which can be applied to other projects
throughout the State.

During the initial round of grant requests in May 2008 , the total amount requested ($2.3 million),
exceeded the appropriated amount of $ 1.5 million. Of these requests, the Board approved three
grant applications that totaled $1,000,000 and directing that $500,000 be reserved for
applications to be considered at the November 2008 meeting. Staff is aware of interest in this
program and let ters have been received from potential applicants stating their intent to apply for
grants in the future. Clearly, there is significant interest in this new area of water resource
management and additional funding of this important program will provide f or further
advancement of the tools and methods to avoid the traditional dry - up of agricultural irrigated
lands. The grant program established under SB 07 - 122 limited the projects to those located
within the Arkansas and South Platte River basins. While the SWSI reports a potential dry - up of
500,000 acres in these basins and that is where the most critical need is located, this application
proposes to open the projects Statewide. It is conceivable that conservation projects,
interruptible supply agreemen ts and/or fallowing programs could be implemented in other basins
for benefits in side and /or outside of the basin.

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