8001

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 8001
• Author: Western Regional Instream Flow Conference.
• Title: Proceedings, Western Regional Instream Flow Conference.
• USFW Year: 1992.
• USFW - Doc Type: Oct. 2-3, 1992.
• Copyright Material: NO

2-By Bruce Hoagland, Director, Colorado Trout Unlimited,
Denver, Colorado:
I'd like to follow in this same vein that we're talking about. In
Colorado in the last two years, we've had legislation introduced
to attempt to reshape water law, especially the part about "use it
or lose it" to change it to "save it and sell it." And this is to
address to the agricultural community the evaporative losses and
more efficient means of transportation. The "save it and sell it"
idea would then give the incentive to the rancher to go out and
line ditches, put things in pipes, conduits, and so forth water
conservancy districts as well. I wish I could say it's been a
success. We're still working on it. We will reintroduce it again in
this session. The first year we got shot down on the first
committee in the House. The second, last year, we were much
more successful. The bill got through the legislative House, and
got killed in the Senate committee this time, but only by two
votes. I would enlist any help that you have, because we think
that this is a formidable piece of legislation a little different
approach where the "save it and sell it" idea would provide the
incentive for people to do this. Money talks, as we all know with
water. Thank you.
A-(Dennis Underwood) Let me just make a comment. 1
believe there is real opportunities to potentially be doing
improvements or potentially conserving water and make it
of use for other people. There is some concern that 1 have
as opposed to people talking about water as a free com-
modity, because basically it is not a free commodity.
Basically you don't have absolute ownership, you have a
right to use. The other part that concerns me is that you get
into the golden rule: Those who have the gold, rule. And if
you're really looking at resources management meaning
that if you're going to be making greater instream flow
values or other uses of water, you can't have it flowing to
who has the most gold, because that's not necessarily sound
resource management. So there has to be a balance when
you're looking at the potentials for marketing waters, or as I
more commonly referred to as transfers of waters.
2-Barry Saunders, Utah Division of Water Resources, Salt
Lake City, Utah:
I couldn't resist it when you brought up lining canals and we
want agricultural people to be more efficient. One of the real
problems is if you line canals and eliminate tail water, EPA and
the Corps of Engineers say you're drying up wetlands. How do
you address this problem?
A-(Ed Osann) I think as John mentioned, the most
desirable approach is for in the case if we're talking about
agriculture for districts to consider a wide range of mea-
sures and to employer implement those that are most cost-
effective on their own system taking into account both
economic and environmental costs. It may well be that the
cost of sustaining a wetland that is sustained by canal
leakage through direct application may well be substantially
less than the total leakage that's being experienced. But
those are things that need to be examined on a site specific
basis, and it's really almost impossible to generalize about
them. But when we're talking about transfers and third
party partnerships and so on, I think we ought not lose
sight of the fact that while it takes money to save water, I
don't think we ought to necessarily assume that it's always
going to be beyond the irrigators' capability or interest in
doing so for his or her own benefit. There are variety of
methods can be employed that will maintain or improve
yields. Also, we need to look at potential distinctions
between the individual irrigator's interests and the irrigation
district's interest. Pricing structures, for instance, are
frequently in place for the convenience of the management
of the district. And, so, we have high fixed charges and low
commodity charges because that's the easiest to administer,
and it's most reliable from one year to the next. The effect
of that is though there may be very little reward for indi-
vidual irrigators who invest in efficiency improvements in
terms of their water costs, and the districts can assume a
little more responsibility to develop the kind of pricing
signals that would be able to reward farmers more directly
for improvements on their own efficiency. And that's well
within their own capability.
2-By Chuck Coiner, Twin Falls Canal Co., Twin Falls, Idaho:
It disturbs me a little I keep hearing saving water, wasting
water. In the Snake River Plain where we divert six acre feet,
deliver four acre feet, two acre feet is lost probably to percolation
which then eventually goes into recharging the aquifer and then
comes out back into the river in the form of springs. When you
talk about water conservation and lining canals and saving this,
you're not saving anything. I mean that water is not lost. That
water may be going to somebody else's right down below in the
form of a pumping right or a fish farmer in the form of a spring
that he uses to propagate fish with. So, in a lot of these practices
of conserving water, you're not conserving water, you're just
changing its use, and its time of application and when it does get
back to the river. You're actually hurting one or two other water
users in another sense. So, I think we have to be very careful in
going into some of these plans to conserve water and look at
some of the ramifications of it further down the stream. Thank
you.
A-(Ed Osann) I'd like to respond to that by saying I agree
with you that we need to be very careful about that. But I've
heard that argument used, but not for being careful, but for
doing nothing, and I think that as a general matter we
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