WSPC01394

• File Number: 8460.500
• Description: Platte River Basin - Endangered Species Issues - South Platte Recovery Program
• State: CO
• Basin: South Platte
• Water Division: 1
• Date: 10/1/1996
• Title: South Platte Agreement - Irrigation Water Conservation - Opportunities and Limitations in Colorado - Report of the Agricultural Water Conservation Task Force
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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insensitive to soil water deficits, This form of information management is generally referred to as deficit
irrigation, and results in decreases in beneficial consumptive use, Various state and federal agencies have
devoted significant research effort in recent years to defining deficit irrigation practices that will allow
producers to either avoid or minimi7C economic and productivity losses, Substantial progress has been made
in devising successful strategies, especially with grain crops, in which the fraction of the plant harvested for
sale or direct end-use is only a fraction of biological yield,
Changes in cropping patterns also can result in decreases in beneficial consumptive water use, Examples
of specific changes include reducing acreages of irrigated crops, switching entirely to dryland crops, and
switching to crops with lower seasonal consumptive use,
Some conservation measures can be implemented at the system level to improve overall application
efficiency within a basin and, in some cases, decrease nonbeneficial consumptive use, For example, some
segments of conveyance canals maintained by irrigation companies in the Grand Valley have been lined to
reduce seepage losses and decrease nonbeneficial consumptive water use by weedy plant communities along
these canals. Further savings have been proposed for other delivel)' systems in the Grand Valley by the use
of structural alterations in canals that will result in increased application efficiencies,

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Incentives for adoDtine: water conservation measmes, Incentives for adopting water conservation practices
vmy regionally, In those areas pumping from deep ground waler aquifers, economic incentives for water
conservation exist because practices that result in increased application efficiency can frequently be justified
on the basis of decreased pumping costs, In addition, institutional incentives in the form of restrictions on the
rate of aquifer depletion encourage the adoption of irrigation water conservation practices,
In the alluvial watershed basins where water is obtained from surface diversions or shallow aquifers,
incentives for adopting practices that decrease consumptive use or result in saved water are somewhat limited
unless the water conserved can be used to extend supplies under the tenns of an existing water-right decree.
In some situations other direct economic benefits can be reaIized from the adoption of water conservation
measures, Examples include savings from reduced power costs associated with pumping and revenue derived
from marketing the conserved water on the rental or sales market Economic benefits are difficult to project
on general basis because the large number of variables involved requires that potential gains have to
evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
If the goal is to recover salvaged water for some other beneficial use, incentives for conservation are
generally assumed to be limited because of the amounts of water available from changes in practices or
potential institutional, statutory, and economic barriers to transfer of use, In the case of water conserved by

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