Water conservation is more important now than ever before. In 2015, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that, on average, every American uses 82 gallons of water daily in their homes, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) places the number at 300 gallons per family daily.
However, the agricultural industry represents one of the biggest draws on the nation’s water resources. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 70% of freshwater drawn from the ground is used for agriculture. Plus, the World Bank expects that to provide food for 10 billion people by mid-century, agricultural production will need to increase by 50%, and water withdrawals will need to increase by 15%.
Climate change is escalating the issue. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, since 1980, draught-inflicted crop failures and economic losses have totaled more than $360 billion. In the western U.S., this poses a significant challenge.
Data from the U.S. Drought Monitor indicated that in the summer of 2021, the region experienced the worst drought since 2000.
Since then, conditions have not been as drastic; however, the threat has not been completely averted. Two of the country’s biggest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are still in danger of reaching “dead pool status,” with water levels unable to power hydroelectric dams if more is not done.
“The conditions in the American West, which we’re seeing around the Colorado River basin, have been so dry for more than 20 years that we’re no longer speaking of a drought,” Lis Mullin Bernhardt, an ecosystems expert at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), explained in a UN Environment Programme article. “We refer to it as ‘aridification’ — a new, very dry normal.”
Photo Courtesy U.S. National Park Service
Accordingly, the federal government has been hard at work trying to improve water conservation. In 2021, the White House created an Interagency Drought Relief Working Group. Co-chaired by the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, the working group provides funding and technical expertise to irrigators, including Tribes, farmers, landowners, and rural communities impacted by droughts. It is also working to build long-term local and regional climate resiliency.
A similar resiliency mission is baked into 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which allocates approximately $4.6 billion for projects intended to alleviate the results of drought.
Some of this funding goes toward launching domestic water supply projects for disadvantaged communities and enhancing the sustainability of the Colorado River System.
Photo Courtesy National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) took things to the next level by launching the Western Water and Working Lands Framework for Conservation Action (Western Water Framework). The framework lists six water-related conservation challenges facing the western part of the country and 13 strategies that provide feasible responses across 17 states:
- To meet the need to predict water supplies, NRCS will improve forecasting technologies and expand the sites used to survey snowpack.
- To ensure the continuation of agricultural productivity, it will update the infrastructure used for storing and delivering water and introduce techniques to reuse treated wastewater.
- To maintain groundwater availability, NRCS will reduce withdrawal rates to prolong the lives of aquifers and launch aquifer recharge projects.
- To maintain surface water availability, it will build systems to prevent sediment from compromising water quality and work to protect streams and wetlands.
- To preserve and restore forestlands and rangelands, NRCS will advance grazing and forest management techniques.
- To address the impacts of natural disasters, the service will mend past damage and add long-term support for future resilience.
Photo Courtesy U.S. Department of Agriculture
Some of NRCS’s primary conservation programs fall under the Western Water Framework. Through the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), NRCS works with producers to create conservation plans that will enhance their operations, clean up the air and water, improve the health of the soil, and preserve wildlife habitats. For example, through CSP, it enters five-year contracts with farmers and landowners that pay them annually for adopting and maintaining conservation practices.
Meanwhile, EQIP provides financial assistance for activities like transitioning to organic farming and adopting energy-efficient practices. Through Conservation Innovation Grants, NRCS also backs innovative approaches for handling resource conservation challenges.
Additionally, the WaterSMART Initiative (WSI) represents a partnership with the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Reclamation that has existed since 2011. It enables the agencies to direct investments into western priority projects that enable EQIP participants to conserve water, build drought resilience, and improve land productivity.
In 2024, NRCS funded 36 existing WSI priority funding areas and nine new ones, amounting to $29.7 million spanning 16 states.
Finally, through the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), NRCS enters into conservation easements with landowners and land trusts. For example, Agricultural Land Easements prevent grassland from being used for non-agricultural purposes, which could harm it. Wetland Reserve Easements help restore land that has become degraded from its agricultural history, contributing to habitats for migratory birds and other wildlife. The IRA has allocated $1.4 billion in funding for ACEP.
A recent USDA press release indicates that last year, in total, NRCS invested $2.3 billion through the Western Water Framework. Of that funding, $213.3 million was intended to help the western states manage their water and mitigate the effects of climate change and came from the IRA.
Photo Courtesy Synergia Ranch
Most recently, USDA announced a $400 million investment to help farmers and producers in at least 18 irrigation districts adopt agricultural techniques and technologies and to grow commodities that save water. Irrigation districts, essentially, are statutorily created subdivisions of state governments that act as water management agencies. They maintain watery delivery facilities and distribute water to irrigate the lands within their geographic regions.
They range in size, with California’s Imperial Irrigation District, for instance, supplying water to 500,000 acres of farmland and electricity to more than 150,000 customers.
USDA used data from the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates dams and hydroelectric power plants in the western states, and analyzed factors related to commodity production and water management to preliminarily pick the best districts to meet the program objectives. USDA’s Economic Research Service’s data and analysis backed those district selections in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
Each preliminarily selected irrigation district could receive $15 million, which they will use to create sub-agreements with local producers that will enroll and work directly with them. Those producers will be paid to voluntarily cut their water use rates while simultaneously guaranteeing that they will continue producing commodities in the areas impacted by that reduction.
The final agreements the USDA hashed out will specify the budgets allocated, commodities to be grown, and water-saving strategies employed in each district. Each producer will have different needs, informing the practices adopted, such as improving irrigation systems or changing cropping systems. In turn, USDA will be able to learn from those different strategies and even develop new ones that could make a future impact.
Overall, USDA predicts that this funding will save approximately 50,000 acre-feet in water use, spanning 250,000 acres of irrigated agricultural land.
“Agricultural producers are the backbone of rural communities across the West, and many of them are struggling under prolonged drought conditions,” Tom Vilsack, U.S. secretary of agriculture, said in the press release. “USDA is taking an ‘all hands’ approach to help address this challenge, including these new partnerships with irrigation districts to support producers.”
Photo Courtesy East Columbia Basin Irrigation District
USDA has also allocated $40 million in additional awards for Tribes via a set-aside within this program. The department will work with the Tribes, Tribal producers, and DOI’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) toward the same goal as the larger program: reduced water consumption with continued agricultural production of water-saving commodities. Playing a similar role to the Bureau of Reclamation and the Economic Research Service, BIA will provide useful data on the Tribes and work with them to develop the selection criteria, which will need to be attuned to their territories’ specific water management systems and other needs.
Additionally, because many irrigators in the Southwest use the acequia model rather than the irrigation district model, the USDA will also provide support for the acequias’ water-saving commodity production.
Acequias are community-based irrigation canals that also serve as one of the first forms of local government and require interregional cooperation.
Acequias trace their roots back to the Moors, who brought the technique with them when they arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century. Although Indigenous people had long been irrigating in North America, the social organization aspect of the acequia was carried to the continent with the Spanish conquistadors. According to New Mexico’s Acequia Commission, the state contains approximately 700 functioning acequias, some of which have existed for 300 years.
By supporting multiple local irrigation and water management governance systems, the federal government heightens its chances of meeting its goals to address the Western water crisis.
Photo Courtesy The Acequia Institute
