Meeting irrigation demands in a water-challenged environment

Presented at Meeting irrigation demands in a water-challenged environment: SCADA and technology: tools to improve production: a USCID water management conference held on September 28 - October 1, 2010 in Fort Collins, Colorado.The Prior Appropriation Doctrine formulated in early-day Colorado as a means of appropriating water used primarily by the mining industry became the framework of water law for most states of the western United States. Colorado has also been a frontrunner in establishing legal recognition of the hydraulic connection between surface streams and the tributary aquifers in within stream basins. Colorado's Water Right Determination and Administration Act of 1969 was passed to integrate administration of groundwater pumped from tributary aquifers with the administration of diversions from surface streams. The impact of the 1969 act on well users was magnified by a 2001 Colorado Supreme Court ruling, (Empire Lodge Homeowner's Association vs. Moyer), subsequent to which eastern Colorado water users that depend at least in part on groundwater wells have faced a dramatic increase in requirements for measuring and recording water flows. A case-study is presented documenting an effort spearheaded by the South Platte Ditch Company (SPDC) in northeastern Colorado with objectives of improving flow measurement capabilities and of simplifying data collection and data management tasks. After an initial season with two field sites, representing SPDC's first experience with electronic flow monitoring equipment, the district quickly recognized that integration of electronic technologies represented a steep learning curve, and saw evidence that significant mutual benefits could be realized if multiple small districts like themselves (along with individual irrigators) could jointly establish and utilize a wireless data collection network. A grant to fund a broader scale demonstration project was awarded to SPDC by the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) in late 2005. The key objective of the project is to enable water users to make water management decisions – including augmentation of stream flows to offset depletions due to past well pumping – based on real-time data. In the aftermath of the 2001 Empire Lodge ruling, well augmentation requirements are being quantified based on "worse-case" projections using data whose availability is typically lagged a month or more. Cooperating partners in the demonstration project include the South Platte Ditch Co.; shareholders of the Johnson and Edwards Ditch Co.; the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District; the Colorado Division of Water Resources; US Bureau of Reclamation; Control Design Inc. along with limited support of other water entities and equipment manufacturers