RED DEER – Water could become a bigger cash crop for farmer-run irrigation districts than the crops they grow on their land.
Len Ring of Alberta Agriculture’s irrigation division says the demand for fresh water and storm drainage is growing, particularly in the Western Irrigation District that butts up against the more than one million people who live in Calgary and surrounding communities.
Those services come with a price that urban communities are willing to pay, he added.
Because no new allocation licences are allowed from southern Alberta rivers, the region’s 13 irrigation districts stress conservation to reduce waste, which frees up more water for others.
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“You don’t have to save very much irrigation water to be able to supply a whole bunch of other users because they don’t consume a lot of water,” he told the Alberta Association of Agriculture Economists annual meeting in Red Deer May 2.
He said the difficulty is moving water to where it is needed and persuading the province to agree to a transfer.
Some districts have successfully set aside water within the provisions of their licences under the province’s irrigation act:
- The St. Mary’s irrigation district set aside 12,000 acre feet or two percent of its allocation. An acre foot is enough water to cover an acre with a foot of water.
- The Raymond district can transfer 4,500 acre feet, or 5.6 percent of its allocation.
- The Eastern irrigation district is waiting for approval to transfer 2.6 percent, or 20,000 acre feet.
For example, Albertans might want to look to California, which has already faced many of the same challenges, said water and environment professor David Ziberman of the University of California at Berkeley.
California supplies 32 to 35 million acre feet a year to 36 million people. About two-thirds comes from surface water and the rest from ground water.
After a major drought ended in 1992, more than 50 percent of the state’s tree crops switched to drip irrigation, and agriculture’s adoption of low pressure sprinklers increased by 40 percent for crops such as alfalfa and cotton.
The ability to trade water saved many in that drought. The price of water in California varies from $5 to more than $700 per acre foot.
“If you pay less than $80 per acre foot, it is like you are getting it for free” Ziberman said.
But the state still faces a major obstacle in moving water to where it is needed.
Even though California implemented a water bank to share the resource, some areas lack distribution infrastructure. In the water bank, the state buys portions of unused water allocations from farmers, stores it and sells it to those who need it.
California is also exploring ways to improve water delivery systems. Increasing taxes to do so has proven controversial.
