Water 2025: Looking Ahead for the Arid West

The 32 mile-long Truckee canal connects the Truckee and Carson river systems and supports important agricultural areas. The canal was completed in 1905 as part of the Newlands Reclamation Project.

"I tell you, gentlemen," warned western explorer John Wesley Powell in an 1893 address to the International Irrigation Congress, "you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation... for there is not sufficient water to supply the land."

More than 100 years later, Powell's words seem prophetic, as fast-paced growth in the western United States threatens to overwhelm limited resources, and city residents, farmers, fishermen, Native Americans, recreationists and the environment itself all vie for the same finite supply of precious water.

Avoiding and mitigating water-driven clashes, and developing strategies to deal with the arid West's imminent, and in many cases current, water crises, is the goal of a new initiative of the U.S. Department of the Interior known as Water 2025. And with a long track record of examining and finding solutions to just such crises in Nevada, DRI has been recruited to help develop a more forward-looking approach to water issues in the region.

"This really came about for us because Senator Harry Reid saw an opportunity for DRI to work with the Bureau of Reclamation on Water 2025," explains Dr. John Tracy, Executive Director of DRI's Center for Watersheds and Environmental Sustainability, "and because of his faith in DRI. We've done good work in the past addressing water conflicts on the Walker River and the Truckee, and conflict resolution is the whole purpose of this initiative."

Sen. Reid, D-Nev., sees conservation as essential for the state. "We need to make sure we're using our water supply as efficiently as possible so we can continue to meet the demands of Nevada's growing population and its growing economy," Reid says. "We need to focus both on specific ways to conserve more water right now, and on long-term, innovative ideas for the future. That's why I'm glad to help get funding for the Desert Research Institute. They're doing groundbreaking work on these issues, and their efforts will help us weather the drought."

One way to stretch the current water supply is to prevent consumptive losses: water wasted or lost during transport or use. "For instance," Project Manager Alan McKay explains, "the bureau manages a lot of unlined irrigation canals dug in natural earth and so they leak, or lose water to the ground. As there is more and more competition for this limited resource, they'd like to increase the efficiency of those canals that transport water."

The Truckee's upper basin runs through California. Here it wends its way through some beautiful Sierra scenery. (Photo by Laurel Saito)

To this end, the bureau has several pilot projects in the western United States to test the effectiveness of the chemical Polyacrylamide, or PAM, in sealing canals and preventing seepage. "Polyacrylamide has traditionally been used in agriculture to enhance infiltration in soils and reduce runoff and erosion," McKay explains. "But it turns out that if you cross a certain concentration threshold, PAM will have the exact opposite effect, sealing the soil so there is no infiltration."

Working with bureau offices in Idaho, Oregon and other locations outside Nevada, DRI will help set up better sampling protocols at those experimental sites to address hydrologic measurement and water quality issues. "When you put something in the system," McKay says, "it's important to find out how it acts, where it goes, how persistent it is in the environment."

In the southwest, DRI will be working on the Colorado River with bureau researchers in Boulder City, Nev.

In northern Nevada, work will focus on the Truckee and Carson rivers—two little waterways with the big job of sustaining growing communities, flourishing agriculture districts and important fisheries. Researchers will look at irrigation techniques along the 32-mile-long Truckee canal, which diverts water to the Carson River, and supports development and agriculture in the Lahontan Valley .

Under scrutiny will be the system of "check dams" along the canal, used to control flow and aid in withdrawing water. "We'll be trying to understand the relationship between particular check dams," McKay explains, "to improve the efficiency of their operation."

Mature cottonwoods hug the banks in the Truckee River's lower basin. This unassuming waterway must support the ever-growing needs of northern Nevada communities, fisheries, agriculture, recreation and wildlife habitats. (Photo by Mary Patterson)

But beyond the important step of lessening waste, Water 2025 also aims to reduce the inherent uncertainty of predicting the availability of water resources—from year to year, and in the long-term. Of particular interest to the bureau is gaining a better understanding and an improved predictive capability for the Carson River. The Carson River feeds the Lahontan reservoir, with augmentation from Truckee River water that reaches it via the Truckee canal.

Tracy explains that the reclamation bureau has to decide "way in advance" how much water to divert from the Truckee to maintain desired levels at Lahontan. "We want to give them a better tool, an effective computer model, for predicting what flows will be and to help with that decision."

And key to good water decisions, Tracy says, is a better understanding of the water system as a whole—both above and below the surface.

"Years ago, people didn't view surface and groundwater as a single connected resource. In a lot of situations they are." Flood irrigation, for instance, may seem to use excessive water, but that water also recharges aquifers and drains to streams. To make good long-term decisions and avoid future conflicts, he says, it's crucial to understand this kind of interconnectedness.

"Canal seepage recharges the town of Fernley's aquifer, so while reducing seepage may always seem like a good idea at first, this is a situation where you would want to avoid it to protect the water supply," Tracy says.

And as the West continues to boom, planners will be called upon more and more often to predict the future, deciding the best ways to sustain a happy population and a healthy economy.

"Urban growth, open space preservation, agriculture—all of these will impact the water dynamic differently," Tracy says. "We can develop the analysis tools that will allow agencies to set up better water management strategies, even let them test virtual strategies to avoid potential problems and conflicts."

—Jackie Allen

That's because westerners have better things to do than fight over water.