Estimating conservable water in the Kalmath irrigation project
Date
2004-10
Authors
Freeman, Beau, author
Burt, Charles, author
U.S. Committee on Irrigation and Drainage, publisher
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
In 2001, irrigation water was withheld from the majority of farms in the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Klamath Project to provide in-stream flows for fish species listed as "endangered" or "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The subsequent controversy and pleas for emergency action highlighted a wide gulf in the technical understanding of the actual hydrologic and hydraulic processes that occur in the Klamath Basin. A multi-year hydrologic assessment was performed to determine the precise destination, volume, and timing of surface and subsurface water flows throughout the Klamath Project. Confidence intervals were assigned to each water origin or destination component based on a systematic field examination of the physical processes used to measure or estimate various hydrologic values. The primary conclusion of the investigation was that significant amounts of irrigation water cannot be made available to the Klamath River by traditional water conservation activities. The irrigation community in the Klamath Project faces critical future challenges, which the existing internal processes and physical infrastructure are incapable of dealing with successfully. This will require significant irrigation modernization to improve the precise control and monitoring of flows at different levels of the system, especially on a real-time basis, and thus provide excellent water delivery service to individual irrigation districts and water users.
Description
Presented during the USCID water management conference held on October 13-16, 2004 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The theme of the conference was "Water rights and related water supply issues."