Irrigation Leader June 2016

Volume 7 Issue 6

June 2016

The Australia Issue

A Very Special Thank You

By Kris Polly

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n early January, I phoned Mr. Damien Pearson, general manager, North America, for Rubicon Water, and said, “What do you think about our Irrigation Leader magazine working with Rubicon to co-sponsor a trip to Australia for irrigation district managers?” Damien’s response was a very Australian “no worries,” and “no worries” it truly was. Once the dates for the trip of February 20–26 were decided, and two door prizes for the trip awarded during our Irrigation Leader Workshop held in Phoenix on January 28, the American involvement in planning and logistics was greatly reduced. All credit for such a wonderfully successful and educational tour is due to Rubicon Water and its excellent people. From the time we Americans stepped foot in Australia, Rubicon was there. Mr. Tony Oakes and his very accomplished wife, Kay, met us at the airport, helped track down our participants, and gathered up our luggage.

They drove us to our hotel and helped us check in. Such down-to-earth, friendly, funny, and disarming people, it was a bit of a surprise to members of our group a day or so later when they realized Mr. Oakes is actually one of the founding members and very top people of Rubicon.

By then, everyone was on such familiar and friendly terms with Tony that it was too late for proper respect. Tony spent nearly five days driving and touring our group from our beginning point of Melbourne, to Shepparton, to all the irrigation districts, and to our final destination of Griffith, where we boarded a flight for Sydney. What we saw and learned during those days underscored my personal belief in the ability of individuals to face seemingly insurmountable

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challenges and create solutions. When Australia experienced its epic drought, Tony and his colleagues put their heads together, formed Rubicon, and created technology that leads the global industry of surface irrigation water management. Over 20,000 canal gates later, Rubicon continues to innovate new products and software and lead the industry.

What is the secret of its success? It is the “can-do, anythingis-possible, no-worries” attitude that is so pervasive in the culture of the company.

The hospitality and graciousness of our Australian hosts cannot be overstated. A very special thank you is due to all the tremendous Rubicon Water people for being such great ambassadors of their company and country. Thank you for your time, effort, and expense in showing us the solutions you have developed and for reminding us Americans that anything is possible.

To our readers, we hope you enjoy reading this issue of Irrigation Leader magazine and learning about Australia.

We intend for the magazine to help organize and sponsor an international trip each year. Our next destination will be New Zealand in February 2017. All who wish to participate are welcome. Please look for additional details in this and upcoming issues of Irrigation Leader.

Kris Polly is editor-in-chief of Irrigation Leader magazine and president of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies.

He may be contacted at Kris.Polly@waterstrategies.com.

Irrigation Leader

JUNE 2016

C O N T E N T S 2 Column

VOLUME 7

ISSUE 6

Irrigation Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by Water Strategies LLC 4 E Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief John Crotty, Senior Writer Robin Pursley, Graphic Designer Capital Copyediting LLC, Copyeditor SUBMISSIONS: Irrigation Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact John Crotty at (202) 698-0690 or john.crotty@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISING: Irrigation Leader accepts one-quarter, half-page, and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or Irrigation.Leader@waterstrategies.com.

CIRCULATION: Irrigation Leader is distributed to irrigation district managers and boards of directors in the 17 western states, Bureau of Reclamation officials, members of Congress and committee staff, and advertising sponsors.

For address corrections or additions, please contact our office at Irrigation.Leader@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2016 Water Strategies LLC. Irrigation Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Irrigation Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Irrigation Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Irrigation Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

COVER PHOTOS: Photo by Michael Kai of Rubicon Water.

Inline regulating structure on Goulburn–Murray Water canal near Shepparton, Victoria. Inset photo of Australia tour participants (left to right) Kris Polly, LaRae Lind, Harold Mohlman (front), John Lind, Kathy Mohlman, Craig Simpson, Boe Clausen, Kevin Johansen, Maury Balcom, Mark Zirschky, and Brad Edgerton.

Irrigation Leader

By Kris Polly

4 Irrigation Leader Australia Tour Observations by:

Maury Balcom, Board Member,

South Columbia Basin Irrigation District Boe Clausen, President,

East Columbia Basin Irrigation District Brad Edgerton, General Manager,

Frenchman–Cambridge Irrigation District Kevin Johansen, Engineer,

Provost & Pritchard Consulting Group John Lind, General Manager,

Burley Irrigation District Harold Mohlman, President,

A&B Irrigation District and Kathy Mohlman Craig Simpson, General Manager,

East Columbia Basin Irrigation District Mark Zirschky, General Manager,

Pioneer Irrigation District

14 The Rubicon Story:

An Interview With Tony Oakes

DISTRICT FOCUS

20 Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area

By Peter Duncan

26 The History of Irrigation in the

Murray Region of New South Wales

By Murray Irrigation

ASSOCIATION PROFILE

30 IrrigationNZ

By Andrew Curtis

THE INNOVATORS

36 Anchoring Against the Wind: The Pivot Guard

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Irrigation Leader Australia Tour

Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbor.

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his past February, Irrigation Leader magazine and Rubicon Water sponsored an irrigation education tour of Australia. The tour highlighted solutions adopted by Australian irrigation districts to help farmers address water scarcity. The tour included visits to three irrigation districts (Goulburn–Murray Water, Murrumbidgee Irrigation, and Coleambally Irrigation); a presentation by a fourth irrigation district (Murray Irrigation); and a visit to Rubicon’s office and factory.

Participants also met with Australian farmers to discuss how on-farm innovations have improved water efficiency and increased yields on their farms.

Starting out in the relatively temperate climes of Melbourne, Rubicon Water Director Tony Oakes and his

wife, Kay, led the tour participants on some excursions in and around the city, including a drive along the majestic Great Ocean Road along the south coast of the state of Victoria. The group also made a stop at the Rubicon office to learn the history of Rubicon and receive an overview of Rubicon products and background information on irrigated agriculture in Australia.

From there, the group traveled north, winding through the north Victoria countryside in the Murray–Darling River basin with a stop at the Rubicon factory to see where the various gates, meters, and control systems are made. The late summer temperatures started to rise into the one hundreds and rolling hills gave way to wide, flat expanses of fields dotted with eucalyptus groves. The

TOUR PARTICIPANTS Maury Balcom

Board Member

South Columbia Basin Irrigation District

Washington State

Boe Clausen

Board President

East Columbia Basin Irrigation District

Washington State

Brad Edgerton

General Manager

Frenchman–Cambridge Irrigation District

Nebraska

Kevin Johansen

Engineer

Provost & Pritchard Consulting Group

California

John Lind and his wife, LaRae

General Manager

Burley Irrigation District

Idaho

Harold Mohlman and his wife, Kathy

Board President

A&B Irrigation District

Idaho

Tony Oakes and his wife, Kay

Director

Rubicon Water

Melbourne, Australia

Craig Simpson

General Manager

East Columbia Basin Irrigation District

Washington State

Mark Zirschky

General Manager

Pioneer Irrigation District

Idaho

Kris Polly

Editor-in-Chief

Irrigation Leader magazine

Washington, DC

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thick, red clay soils supported forage crops, such as alfalfa and wheat. The first district visit was Goulburn–Murray Water, a highly technical and innovative district. From there, the group traveled on to hear a presentation by another technologically savvy district, Murray Irrigation, followed by a visit to Coleambally Irrigation.

As the group moved north through southern New South Wales, they passed trucks equipped with “roo guards” on their grilles, and the crop profile turned from fields of recently cut alfalfa into orchards, vegetables, vineyards, and cotton fields. The tour brought the group to the breadbasket of Australia, the town of Griffith, and nearby Murrumbidgee Irrigation. The group also saw the facilities of Yellow Tail wines.

From Griffith, the group flew back to Sydney A Goulburn–Murray Water service truck, complete with snorkel kit, “roo guard,” at the end of the official tour. Some stayed on, shovel, and bumper jack mounted above the driver’s door, in Tatura, Victoria. touring Sydney Harbor via water taxi, while fruits than what I expected to see: orange groves and others headed up to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef. persimmon trees. I saw cotton fields for the first time. I All in all, the group saw a lot of irrigated agriculture, also didn’t know how big their wool industry was. the latest in canal control technology, and a few kangaroos John Lind: I had a very positive impression of the and emus seeking shade. Irrigation Leader’s editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, recently reconnected with the other members of country. The country is very developed and shares an arid climate very similar to what we have in southern Idaho. the tour to discuss the trip.

The need to irrigate is very similar to ours.

It is a dry climate, and geographically, it is pretty flat EXPECTATIONS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS with some rolling hills. We loved seeing the eucalyptus Brad Edgerton: It was my first time out of the country. trees—it reflected the kind of Australian landscape that my You think of Nebraska as being flat, but we at least wife and I had in our minds. have different basins and valleys. The areas we visited in Harold Mohlman: The country seemed so clean.

Australia were very flat in all directions.

Everyone was friendly. I was impressed with how willing Mark Zirschky: I expected scenery from “Crocodile they were to answer questions about how their system Dundee,” so I was amazed at how developed the irrigation worked. What surprised me the most was not seeing center projects were and at the automation the districts have pivots. implemented. When I walked into an irrigation district, it Kathy Mohlman: There were very few weeds; no trash. was like something on Wall Street with all the monitors.

It was amazing at how well they kept their farms looking.

There was quite a bit of hay and alfalfa, and a lot more

Rubicon Water’s factory offices, located in Shepparton, Victoria.

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One of several Goulburn–Murray Water delivery control rooms, with real-time canal information visible on overhead monitors, located in Tatura, Victoria.

Craig Simpson: My initial vision of Australia was of the nonirrigated outback—I expected a drier climate and landscape. We visited many irrigated areas, so it was greener than I expected.

I was also surprised at how flat the landscape was and at how much farms employed flood irrigation. I was also surprised to see how prevalent Rubicon equipment was: A majority of the districts we drove through had a good amount of Rubicon equipment.

THE IRRIGATION DISTRICTS Kevin Johansen: Goulburn–Murray’s SCADA system was impressive—how it takes orders and controls the gates. Everything was controlled through the office. The district has converted its operations to use a lot of young, technologically savvy technicians who work in the office and reduced the number of ditchriders who work in the field.

Craig Simpson: The districts are very large. Like the Columbia Basin Project, the Australian districts had multiple subdivisions. They are predominantly flood irrigation. With the right soils and slopes, flood irrigation works great. You don’t lose much water to evaporation. It is flat enough there to do the leveling to get the flood to work properly.

We learned that the districts are changing the way they are flood irrigating to incorporate shorter flood cycles so 6

they don’t lose as much water. They get the right amount of water to the root zone and cover the paddy in a shorter amount of time.

I don’t recall seeing much lined canal. One of the reasons is that the soil tends to have a higher [than average] clay content. They don’t have the seepage that we would see in our area, where we have more silt and sand.

The soils with higher clay content tend to hold water for longer periods of time, which is good for the rice paddies.

Goulburn–Murray runs its operations out of a control center housing around 40 people. There were people doing the scheduling, diagnosing any errors in the automated system; it was a very robust water management group. A lot of its systems are automated, so there aren’t as many folks out in the field.

Brad Edgerton: The districts are quite large and relied mostly on surface water. They have groundwater, but it is not very good. The other thing that I noticed—in Australia, it almost seems like they avoid pivots. We learned that the lack of pivots has to do with the energy costs of running the pivots. [The Australians] look at gravity—surface water irrigation—as a free way to deliver.

It's totally the opposite of what we do in Nebraska.

John Lind: The irrigation districts are very modern in terms of the facilities, the technology, and the workforce— very professional people. The operations buildings felt like something you would find in Washington, DC. Every Irrigation Leader

district we visited was professional and welcoming, and they gave us every opportunity to ask any questions we had.

The districts operate in a much different way than my own. The districts are very technology heavy, monitoring flows and diversions on computer screens. The technicians go out, diagnose issues, and fix them, whereas our district really relies on the farmers to be our eyes and ears in the field. In that sense, we are very different from the Australian irrigation districts.

Maury Balcom: There are a lot of similarities in each district. I was surprised at the size of the bigger ones—they are huge, even compared to the Columbia Basin Project.

The Rubicon systems were very impressive. I was also impressed by how they control the entire system out of one office.

Harold Mohlman: Their districts are a lot bigger than ours. Where [A&B Irrigation] has 80,000 acres, they were talking somewhere around 200,000 acres.

The offices themselves were impressive. There are computer screens everywhere, keeping them up to date on how the gates were working and if there are any problems. There are people there manning the stations 24/7. It seemed like they had tech people running all the operations. It was more technology based, rather than getting your hands dirty with a shovel.

Most of what we saw down there was basically done from the central office. The farmer orders water from the Internet. The district gets that order in the office, signals the gates, and then the whole system would start regulating itself. The district said that its delivery efficiency got within 1 percent of what the farmer ordered.

Mark Zirschky: In our basin here at home, more than 60 districts deliver to more than 1 million acres; whereas, in Australia, one district serves 1 million acres.

INFRASTRUCTURE Maury Balcom: I was really surprised that they are flood irrigating. It is a combination of a lot of different factors. Down there, power is very expensive. Everything that Rubicon makes is generally solar powered; it doesn’t need any powered delivery systems to get water out to the farm. As hot as it is, a conventional Irrigation Leader

A Rubicon Water gate structure, located on Colembally Irrigation District’s Birganbigil canal, near Blightly, New South Wales.

A single tower T-L pivot of Murray Irrigation District, near Deniliquin, New South Wales.

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Rubicon Water gate structure on Goulburn–Murray Water canal, near Shepparton, Victoria.

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pivot system wouldn’t be very efficient.

Evaporation would be a huge problem.

Seeing the Rubicon systems in action was very impressive. It was simplistic in a way, but boy, those things were bulletproof the way they had them built. That in itself was worth the entire trip. When somebody down at the tail end needs water, the whole system fluctuates to allow that water through. There is nothing going to waste. Everything is under operational control from a war room–like office.

Harlod Mohlman: Canals are not lined—just dirt with automated checks every so often. The canals are basically used for storage, which allows them to regulate water systemwide.

One of the farmers we met uses automated gates to water his fields. He is able to use his cell phone to set the gates to open and close and set the time to run water on his paddy. When he finishes, the gate closes and the next one opens up. It waters the field itself.

The canals and laterals are clean. There is no overgrowth or aquatic weeds in the canal. They use a special mower to control the aquatic life in the canal. I guess it is on a boat and goes 2 or 3 feet below the surface to take care of it.

Kathy Mohlman: The system makes sure there is no runoff at the end. What runoff they do have is reused. There is a ditch or pond at the other side of the field. The farmer explained that he had it worked out to a science. He knew that when the water would get to the end, the gates would close.

Mark Zirschky: The irrigation canals were bigger than I anticipated and very clean. I am used to water wheel–type meters almost on every turnout, but the Australians had Rubicon monitoring and technology. The automation control from the headgate to the field was really interesting to see. It would open and flood directly onto the field itself. Here, we open a headgate and the water runs through a series of private ditches before it is finally diverted out onto the field. There wasn’t so much of that private infrastructure on the fields we saw.

Brad Edgerton: They kept referring to fastflood irrigation; they would flood a paddy for two hours and move to the next one with no water running to the end of the field. The water didn’t drain back into the river; it just soaked back into the groundwater table, which is pretty salty. They had to do something to avoid that.

There is no second chance—use it or lose it.

Irrigation Leader

Rubicon Water Product and Solutions Lead Engineer, Matthew Collins (in yellow vest), leads tour of Rubicon factory in Shepparton, Victoria.

Matthew worked out of the Rubicon Fort Collins, Colorado office from 2009-2013.

On our system, we’ll have a check structure almost every mile. Over there, they can go miles without a check structure because it is so flat. That also gives them a lot of water to put into storage in the canal system. The Rubicon system is perfect for that situation. We have actually invested in Rubicon systems. We think it is a technology that is going to help us. If we can reduce or eliminate our tail water, then that is water we can retain in our reservoirs.

Kevin Johansen: During a demonstration at the Rubicon office, they put in a phantom water order so we could see how the Total Channel Control system worked and reacted. When we saw the systems represented on screen, we saw how the gates and water orders could all be tied together to control the water so operational spills are virtually eliminated, increasing the efficiency of the water deliveries.

Rubicon’s FarmConnect is SCADA down to the farm level. One option is for automated flood irrigation of border checks. We saw one farmer’s setup where he had ditches running across the head of the fields with small concrete outlet structures and a large automated flap gate at each check. The farmer could order water and make gate adjustments on his iPhone. It is a very slick system.

COMPARING AND CONTRASTING SYSTEMS Boe Clausen: The irrigation districts are ahead of us here in Washington in terms of utilizing technology. I think the lack of reliable water is the biggest driving force in that.

Irrigation Leader

Because we have a reliable source of water, we can get away with using older technology.

Mark Zirschky: Our system isn’t surcharged to the point that it can allow people to take water when they want it. It is an on-demand system. We are not taking it out until we put it in. We save a lot of water doing it that way, but it is not instantaneous on the delivery end.

So it was very interesting and, to some degree, a little difficult to wrap the mind around the fact that the Australian districts run their system more like a reservoir.

That’s why their laterals were piped. They can handle those deliveries instantaneously. If we tried to do that, we would see a loss of head for several hours. We couldn’t operate our system that way.

It was also interesting to learn that Australian local governments invested millions of dollars to make the system work well. If we had that level of support on our end, we could really do some amazing things. And Idaho is a relatively supportive state for water financing. It was interesting to see the results of Australian state government investment.

John Lind: It was all surface irrigation. In the areas we visited, once water got into the alkaline soil, it would become unusable for irrigation. The irrigation companies do the best they can to prevent seepage into the ground.

That is the opposite from us. We are surface irrigators but are connected with groundwater; we look for ways to put surface water into the ground to recharge aquifers.

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Tony Oakes of Rubicon Water explaining on of thousands of "Deth Ridge" water wheels previously used to meter water deliveries since the early 1900's. Anecdotally, the meter wheels were vulnerable to being wedged immobile by frozen carp and other "accidental" obstructions.

Maury Balcom: It is hard to quantify how much they are really paying for water. I tried to compare it to what we do, and it seems very expensive.

With farmers and others owning the water separate from the ground, I would think that would be a difficult situation.

You are going out on the open market and dealing with people who are not necessarily farmers, but who do have rights.

From what I understand, they have businesses traded on the stock market, and all they do is trade water rights. Some are generating a 9 or 10 percent return on investment. If I were a farmer and knew I could get that return, I would be getting out of the farming business. That is such an odd concept for us—that there would be separate ownership of the water right.

Craig Simpson: I appreciated exposure to a different culture and a different point of view on irrigation, water supplies, and conservation. It appears the Australian government truly values irrigated agriculture and invested in it.

The other thing that was considerably different was the water marketing. In Australia, water is another commodity.

There are exchanges for it. You can move it around in the system—it isn’t tied to a parcel of land. They just have more monetary value in their water. They pay money for their ecological supplies—they are not allotted a specific amount. It is a part of the market.

CROPS John Lind: In the area around Griffith, there were many vineyards and citrus groves—crops we would consider to be 10

Brett O’Toole of Rubicon Water explaining a solar-powered telemetry repeater site that is the backbone of the canal control system.

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water intensive. The farmers grew these crops in a waterefficient manner. The growing season in that part of Australia is approximately nine months long, and over that time, the growers we met irrigated with approximately 3 acre-feet of water. The Australians are focused on keeping surface water on the surface and minimizing transmission losses to the ground where water is wasted.

They do a really good job of conserving their irrigation water through a combination of Rubicon technology and other infrastructure upgrades to maximize their crop yields. In our case, aquifer recharge (both incidental and managed) is a vital component of our long-term water sustainability planning, as groundwater is our source of drinking water and a major source of irrigation water. In other words, the Australians are trying to keep water out of the ground while we’re looking for ways to put more in.

Craig Simpson: We arrived at the end of the growing season; there were a lot of harvested crops. We saw a lot of cereal grains. They also grow rice where soils are more suitable. As we moved further north to hotter temperatures, we saw more orchards, citrus fruits, vineyards, and livestock.

Brad Edgerton: We saw a lot of alfalfa and irrigated wheat. Where growers have high priority water rights, we saw high-value crops, citrus crops, and orchards. It reminded me of what we would see in Texas in terms of climate. The Australian farmers also have the luxury of double cropping. They irrigate their wheat and put in a cover crop in the winter for grazing.

HIGHLIGHTS John Lind: I enjoyed seeing full-blown Rubicon systems. The district headquarters mapped and monitored

the whole system all the way down to the individual farm level. It was very impressive. When a farmer orders 10 megaliters of water, he or she is guaranteed to receive 10 megaliters of water. The farmer can monitor it and operate it remotely just like the irrigation district does. The Rubicon system is really impressive to see in action.

Mark Zirschky: The highlight for me was how the Australians transformed their irrigation systems. It is phenomenal how every headgate on the system is automated and can be controlled by a computer or a phone.

We have that to some degree here—I have 10 automated sites, which have been a tremendous help in regulating and monitoring our system. But to have 100 percent of the system automated—wow. I know they had to start off in a place where we are now, but the transformation they went through is simply amazing: all of that control at the push of a button.

Boe Clausen: I was very impressed by the control room at Goulburn-Murray. It was fun to see it in action. It was also interesting to visit with the ditchriders who made the change from working out in the field to the office.

LESSONS LEARNED Brad Edgerton: It is just amazing how [the Australians] acknowledged they had a problem and went about solving it with the leadership of companies like Rubicon. I think the future of our system is going in that direction.

The Republican River is in short water supply due to overdevelopment, and the value of our water is great. We are trying to conserve as much water as we can. Our basin is the poster child for where we need to be sustainable. We are preparing for the future to maximize water supply.

We have an 8-inch allocation on the Cambridge Canal

View of dry canal going toward a typical field. Note eucalyptus trees provide shade for livestock when fields are used for pasture and are simply farmed around when crops are planted and harvested.

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this year; we do whatever we can to stretch that. We don’t know if we are going to have a good allocation next year, so we have to conserve this year. Using Rubicon systems seems to be as good as putting your system into pipe. Rubicon automation makes an open ditch act like a buried pipe.

Craig Simpson: Our water doesn’t carry the same value as it does in Australia. That lack of value limits our ability to implement the solutions we have available because there is not a sufficient value for conserved water at this point in time to overhaul a substantial amount of our system. For us, saving water doesn’t solve a problem because we haven’t been water short. The value of 1 acrefoot of water savings doesn’t currently give us a positive return over a short period of time. So our focus is more on improved conveyance and operational efficiencies.

On one of our stops, we inspected several on-farm gates. I walked around and looked at the back side of one the slip-gates. The seal of the gate was not leaking any water. There was a small damp spot in one of the corners, but it had a full head of water on the back side of it. I asked how long that gate had been in there—it had been there for 12 years. There hadn’t been any upgrades or rehabilitation maintenance over the years. I was impressed at how watertight that particular location was. There was no seepage of water. Most gates have some leakage. The frame of this gate hardly had any on it. It wasn’t dripping any water. It gives you a good feel that the machining and tolerances of Rubicon gates were pretty high.

Boe Clausen: The [Australian] government provided full support for the district’s water utilization plan.

There was a lot support from the government, and these multimillion-dollar projects are now showing that the investment is paying off over a relatively short period of time. The Australian people are really benefiting from that investment. The Australian government is setting a good example, and we can follow suit.

John Lind: Tony [Oakes] mentioned that the Australian government was focused on long-term development. The government recognized the importance of agriculture to the economy, worked with agriculture to determine how much water was needed to grow crops, and was able to give agriculture the water it needed. The government paid three times the market rate for excess water, fueling long-term development. I thought it was an interesting solution that works for Australia.

Mark Zirschky: The fact that no water [in the Australian systems] is wasted and everything that is ordered is used really shows how much they value irrigation and agriculture. Our irrigators run a certain amount of extra water to allow for fluctuation and account for evaporation. I thought we were pretty darn efficient. It really makes you think about what Rubicon has to offer.

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A water bailiff (aka ditch rider) with a service-truck-mounted retractable refrigerator, complete with Victoria Bitter’s Gold.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES Craig Simpson: We saw kangaroos, koalas, and emus— one of funniest things was seeing a group of four or five emus standing out there in the fields as we were driving along.

Maury Balcom: And, of course, the flies out there were very memorable. I have never seen flies like that. It still gives me the willies. As soon as you got out of the car, there were flies everywhere.

Brad Edgerton: They were hollering at me not to walk in certain places because of the snakes. It was a bit of a wakeup call.

Kevin Johansen: We enjoyed seeing the kangaroos hanging out on the golf course where there was some green grass. We saw some huge bats. It was a very educational and enjoyable visit.

Brad Edgerton: Everyone used the phrase “no worries.”

People here in the office are tired of hearing me use the phrase.

Harold Mohlman: They enjoyed their coffee; you could go anywhere and not worry about getting a cup of coffee. In Melbourne, you would walk half a block and there would be a coffee shop.

Every time we went into a roundabout, we ended up going what felt like the wrong way. Tony [Oakes] picked us up in a van; as he pulled away from the curb, his wife turned around toward us. Now, she was in what I thought was the driver’s seat. She turned around and started talking to us.

I said, “Holy cow, turn around and drive this thing.” She was on the left side of the car, but that was not where the steering wheel was located. That took some getting used to.

We got to meet and interact with normal people living their normal lives. I’ll cherish that for a long time.

Irrigation Leader

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The Rubicon Story:

AN INTERVIEW WITH TONY OAKES

W

hen the Australian state of Victoria restructured its water sector back in the mid-1990s, a group of agricultural engineers recognized an opportunity to meet the needs of a new and changing market. Those engineers came together to form Rubicon Water, a company that today is focused on systematically improving water conservation and delivery efficiencies for irrigated agriculture worldwide.

Irrigation Leader’s senior writer, John Crotty, spoke with Rubicon co-founder Tony Oakes about the origins of the company, its role in changing irrigation systems in Australia, and the importance of technology in the delivery of water.

John Crotty: What kinds of changes were occurring in Australian water that precipitated the founding of Rubicon?

Tony Oakes: Australian irrigation development began in the 1890s and continued on up through the 1980s. The last major storage for Australian irrigation was completed

in 1979. At that point, the strategic focus for irrigation authorities, which were all state-owned systems, was on long-term sustainability and removing dependence on government financing.

The 1980s brought significant institutional consolidation though a series of public inquiries. In the case of Victoria, 400 small water authorities were reduced to 17. The idea was to aggregate scale. In the urban sector, in which every small town would have its own water, sewage, and local government authority, control consolidated at the regional level. The irrigation sector moved away from a central state agency to four regional authorities. The structural changes in the irrigation sector occurred in 1994 and 1995, which was when Rubicon was established.

Toward the end of the 1980s, people realized that manually driving around irrigation canals in cars and dropping boards into concrete structures could be done more smartly. In the mid-1980s, the idea of

Rubicon’s founding directors (left to right): Gino Ciavarella, Tony Oakes, Bruce Rodgerson, and David Aughton.Â

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using computers to support the water ordering process was introduced. By the early 1990s, it was apparent that the sector needed to change. There were opportunities to use technology to improve service and reduce costs.

John Crotty: Where did you get the name?

Tony Oakes: We wanted to focus on a name that didn’t imply some kind of business strategy. There is a small river in Australia called the Rubicon. It was only later that we learned of the historical implications of the name and Julius Ceasar. It wasn’t a consideration at the time. We didn’t have anyone with a background in the Classics; we’re all engineers.

John Crotty: What was Rubicon trying to achieve?

Tony Oakes: We simply wanted to improve the performance of the water sector. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the irrigation sector was experiencing a variety of environmental issues: a rise in water tables, increased salinity of our farmland, and nutrient blooms. This was all in the context of the Murray–Darling River basin, which covers about one-fifth of Australia. There were questions around the sustainability of irrigated agriculture—the volume of water being moved in the river system and the technology being used to do that. There was a real opportunity to improve sustainability.

John Crotty: How did Rubicon go about meeting those challenges?

Tony Oakes: We were able to secure contracts with the larger irrigation authorities in Australia. Our business involved the design and manufacture of automated gates, the design and development of software systems to support the operational logistics of running an irrigation district, and the implementation of data acquisition technology to integrate those gate and software systems. That was the business as we started out.

After a few years, we realized that the traditional approaches were probably not going to be successful on a large scale. So in 1997, we sought the help of the University of Melbourne. That was the start of what has proven to be a very successful collaborative research and development relationship.

John Crotty: Can you explain that relationship and how it led to the development of Rubicon’s Total Channel Control system?

Tony Oakes: Around the time we began our collaboration with the University of Melbourne, the academic literature was showing that controlling one or two gates automatically was feasible, but controlling three or four was far more difficult.

Irrigation Leader

Inside the Rubicon factory in Shepparton, north-central Victoria.

We worked with the university to tap into its control engineering expertise. The university’s electrical and mechanical engineers had more formal training in control engineering than its civil or agricultural engineers.

University engineers recognized that solving this problem [of delivery control at large scales] would have significant benefits for the broader community. The initial work of the university revolved around modeling the cause and effect of the action of the gates and devising strategies to operate the networks at a large scale. Those were the underpinnings of the challenges of the research.

In parallel with that, Rubicon developed new gate designs. We realized that the traditional method of going to a site, taking measurements at that site, and then going to a shop to cut and weld was not going to work well at large scales. The university provided some engineering and design advice. We employed new composite materials for the gates and developed a new range of products based on those designs and materials—it relied a lot on aluminum 15

extrusions and routing machines so that we could produce precision gates. We also developed our own circuit boards; we put a range of components on a single board to address a variety of functions, such as solar charging, soft switching of motors, and solid state fusing, which was traditionally provided by third-party suppliers.

So, while the enabling part of the scaling up was the gate itself, the intellect was the software to get these gates to operate in collaboration with each other to transform the behavior of a manually controlled irrigation network into something more responsive and dynamic.

Rubicon worker positioning aluminum sheet to be processed by computer automated

John Crotty: What would you say to fabricator.

American irrigation districts with older systems that are considering adding automated gates to their systems?

Tony Oakes: Our strategy in entering the United States was to use our hardware products as the entry point.

The way that water rights are organized and the way service is provided in the United States, we felt that trying to implement our software first may be daunting. We thought that if district managers can see and touch a single gate, they will be very comfortable with it. Our hope was to have a district install one or two gates to see that they can be used to meet a local objective and improve control.

We have had repeat business from a number of districts that bought one and then came back and bought more.

Naches–Selah Irrigation District [in Washington State] is a very good example. It put in a few gates and then, over a period of years, added more. It then bought the Total Channel Control technology to help it achieve its delivery objectives.

The World Water Resources Group is saying that by 2030, if the demand for water remains unabated, we’ll need to increase supply by 40 percent. The pressure to do more with less is really building. Technology determines how far the water will go.

For much of its history, Rubicon has been improving the technology that moves water from the dam to the farmgate; but in the last five years, Rubicon has been developing technology to improve the distribution of water on the farm itself. Those farmers who have made significant investments in this technology have received significant productivity and lifestyle benefits—they can now request deliveries using their smartphones or tablets.

In addition, our approach has been demonstrated to significantly improve yields on the farm.

16

On the world scale, most of the food and fiber produced by irrigated agriculture is still under flood. There is a significant capital investment in pivot irrigation. The actual advantage of surface irrigation in Australia has been due to laser leveling and moving from manual to automated delivery. The energy to put water through center pivot depends on energy prices—in Australia, it is upward of AU$40 to put 1 megaliter of water through a center pivot.

There are obvious advantages to pivots. In some cases, where the soils are light and the landscape is undulating, pivot is quite clearly the best option.

John Crotty: Over the course of your career, what is the most important lesson that you have learned about using technology to conserve water?

Tony Oakes: The true thing we have learned over the journey is that while the scale of water delivery infrastructure changes might appear to be daunting, if you approach the problem in a well-structured manner with confidence and appropriate planning, it is really quite achievable. You need strong leadership, stakeholder engagement, and a sound plan to make the change. These changes will involve everyone from the chairman of the board of management down to the ditchtender.

Australia has moved its focus from irrigation system development to efficient system operation—from on-farm irrigation delivery orders to nutrient management to disease control—to meet the challenges of producing food.

We are confident that our technology can significantly improve the performance of open canal irrigation systems.

The challenge is getting everyone to progress through the reform process at a pace that suits each stakeholder’s needs and abilities.

Irrigation Leader

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District Focus

Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area

20

By Peter Duncan

T

he Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, located in south-central New South Wales (NSW), Australia, covers an area of 660,000 hectares (1.6 million acres), of which 170,000 hectares are irrigated. First established in 1912, the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area represents the largest irrigated area in Australia, and from an output perspective, the most productive.

With a combined maximum capacity of 2,657 gigalitres (2.2 million acre-feet), Burrinjuck and Blowering Dams in the upper Murrumbidgee catchment supply highquality water for the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. Blowering Dam stores water that has been released from storages further upstream in the Snowy–Tumut Development of the Snowy Mountains HydroElectric Scheme. Required annual releases from Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme underpin the area’s high water reliability.

Water releases from Blowering and Burrinjuck Dams are managed by Water NSW to provide for town water supply, irrigation, and environmental

use requirements. Water diverted into the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area is used to supply the major townships of Griffith and Leeton as well as over 3,000 agricultural landholdings. Irrigators in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area have licences that allow them to use a prescribed volume of water each year. This irrigation water is delivered and metered by Murrumbidgee Irrigation (MI). MI operates over 3,500 kilometers (km) of supply channels, and 1,600 km of drainage channels. Of the supply channels, around 250 km are cement lined, 100 km are piped, and the remainder are earthen channels.

Irrigated agriculture is the major industry in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, and it encompasses dynamic, broad-acre farming, horticulture, livestock, and poultry operations. Reliable and quality agriculture outputs support the region’s innovative processing businesses, which market premium food and fibre products domestically and around the world.

MI—One of Australia’s Largest Irrigation Companies MI is one of Australia’s largest private irrigation companies, servicing over 2,500 customers. Chief Executive Officer Brett Jones explained that the company plays a pivotal role in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area through

Irrigation Leader

the provision of efficient irrigation water and drainage services to customers. “The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area is a dynamic region with business profiles and crop profiles continuing to change in response to consumer demand and global trends,” he said.

“The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area boasts some of the best soils, climate, and water reliability in the country. Coupled with our thriving service centres, there is no doubt we are Australia’s premier irrigation area.”

The natural advantages of the region have led to significant new growth, including in cotton production and multimillion-dollar investments in new cotton gins; continued expansion of wine and beer production, with distribution arrangements to over 50 countries around the world; and significant new plantations for walnuts and almonds, to reflect global demand for healthy and functional food.

Supporting this growth are associated valueadding industries for processing local products.

“We have significant new investment in a modern walnut cracking and processing plant and substantial expansion of poultry processing to 1.5 million birds per week,” Mr. Jones enthused. “This has been supported by investment in a critical logistics facility to store and load on rail a range of bulk products, including cotton, wine, grain, and hay. This growth is continuing.”

MI recognizes the value in regional partnerships, including with their customers. “From the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area Renewal Alliance

Murrumbidgee Irrigation offices in Griffith, New South Wales.

Irrigation Leader

(MIARA) to our local customer focus group, our mission is to work together to drive innovation and value to keep growing our irrigation area,” Mr. Jones said.

“Water is now a competitive business, and Murrumbidgee Irrigation must continue to change internally and externally to ensure the ongoing viability and growth in agriculture within the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. Our focus is on supporting initiatives to partner with others to grow the value of agricultural production in the region, and we are very interested in hearing about any opportunities to do this.”

MI Growing Its Future Together With Customers and the Community MI’s new vision, Growing our future together, customers, company, community, forms the basis for the development of the company’s new corporate plan, which incorporates three strategic themes: business growth, organizational excellence, and partnering.

“These themes reflect our commitment to operating a safe business, while being customer focused and promoting the region,” Mr. Jones said. “Overall, the corporate plan anticipates changing and emerging customer, company, and community needs in a competitive and challenging environment. We are very confident that things are growing in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, and this plan will help us to capitalize on our regional advantages.”

Modernization Projects Improving Water Delivery Efficiencies MI is currently partnering with the Australian government to modernize water delivery infrastructure in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. This investment will improve efficiency in water delivery, provide higher services levels for customers, and allow opportunities for growth in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.

These off-farm works will complement the on-farm modernization works that are currently being rolled out across the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. On-farm activities eligible for funding are to be undertaken in exchange for landholders transferring water entitlements to the Australian government.

Eligible activities include conversion to high-tech irrigation and soil moisture monitoring.

“The funding is an excellent opportunity for landholders to improve their productivity, adapt to reduced water availability, and provide water back to the environment through upgrades to their irrigation infrastructure,” said MI Delivery Manager Jody Rudd.

A multimillion-dollar off-farm modernization project, which will provide a modern and efficient water delivery system to around 210 landholdings in the Hanwood area, was completed in late 2015.

The AU$40.2 million Hanwood Modernisation Works have been funded through a AU$149.6 million Australian 21

MIA modernization works.

MI’s Lake Wyangan team.

government grant to MI. This project involved replacing 12.4 km of aging concrete-lined supply system channels with gravity flow pipelines, the installation of electronic flow meters with remote monitoring on 67 outlets, and the replacement or upgrading of 87 regulating structures within the Hanwood project area. Gravity pipelines were chosen based on key design parameters, including service life, durability, and lower operational costs for customers.

Mr. Rudd said that the MIARA, which is made up of MI and three Australian engineering firms—GHD, John Holland, and UGL—has been responsible for the successful construction of this modernization project.

“MI chose an alliance model to ensure that we had blend of technical and project governance skills to deliver our ambitious modernization program under a tight schedule.

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The project was delivered on time and under budget.”

MIARA commenced project construction in April 2014 with the goal of improving the way water is delivered to irrigators in the Hanwood area.

“MIARA has adhered to a tight construction program that included works during the season to ensure key project milestones were achieved,” Mr. Rudd said. “This strategy of conducting in-season works resulted in limited impacts to the construction program due to the unusually wet winter experienced last year.”

Automation of the system will enable increased reaction times compared with manual operation, which will improve the reliability and efficiency of the system, particularly during any periods of peak water demand.

This is the second major project completed by MIARA, following on from the AU$54 million Lake Wyangan Project, and a continuation of the rollout of a modernization program across the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.

“The program is also an effective means of driving regional development, investment, and growth,” Mr. Rudd said. “MIARA has recently commenced works in Yenda and Bilbul as part of the MIA Modernisation Project, the next stage of our modernization program.”

Peter Duncan is communications director at Murrumbidgee Irrigation. For more information on Murrumbidgee Irrigation, visit the company’s website at www.mirrigation.com.au.

Irrigation Leader

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District Focus

The History of Irrigation in the Murray Region of New South Wales

By Murray Irrigation

M

urray Irrigation Limited is the largest private irrigation company in Australia.

It was formed as an unlisted public company in March 1995 when the New South Wales (NSW) government privatized its Murray Irrigation Area and districts. The company’s shareholders are the irrigators, which include over 1,600 predominantly family farm businesses.

The Murray Irrigation Area is located north of the Murray River, which forms the border between two states (NSW and Victoria). The irrigation area has an extensive history dating back to the early 1930s, and it was originally developed by the NSW government as a method of drought proofing, with the hope of providing reliable stock and domestic water to a vast region that had been regularly devastated by drought. It has since become a large-scale, broad‑acre cropping district producing dairy, cereals, pulses, and over 50 percent of Australia’s annual rice harvest and contributing over AU$600 million per year in gross value irrigated agricultural production.

One irrigation area and four irrigation districts were developed in the Southern Riverina: District

Formed

Wakool

1932

Berriquin

1933

Deniboota

1938

Denimein

1945

Area Tullakool 26

Formed 1946

In the drought of the early 1960s, demand for water outstripped supply for the first time. As a result, the NSW government introduced volumetric allocations in the 1966– 1967 season, limiting how much water landholders could use. This meant there would be no new water allocations in the irrigation districts. The same year, the first water trades between local landholders were recorded, marking the beginning of the water market in Australia—albeit limited to within the district.

Various NSW government departments managed the construction and operation of the irrigation network until 1995, when more than 700 irrigators at a meeting in Deniliquin voted to support a fully irrigator-owned water supply company in the Southern Riverina. Spurred by the irrigators’ momentum, the NSW government enacted the final legislation that allowed the handover of its irrigation network in the region, enabling the formation of Murray Irrigation and providing the model for similar privatizations in other parts of the state.

THE COMPANY TODAY Today, Murray Irrigation delivers high‑quality water from the Murray River to 2,037 landholdings in southern NSW across a virtually unchanged footprint. The company also supplies water to the towns of Berrigan, Finley, Wakool, and Bunnaloo. An estimated 90 percent of businesses regionally are reliant on irrigated agriculture; the network supports a Area (farmland) regional population of 33,000.

204,309 hectares (504,859 acres) The company’s irrigation system is gravity fed, with 341,546 hectares (843,979 acres) 2,944 kilometers of supply 142,568 hectares (352,293 acres) channels and 1,421 kilometers of 59,000 hectares (145,792 acres) stormwater escape channels. Water is delivered across 748,000 hectares Area (farmland) (1.8 million acres); however, only 6,385 hectares (15,778 acres) half this area has been developed Irrigation Leader

for irrigation and less than half of the developed area is irrigated in any one year.

Murray Irrigation is also host to the first hydroelectric scheme built on an irrigation channel. Known locally as The Drop, the 2.5‑megawatt powerplant was constructed to generate clean, renewable energy without affecting the water flow to the 2,600 farms the canal supplies. It began generating power in 2002 and currently abates around 8,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year.

Today, the company employs approximately 150 people, with offices in Finley, Deniliquin, and Wakool, and has an annual turnover of up to $65 million and assets valued at more than $800 million. The system operates during the irrigation season from August to May, with planned maintenance and works conducted during the system shutdown period in the Australian winter.

THE MODERNIZATION PROCESS Murray Irrigation is currently rolling out its Private Irrigation Infrastructure Operators Program (PIIOP) project, which is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernize the irrigation infrastructure and supply system in the NSW Murray region. The PIIOP project will benefit all irrigation customers by providing improved water efficiency and productivity for farm businesses. The project will also position Murray Irrigation for a productive future and improve water efficiency both on‑ and off‑farm.

The Commonwealth Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources has provided $169.2 million of funding from the Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure Program to complete the project.

The funding agreement was finalised in 2012 to undertake the following: • Outlet and regulator upgrades: Replacement and upgrade of channel infrastructure, including the introduction of modern meters with improved and Irrigation Leader

The development of irrigation in the Murray region.

Upgrading an outlet with a Rubicon FlumeGate as part of the Private Irrigation Infrastructure Operators Program.

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Development of the Irrigation Area 1933: The NSW government commenced the development of the state’s largest irrigation network, known as the Murray Irrigation Area and Districts, fed by the waters of the Murray River.

1935: The works began with the development of the Wakool Irrigation District in 1935, followed by the construction of the Yarrawonga Weir and Mulwala Canal branching off the Murray River. This main canal and associated channels opened in 1938. Construction of irrigation systems continued well into the 1930s.

1939: The Mulwala Canal had nearly reached the Edward River (an anabranch of the Murray River) when work on the Lawson Siphons commenced. These 12‑foot-diameter cement pipes total a length of almost 3,000 feet and are designed to carry the canal under the river. Construction began in 1939.

1942–1955: Work halted in 1942 due to a shortage of manpower and materials caused by the war effort.

Work resumed again in 1945, providing much-needed employment for many postwar immigrants. The siphons were officially opened in 1955.

1964: The final channels of this irrigation system opened. verifiable accuracy. These upgrades will also lead to the remote control and automation of the irrigation system.

• System reconfigurations: Providing an alternate supply point to customers who have a connection to the Murray Irrigation channel. This will ultimately reduce the total length and number of major channel assets operated and maintained by Murray Irrigation by altering how a landholding is connected to the channel system. The system reconfigurations also provide improvements for landholders looking to reform their landholdings with better supply outcomes.

• Subsystem retirements: Voluntary strategic retirement of landholdings from Murray Irrigation’s area of operations and disconnection from related channel delivery system infrastructure. These retirements will enable these landholdings to convert to dryland farming and will also enable the installation of an alternate source of stock and domestic water supply.

28

Part of this project involves upgrading the outlets within the system from traditional Dethridge wheels to new modern meters that meet stringent test environment parameters. The two main outlets being installed are FlumeGate™ and SlipMeter™ outlets. The upgraded outlets incorporate flow measurement, precise motor control, power supply, and radio communications. These new meters accurately meter the water even in turbulent conditions and use new technology to move the system to a remote control operation, reducing the number of required field staff. The new technology will also allow Murray Irrigation customers to adjust water orders multiple times per day, as opposed to the once-a-day service offered when the system used Dethridge wheels.

The project is expected to be completed by October 2017.

More information on this project can be found at http://www.murrayirrigation.com.au/piiop/.

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A S S O C I A T I O N

IrrigationNZ

P R O F I L E:

Sheep and cattle under a center pivot in Canterbury.

By Andrew Curtis

I

rrigationNZ is an industry body that has represented the interests of New Zealand irrigators and the irrigation industry since the late 1970s. Initially a technical organization for government irrigation scheme (or district) development, the organization then turned into an advocacy organization when the New Zealand government pulled out of irrigation scheme development. Over time, it has turned back the other way, and while it still engages in advocacy, the main focus of the organization is to promote excellence in irrigation through good management practices, education, and training. We also educate the general population about the benefits of irrigation schemes and water projects.

Sixty percent of New Zealand’s irrigators are members of IrrigationNZ. Eighty percent of the country’s irrigation is on the South Island, so most of our members are located there.

Irrigation in New Zealand

People often associate New Zealand with natural lushness and green landscapes, not irrigation.

On the west coast of New Zealand, you measure rainfall in meters; however, on the east coast, there is a rain shadow effect from the mountains. That effect, coupled with lands lacking in high water-holding capacities, makes farming difficult without irrigation.

New Zealand is not water limited, but it is land limited. We have good, natural pipelines with catchments on the west coast. These big alpine rivers transport water from the west coast over to the east coast of the country.

So when you do the water balance in New Zealand, you could potentially

30

irrigate all the irrigable land with a little bit of storage here and there.

New Zealand currently has 1.9 million irrigated acres, 60 percent of which are under center-pivot irrigation. Half of those acres are served by irrigation schemes that take water to the farm gate, and the other half of the irrigated area in New Zealand is individual takes—either groundwater pumping or direct surface water takes. Seventy-five percent of the irrigated land in New Zealand is for pastoral irrigation, either dairy or sheepbased units. The rest is high-value horticulture: orchards, vineyards, and vegetables. There is also a lot of seed production: New Zealand produces 70 percent of the world’s carrot seeds.

Irrigation in New Zealand has some unique attributes. Our farmers irrigate corners, and to do this, most farmers have corner arms on their pivots. The other thing that we do here—and most people think it is quite strange—is irrigate our rolling hill country. We have experimented quite a lot with that and have pivots going to places that they do not usually go.

One of the biggest challenges facing New Zealand irrigators has come from land use intensification: the water quality challenges from nitrate loss and phosphate runoff into rivers and aquifers. The Canterbury Plains, which runs along the central-eastern coastline of the South Island, is home to a contiguous wall of irrigation. Eighty percent of irrigation is concentrated in this one area, contributing to those land use and water quality challenges.

The old government irrigation schemes were open channel canals, but there is a modernization program underway that is putting those canals Irrigation Leader

into pipe. We do benefit from the slope of the Canterbury Plains, which is about 300 meters above sea level at one end. Water in a pipe pressurizes due to gravity. The piping project becomes cost neutral with the energy and water savings that result.

Training Programs

Fifteen years ago, New Zealand started to implement more stringent water efficiency requirements for irrigators.

More recently, this has been added to with the setting of nutrient loss limits from farms. There is a link between efficient water use and nutrient loss: efficient irrigation reduces drainage from the profile and runoff. Due to the efficiency expectations, we have seen a mass migration from flood to pivot. So, as an organization, we began to really focus on helping irrigators change to more efficient water use. Since then, in part due to the new nutrient loss rules coming into effect, we have had a large uptake in training.

Most of our farmers leave our training sessions saying that it was worth it. Our training programs are practical and hands on: the basics of scheduling, maintenance requirements, and developing irrigation. We train out in the paddock, kicking tires and dirt, ensuring our farmers understand how to make things work in the field.

IrrigationNZ holds around 35 courses across the country each year.

Developing hill country irrigation has become more common in New Zealand due to new technologies.

SMART Irrigation

IrrigationNZ created SMART Irrigation as a framework for irrigators to easily achieve good management practices on the farm. Implementing good management practices enables irrigators to achieve their efficiency and nutrient loss expectations.

We have developed codes of practice for design and installation, so new irrigation systems can efficiently deliver and apply water. These are process-driven codes that outline how site-specific data can be collected and turned into site-specific designs.

SMART Irrigation involves scheduling and an annual performance assessment of water application.

Irrigators have to be able to justify the amount of water they apply and know they are actually applying it. Operators who have implemented SMART Irrigation have saved on costs over the long run, and production generally increases as well.

It would be fair to say that some of what is happening in New Zealand now is world leading in terms of performance.

New Zealand irrigators have embraced precision variable rate irrigation technology. Kiwis are the ones who developed the spatial control component—being able to map your farm and its soil types and then implementing individual sprinkler control to manage it. It all comes down to sprinkler control. It would be safe to say that New Zealand has some of the highest density of precision-irrigated farms in the world.

The last part of SMART Irrigation is recordkeeping. New Zealand requires farmers to have farm environment plans to reduce nutrient losses.

Those plans are audited anywhere from six months to three years. You have to be able to provide the auditor with evidence of what you are doing and confirm that your practice and systems meet expectations.

That is where modern technology has really helped out. We have recently wired up all the individual irrigation systems within a farm. The water application and nutrient data from this approach are very revealing. It enables irrigators to determine where they can make gains. The differences you find when you look at the average compared to the sum of all the parts are amazing.

Moving Out Ahead of the Regulators

SMART Irrigation has now been picked up by the regulatory regime. We struggled with this initially, but it all comes down to this: Do you proactively drive a monitoring program into something that is practical and achievable and that creates outcomes, or do you let the regulator prescribe your future for

Irrigation Leader

31

An on-farm water storage pond in North Otago.

you? IrrigationNZ decided to push the SMART Irrigation program, and it is gaining much traction. Expectations are being written into the farm environment plans.

Our horticultural industries are all subject to Good Agricultural Practices programs. At the moment, the water modules within those are fairly broad. However, there will be greater expectations for more stringent requirements.

So we have been working with our horticultural members to incorporate them into some of the market requirements.

The growers like that idea because they do not like having to do one thing for the regulatory environment and another thing for the market environment. As you know, farmers dislike men in white coats.

The Future of Irrigation in New Zealand

There are a number of irrigation schemes developing, and the goal is to increase irrigated lands to nearly 2.5 million acres. All our groundwater and surface water is fully allocated. The only water available now is through storage or reticulation from those big alpine rivers.

Our aquifer systems do not hold water for long—on average, only three months. Water leaks out to the sea through the highly permeable gravel. But if you manage it, there are big opportunities.

32

The big challenge is the expense: New Zealand is an agriculture subsidy–free country. However, we are working with the government around interventions if there is the potential for market failure or where suboptimal outcomes would otherwise occur. Irrigation scheme developers are actually working out ways to solve the environmental challenges. If we can store water for irrigation, we can also use it during the summer to augment stream flows or for aquifer recharge projects, both of which dilute the concentration of nitrates in the groundwater and rivers (as opposed to just storage).

If we implement some of the environmental regulations that are currently being proposed, we would actually end up going backward. But with catchment-level storage solutions, we can continue to grow the pie. The new schemes are more than irrigation projects; they are community water projects.

Andrew Curtis has served as the chief executive of IrrigationNZ since 2009. You can reach Mr. Curtis at acurtis@irrigationnz.co.nz.

Irrigation Leader

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JOEL IRVING (310) 614-4681 iwsjoel@sbcglobal.net

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The Innovators

Anchoring Against the Wind:

The Pivot Guard

H

igh winds are the enemy of pivot irrigation. A big storm sweeping across the high plains can overturn pivot towers, resulting in downtime and hurting an irrigator’s bottom line.

There are 50,000 pivots in Nebraska, and in 2014, irrigators lost around 750 to storm damage. According to Nebraska inventor James Frager, those losses have pushed up insurance rates on pivots. “The deductible has gone up tremendously, with some insurance company rates at up to around $10,000 per pivot. If we have any more damage like we did in 2014, either some companies will stop insuring pivots or the deductible will run up to half of what a single center pivot costs.” Assuming the average cost of a center pivot is $75,000—and of a corner system, $100,000— insurance becomes cost prohibitive.

Mr. James Frager (bottom) and his innovation, a Pivot Guard auger (top).

36

Inventing Solutions Mr. Frager takes those numbers to heart. He grew up on a farm in northern Kansas, south of Fairbury, Nebraska, and his brothers continue to farm that land with 14 pivots. They lost 2 pivots this spring and know firsthand the damage caused by an overturned pivot. Mr. Frager knows that “lost pivots mean lost profits.”

Irrigation Leader

Mr. Frager has always been interested in scientific, practical solutions across a variety of fields.

Armed with a master’s degree in physical science, he taught high school science for 16 years. In the mid-1970s, he moved from teaching the theoretical to the practical when he began teaching flight courses and started a crop dusting business. He later applied his business acumen to support business development and encourage the growth of wind power in Johnson County, Nebraska. He is also the owner of four patents.

The financial burden of pivot loss, coupled with low commodity prices, weighed heavily on Mr. Frager.

“I started thinking about what I could invent to help stop some of the damage from storms with up to 90-mile-an-hour winds.” He worked on a simple solution: the Pivot Guard, a motorized auger that fits between the tires on each tower of a pivot and can be controlled remotely from a cell phone or manually at the pivot.

How It Works A wind sensor on the device notifies the irrigator when winds reach 60 miles per hour. An irrigator can then engage the auger via a remote control system, such as AgSense, or manually.

The auger motor is fixed to the pivot’s pipe between the drive wheels. The pivot’s power source—whether diesel, electric, or battery—powers the auger.

Once engaged, the 2-inch-diameter auger drills down 4 feet. As the drill enters the ground, the motor slows the auger from 1,800 revolutions per minute to 36 revolutions per minute in a gearbox to keep dirt in the ground. Once set, the auger provides up to 8,000 pounds of download, depending on soil type, to offset winds up to 100 miles an hour.

Protecting Investments Mr. Frager started the development process about two years ago and has transitioned the Pivot Guard to production. Each Pivot Guard costs $3,000 per tower and requires 30 minutes for installation.

Irrigation Leader

Big John Manufacturing of Osmond, Nebraska, a supplier of agricultural products for more than 40 years, manufactures the Pivot Guard. With the help of Big John, Mr. Frager thinks the Pivot Guard will serve as a low-cost solution to help protect pivots in Nebraska and across the West. He reports that some insurance companies are considering reducing or eliminating their deductibles on pivots if the Pivot Guard is installed.

For more information about the Pivot Guard, contact Jim Fritz at Big John Manufacturing of Osmond, Nebraska, at (800) 658-4471 or Jim Frager at jfrager@diodecom.net or (402) 239-0786.

37

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Irrigation Leader and Municipal Water Leader magazines will sponsor a Water Leader Educational Tour of irrigation and other water related infrastructure in New Zealand. The preliminary tour dates are February 18-25, 2017.

Please note that we will award two special door prizes—credits (in the form of a reimbursement) to be applied to the Water Leader Educational Tour of New Zealand—at our annual Operations and Management Workshop at the Crowne Plaza Phoenix Airport Hotel, Arizona, on February 1 and 2, 2017.

2017 New Zealand Water Leader Educational Tour

As details of the tour and workshop are confirmed, information will be posted on our web site at www.

WaterStrategies.com.

Companies that have expressed interest in participating and sponsoring the tour include: • Alligare • Rubicon Water • Watertronics Should you be interested in receiving information about the tour as a potential participant or your company is interested in being a sponsor, please e-mail Kris Polly at Kris.Polly@WaterStrategies.com and we will add you to our information distribution list.

Bridging the gap between idea + achievement Offices worldwide

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2016 CALENDAR

June 13–14 Idaho Water Users Association, Summer Water Law and Resource Issues Seminar, Sun Valley, ID June 15–17 Texas Water Conservation Association, Mid-Year Conference, Horseshoe Bay, TX June 22–23 Water Leader Workshop Sponsored by Irrigation Leader and Municipal Water Leader Magazines,

Milwaukee, WI June 22–24 WESTCAS, Annual Conference, Santa Fe, NM June 27–July 1 ESRI, User Conference, San Diego, CA June 29–July 1 Groundwater Management Districts Association, Summer Session, Yakima, WA July 11–12 North Dakota Water Resources Districts, Joint Summer Meetings, Fargo, ND July 26–27 Kansas Water Congress, Summer Conference, Wichita, KS August 3–5 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Seminar, Sun Valley, ID August 23–25 Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts, Groundwater Summit, San Marcos, TX August 24–26 Colorado Water Congress, Summer Conference and Membership Meeting, Steamboat Springs, CO October 12–14 Texas Water Conservation Association, Fall Meeting, San Antonio, TX October 26–28 WESTCAS, Fall Conference, Phoenix, AZ February 18–25 New Zealand Water Leader Educational Tour, Sponsored by Irrigation Leader and Municipal Water Leader Magazines For more information on advertising in Irrigation Leader magazine, or if you would like to have a water event listed here, please phone (703) 517-3962 or e-mail Irrigation.Leader@waterstrategies.com.

Submissions are due the first of each month preceding the next issue.

Past issues of Irrigation Leader are archived at

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