Irrigation Leader Montana Edition June 2022

VOLUME 13 ISSUE 6

MONTANA EDITION

Scott Aspenlieder: Representing Irrigated Ag at the Montana Water Resources Association

june 2022

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CONTENTS JUNE 2022 Volume 13 Issue 6

6

Scott Aspenlieder: Representing Irrigated Ag at the Montana Water Resources Association

5 A n Advocate for Montana Irrigated Agriculture

By Kris Polly 6 S cott Aspenlieder: Representing Irrigated Ag at the Montana Water Resources Association 10 T he Sheehan Family of Washington State: On Dairy Farming, Irrigated Agriculture, and the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan 16 M ichelle Reimers: Equipping Turlock Irrigation District for the Challenges of an Unpredictable Future 22 O akdale Irrigation District’s Virtuous Cycle: Conserving Water and Selling It to Finance Modernization

28 J ason Phillips of the Friant Water Authority: Tackling Drought, Subsidence, and Regulatory Issues 34 P rofessor Daniele Zaccaria: Applying Science-Based Solutions to Growing Water Concerns in the Central Valley 38 M odesto Junior College: Training the Next Generation of Irrigation Professionals 42 D aniel Cozad of the Central Valley Salinity Coalition: Addressing Salts and Nitrates in Central Valley Groundwater 44 M apping Aquifers From the Sky: California’s Statewide Airborne Electromagnetic Surveys

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2020 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.

4 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Mike Murphy Montana Contributing Editor

Irrigation Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by

an American company established in 2009.

STAFF:

Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Mike Murphy, Contributing Editor Elaine Robbins, Copyeditor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator Tom Wacker, Advertising Coordinator Patricia Bown, Media Assistant Eve Giordano, Media Assistant William Polly, Media Assistant Milo Schmitt, Media Assistant Amanda Schultz, Media Assistant

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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 Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or kris.polly@waterstrategies.com or Tom Wacker at tom.wacker@waterstrategies.com.

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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 us at admin@waterstrategies.com. /IrrigationLeader

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COVER PHOTO: Scott Aspenlieder, Principal and Cofounder, Performance Engineering. Photo courtesy of Performance Engineering.

irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING.

51 JOB LISTINGS

MONTANA EDITION

An Advocate for Montana Irrigated Agriculture

W

ith a background in engineering, water resources, and irrigation and as a principal and cofounder of Performance Engineering, Scott Aspenlieder’s background equips him perfectly for his role as the president of the Montana Water Resources Association (MWRA). In that role, he works to protect water rights and keep policymakers apprised of the economic importance of irrigated agriculture amid the rapid development that parts of the state are experiencing. In our cover story, Mr. Aspenlieder tells us more about MWRA’s top issues and its important role.

We also interview irrigated farmers on the ground: the Sheehan Family of central Washington. The Sheehans run their dairy and crop farm efficiently by reusing water and making use of technologies like efficient sprinklers, satellite imagery, and variable-rate application.

The rest of this month’s issue focuses on California’s Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Established in 1887, Turlock Irrigation District was the first irrigation district in California. General Manager Michelle Reimers tells us about how today, it is actively investing in modernizing its infrastructure while moving forward with exciting initiatives such as Project Nexus, a pilot project for installing solar panel canopies over sections of its canals.

Oakdale Irrigation District’s 2007 water resources plan mapped out a strategy for selling surplus water to fund system modernization, leading to more surplus. We speak with recently retired General Manager Steve Knell and Water Operations Manager and District Engineer Eric Thorburn to learn more about this cycle.

The Friant Water Authority operates and maintains the Friant-Kern Canal, which supplies San Joaquin River water to more than 30 irrigation districts, but the canal’s capacity is being affected by overdraft-caused ground subsidence.

“

By Kris Polly

CEO Jason Phillips tells about how the authority is responding.

Daniele Zaccaria, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, and an agricultural water management specialist at the University of California Cooperative Extension, tells us about his research and outreach work on irrigation and water management.

Modesto Junior College agriculture instructor Ryan Patterson tells us about the school’s irrigation and agriculture mechanics programs, which are giving students hands-on experience with new technologies, such as Rubicon gate systems.

We also speak with Daniel Cozad, the executive director of the Central Valley Salinity Coalition, about the coalition’s efforts to address salt and nitrate infiltration to ensure a sustainable future for Central Valley agriculture.

A thorough response to water supply and subsidence issues requires detailed knowledge of the aquifers below the surface, which the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is gathering through airborne electromagnetic surveying. Katherine Dlubac and Steven Springhorn of DWR tell us more about the valuable data this method supplies.

Exciting advances in irrigation and water management are afoot in both Montana and California. I hope you enjoy learning more about them. IL Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Irrigation Leader magazine and the 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.

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|5

Scott Aspenlieder: Representing Irrigated Ag at the Montana Water Resources Association

Performance Engineering carried out rehab work on Huntley Project Irrigation District’s highline pump station.

A

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Scott Aspenlieder: I grew up in Culbertson, a town on the Missouri River in northeastern Montana. I went to school at Montana State University in Bozeman and got a degree in bioresource engineering, a subdiscipline of civil engineering with a focus on water and water resources. Early in my career,

6 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

I interned for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Indian Affairs on irrigation facilities in northeastern Montana. I spent 4 years working on the Fort Peck Irrigation Project, and after college, I went to work for a private engineering firm. I made my way to Helena, and in 2013, my partner Craig Dalton and I decided to relocate to Billings to start up our company, Performance Engineering. I’ve been working in irrigation for the better part of 20 years now.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about Performance Engineering and the types of work it specializes in.

Scott Aspenlieder: We are civil engineers and surveyors who focus on water-resource and irrigation engineering. That’s one of our key market segments. We also do traditional infrastructure and land-use work for cities and counties and work in the renewable energy field with solar and wind. We work in three or four market sectors, but our company was founded on water resource and irrigation engineering. irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING.

s a cofounder and principal of Performance Engineering and the current president of the Montana Water Resources Association (MWRA), Scott Aspenlieder has a broad and highly informed view of the importance of irrigated agriculture across the state of Montana. Given the rapid pace of development in some parts of the state, MWRA’s work to protect water rights and keep policymakers apprised of the economic importance of irrigated agriculture is only becoming more important. In this interview, Mr. Aspenlieder tells us more about MWRA’s top issues and its important role.

Malta Irrigation District’s Dodson South Canal headgate structure, which Performance Engineering was recently involved in replacing.

Irrigation Leader: You are also the president of MWRA. Please tell us about the organization.

Scott Aspenlieder: MWRA’s members are irrigation districts and water right holders around the state of Montana. It also includes entities like NorthWestern Energy, which has dams and hydropower facilities, and associate members, such as engineering consultants and attorneys who work with irrigation and irrigated ag around the state. Our focus is on ensuring that water rights are protected and honored in the state of Montana. We help ensure that irrigated ag is not forgotten and that it is protected as we continue to see a push for legislation that would affect agriculture and water rights and resources.

Irrigation Leader: How important is irrigation in Montana?

Scott Aspenlieder: Agriculture is still the number 1 economic sector in Montana, and irrigated ag makes up a significant portion of that. Here in Yellowstone County, one report said that the Huntley Project Irrigation District, which covers only 30,000 acres, contributes $50 million to the local economy every year. If you extrapolate from that, considering all the irrigated ag acres across the state of Montana, you can tell that irrigation has a tremendous effect on our state and on our regional economies, especially the rural economies east of the Continental Divide.

Irrigation Leader: Would you tell us about water rights and their importance to your members? irrigationleadermagazine.com

Scott Aspenlieder: From a water rights perspective, we are seeing continual pressures related to the development and the growth of our communities and our state. Montana has a long and storied history in senior water rights and senior water rights law precedents. For the most part, Montana has been good about maintaining that history and protecting agriculture as development around our large municipal areas continues.

Water rights are a different animal in places like Culbertson, in eastern Montana, where I grew up, than in Bozeman, in the Gallatin Valley. Culbertson, a town of 800 people, is not seeing the same explosive growth as is Bozeman. A onesize-fits-all model does not work in this state because it is so diverse and has such large urban and rural areas. It takes a wide swath of people with diverse backgrounds to make sure that we’re coming at these issues from all perspectives. I think that’s the big benefit that MWRA brings to the table—when the administration or the legislature moves on water rights, we make sure that we’re representing all sides. I think we do a pretty good job of ensuring that all our members are represented and that their opinions and viewpoints make it to the forefront of those conversations.

Irrigation Leader: What is your message to your state legislature and your congressional delegation regarding irrigation?

Scott Aspenlieder: In the state of Montana, we do a lot to invest in water, sewer, and bridge infrastructure in our communities and in our counties, but what we have not done is invest in the infrastructure for irrigated ag. We had not invested heavily in irrigated ag infrastructure at the state June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

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Performance Engineering carried out work on Malta Irrigation District’s Exeter Siphon Replacement Project.

8 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

fix major things like the St. Mary diversion or the Fresno Dam. The catastrophes that happened in the Midwest could happen here in Montana, too, but we don’t have the resources to take on projects of that size.

Irrigation Leader: Is there anything you would like to add?

Scott Aspenlieder: I would encourage people to reach out to MWRA and see how they can become members. You don’t have to be an irrigator, a consultant, or an engineering firm. Pipe suppliers, contractors, and other folks can become members, too. Representing more people and a more diverse range of industries helps us convey the message to our state legislators and our congressional delegation that irrigated ag affects people beyond the farmer cutting hay and the guy setting pipe to get ready to irrigate. It touches many more people in our economy and our industry. IL Scott Aspenlieder is a cofounder and principal of Performance Engineering and the president of the Montana Water Resources Association. He can be contacted at scott@performance-ec.com or (406) 384‑0080. irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING.

level since the 1980s until Governor Gianforte did so with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding. With the ARPA funding that arrived in 2021, the governor’s office, the legislators, and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation decided to set aside $10 million for irrigated ag infrastructure. That was the first major investment and the first indication of a shift in policy and approach that we’ve ever really had in the state of Montana as it relates to irrigated ag infrastructure. MWRA worked incredibly hard to facilitate that. Our success has been a huge victory for irrigated ag and the agricultural industry in Montana. On a state level, we hope that that level of investment continues during the 2023 legislative session.

On the national level, bigger issues around investments in infrastructure revolve around the Milk River Project.

Investment is needed to improve, upgrade, and rehabilitate the project’s infrastructure, which is falling apart from St. Mary all the way to Glasgow, where it dumps water back into the Missouri River. We’re reviewing how the Bureau of Reclamation funds major infrastructure projects. Right now, the bulk of the cost lands on the shoulders of irrigators.

Reclamation does the best that it can, but it has historically been underfunded. We would like our congressional delegation to continue to push for funding allocations to

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The Sheehan Family of Washington State: On Dairy Farming, Irrigated Agriculture, and the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan Irrigation Leader: Where in California is your family from?

Karen Sheehan: My parents started in the dairy business in Turlock, California. They ended up coming to Washington State, where they rented a place and then bought a dairy and remodeled it. Eventually, my parents were able to move to the farm where we live now. Besides a home, there was nothing here but bare ground. They built the place from the ground up.

Irrigation Leader: Jason, where is your family from?

Jason Sheehan: My family still operates a couple of dairy farms in southeastern Minnesota. Right now, my three uncles and two cousins are running the farm. They are still milking 300 cows and farming 800–1,000 acres. We went back for a couple of years, but it ended up working better to move out here. Like Karen, I’ve been a dairy farmer all my life.

Irrigation Leader: How many cows are you running right now?

Jason Sheehan: We’re milking a little over 3,000 cows.

We also have dry cows and heifers, so we have around 6,000 animals in total on two sites. We milk three times a day, 24/7, 365, including all holidays, regardless of the weather.

Irrigation Leader: Are they all Holsteins?

Annelise Sheehan with one of her family’s cows.

O

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background.

Karen Sheehan: Jason and I both grew up on dairy farms. We now live on the farm in Washington State where I grew up. I am originally from California. I’m a fourth-generation dairy farmer, and our kids are heavily involved in agriculture, too.

10 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Irrigation Leader: How much rain do you normally get?

Karen Sheehan: About 6–9 inches a year, so irrigation is critical for the operation. Really, we live in a desert.

Irrigation Leader: We've heard from the Department of Ecology that yours is one of the best examples of a forwardthinking dairy that is doing various things to comply with environmental regulations.

Jason Sheehan: We’re one of a handful of dairies in the Yakima Valley that actually has a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation permit. It requires a pretty strict management process for nutrients. irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SHEEHAN FAMILY.

n their dairy farm in Yakima County, Washington, Karen and Jason Sheehan raise their children in the same farming way of life in which they were raised. But they conduct their day-to-day operations with an eye toward the future.

Irrigation Leader spoke with Karen and Jason Sheehan about using water wisely and collaborating with other water users to implement the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan (YBIP).

Jason Sheehan: For the most part. Our younger son has decided that he should have one of all seven breeds of dairy.

He has a Holstein, a Red Holstein, a Jersey, a Brown Swiss, an Ayrshire, a Milking Shorthorn, and a Guernsey.

The Sheehans have around 6,000 cows and heifers at two sites.

Irrigation Leader: Let’s talk about some of the things that you’re doing. We have heard that you use water five times.

Can you explain that?

Karen Sheehan: Water comes out of the ground from the well at 60 degrees. We immediately use it to cool milk, which comes out of the cow at 100 degrees, the cow’s body temperature.

After that, the water is given to the animals to drink and used to cool the cows. In the summers, we run sprinklers over the animals to cool them and keep them comfortable, which keeps our milk production up. After the cows drink the water and expel it as urine or manure, we recycle it in our flush system.

Our flush system continuously cleans out the alleys where the cows are standing behind the feed bunks. That goes into a lagoon and is separated into liquids and solids. The liquids are then put on our fields as irrigation and fertilizer.

Jason Sheehan: That process helps build organic matter.

The organic matter was pretty low in the soil before we got here. By applying organic nitrogen and organic fertilizers, we’ve raised the proportion of organic matter in the soil.

Higher organic matter means greater water retention.

Then, when there is drought, you actually need less water to irrigate your crops. It’s an amazing cycle, and water plays an integral role throughout it.

Karen Sheehan: I always like to say we do more with less.

That’s a big goal of our dairy. irrigationleadermagazine.com

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the importance of irrigation to your operation.

Jason Sheehan: Irrigation water is your number 1 resource when you’re growing a crop. All of us know that we can use it efficiently and train ourselves to use only what we need. There are some things that we know about growing crops in the dairy industry, such as that we don’t want to be pushing nutrients past the 2‑inch root zone. We use realtime irrigation probes to make sure that we water enough to maximize crop yield but not so much that we push nutrients past that root zone.

We’ve really evolved in our use of irrigation water over the last 20 years. When Karen and I first got here, everything was rill and furrow irrigated. We wanted to double-crop triticale and corn to use as many nutrients as we could. We soon figured out that you can’t do that efficiently while rill irrigating, so we started switching to pivot irrigation with overhead sprinklers. We had the sprinklers on top of the pivot before we found out how much water evaporates. Then, we switched to using drops on the pivot and had to integrate irrigation monitoring. We had problems at first, but now we’ve gotten to the point at which I can turn on any of our pivots from my phone. I can change the speed, I can look at the sensors in the field to find out how we’re doing on water, and I can communicate with my employees to make sure we’re not over- or underwatering. We have satellite imagery that comes weekly, showing us where we’re doing a good June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

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job with biomass in the field and crop yields and allowing us to see if there are issues with the sprinkler package. We also have yield monitoring on our forage harvester, which allows us to use variable-rate seeding, fertilizing, and manure application based on the needs of different areas of the field.

With those advancements in irrigation, we have also changed our approach to tilling. When we got here, we were overplowing and washing the soil away. Along with the soil, you wash away the phosphorus and potassium, and you especially don’t want phosphorus in your lakes and streams.

Now, we’ve switched to minimum tillage. The majority of what we do when we take triticale on is no-till. It’s a completely different and more advanced way of farming.

Irrigation Leader: What kind of pivot package do you use?

A center-pivot irrigator on the Sheehans’ farm.

Jason Sheehan: All our pivots are Valley center pivots. All our pivots have drops and pressure regulators to ensure that we’re applying water evenly throughout the field.

Irrigation Leader: Jason, you are on the board of directors for Roza Irrigation District. Why did you decide to get involved?

Jason Sheehan: A past board member contacted me because he felt that we needed to have a broad representation of farming styles on the board. A majority of the Roza farmers grow permanent crops, such as apples, cherries, grapes and juice grapes, and hops. There was no one representing row crops on the board. They caught me at a weak moment, and I said yes.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the YBIP.

A tractor on the Sheehans’ farm.

12 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SHEEHAN FAMILY.

Crops being harvested on the Sheehans’ farm.

Jason Sheehan: The beauty of the YBIP, and what’s so impressive about it, is that it has brought all the stakeholders to the table—the farmers, the tribes, the irrigation districts, the fish and wildlife interests, Ecology, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other people dealing with water rights. As we deal with climate change and other issues, we’re trying to find a solution to make sure that all parties have a say in how water is used in our area. Fish are important to all of us, farming is important to all of us, and the environment is important to all of us. It is really one of the neatest synergies I’ve seen in a long time in the West. We understand that the world is changing and that to survive in the future, we can’t keep doing things the way we’ve always done them.

An example is our own farm operation, which has changed so much in 20 years. We may not want to believe in climate change, but the fact is that if we get low snowpack, we’ve got issues, not just for farming but for fish. When you get everybody involved in working toward solutions, the synergies add up to some great outcomes. Now, it is just a matter of moving forward to fund these projects and make sure we keep our eye on the goal.

Irrigation Leader: What is your message to your congressional delegation and to our readers about the YBIP? What should they know about it?

Jason Sheehan: We all sat down and figured out how to collaborate and come up with a plan for the future that we hope will be successful. If you look across the rest of the West, there are people who haven’t done this, and they are running into some big issues regarding how to divvy up the water. We’d rather do it as stakeholders at a table where we can communicate with each other than let it get to the court system and let someone else decide, because there, in the end, no one wins.

Irrigation Leader: Karen, you’re involved in Washington’s AgForestry Leadership Program. Please tell a little bit about that and why you got involved.

Karen Sheehan: I had always been involved in leadership positions until we started having children. I decided it was time to get more involved again. In the program, we focus on leadership in agriculture and forestry, and we learn how to communicate and collaborate with others. The program encourages us to inspire others and serve in our local communities and states. It’s a great program, and I’ve learned a lot. The relationships and networks that I’ve built have been important, and it has been incredible to learn about the different industries in this state. I’m excited about next year, when we’ll continue to work on and present a public policy project.

we do. A lot of people take their food sources for granted.

We want to help them understand just how much hard work, planning, preparation, and adaptation are required to grow food. We deal not only with nature but with a shrinking labor force and increased costs and environmental regulations. Yet somehow, year in and year out, farmers continue to bring food to the table. People don’t always understand what it takes to get it there. Irrigation water in the West is a prime example of how important it is to work with everyone and to make sure we don’t tilt the tables too far one way or the other. Sufficient water can and should be provided to both farms and the environment, and the two uses can complement each other.

To enable us to keep providing food and keep our ecosystems healthy, we need to keep the supply balanced. IL

The Sheehans on their farm.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SHEEHAN FAMILY AND WATER STRATEGIES.

Irrigation Leader: It’s a great program, and I hope that more folks like you get involved to keep it going. On top of that, your family is also involved in 4-H and Future Farmers of America (FFA).

Karen Sheehan: Yes. We have four kids, and all of them have been in 4‑H since they were very young; a couple are now in FFA. Our four children show swine and dairy. Our youngest is into horses, so we have a horse now. The girls also sew and bake and do other sorts of projects. It is a great program that teaches kids a lot of good life fundamentals. Both Jason and I were involved in 4‑H growing up, and we want to make sure that our kids have that same experience. We are also involved in the local county fair. We are superintendents of the dairy barn at the Yakima Valley Fair and Rodeo. That’s a great way to stay connected with dairy, youth, and our community.

One of the Sheehans' barns.

Irrigation Leader: Is there anything you would like to add?

Jason Sheehan: I hope to make people aware of how important agriculture is. To understand that, just look around the world and see the fear of food shortages resulting from what’s going on in Ukraine. We’ve got some huge blessings in this country, including the ability to grow the amount of food irrigationleadermagazine.com

Karen and Jason Sheehan are dairy farmers in Yakima County, Washington.

They can be contacted at jkdairy2003@gmail.com.

June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

| 13

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Michelle Reimers: Equipping Turlock Irrigation District for the Challenges of an Unpredictable Future An aerial view of one of TID’s canals.

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stablished in 1887 as the first irrigation district in California and with an irrigation system built in the early 1900s, Turlock Irrigation District (TID) has spent $60 million over the past 20 years maintaining aging infrastructure while modernizing to save water and meet future needs. It is also moving forward with existing initiatives such as Project Nexus, a pilot project that will install solar panel canopies over sections of the district’s irrigation canals. In this interview, General Manager Michelle Reimers tells Irrigation Leader about the district’s efforts to build on its past while responding to the challenges of a less-predictable climate.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Michelle Reimers: I started with the district in 2006 as a communications specialist. My degree is in organizational communications, and my hope was to work in an advertising agency, but there aren’t a lot of options for that in Turlock.

My grandparents had an almond orchard, and when I was young, I spent my summers helping them farm. Because of that experience, I was interested in agriculture and water.

That’s what led me to apply for a public information officer job at TID. Later, I was promoted to oversee government affairs. Eventually, I became the assistant general manager of external affairs, overseeing communications, government affairs, customer service, and all our public benefit programs on the energy side. In 2020, I became the general manager.

Michelle Reimers: We were the first irrigation district established in California and are currently celebrating our

16 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Irrigation Leader: What are the main crops grown by your irrigators?

Michelle Reimers: The main crop is tree nuts, including almonds and walnuts, but we also have corn, oats, and alfalfa, which support the dairies, which are a big industry here as well.

Irrigation Leader: What infrastructure does TID own and operate?

Michelle Reimers: We operate Don Pedro Reservoir, a 2‑million-acre-foot reservoir that we own in conjunction with Modesto Irrigation District. TID is the operator of the 203‑megawatt hydroelectric facility there. The two districts also own the La Grange Diversion Dam, which was built in 1893. That dam doesn’t hold water; it just backs it up enough to divert it into our canal systems. We have 250 miles of gravity-fed canals. We also have Turlock Lake, a 50,000 acre-foot regulating reservoir where we hold the water that starts the irrigation system. irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF TID.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about TID’s history and its current services.

135th anniversary. Our irrigation system was built in the early 1900s, and it still serves us today. We’re one of only four utilities in California that provide both water and retail electricity. We irrigate about 150,000 acres and serve about 4,700 growers. On the energy side, we provide power to about 239,000 people in our service area. We are also a balancing authority, which means we have a diverse portfolio of power generation and have the reliability requirements to protect our service territory from any kind of statewide rolling blackout. On the water side, we receive our water from the Tuolumne River, which starts in Yosemite National Park. We supply mostly surface water, but we also use groundwater. We’ve done conjunctive use since our inception.

On the energy side, we have a diverse power portfolio.

We own a couple of natural gas–fired power plants. In addition to our large hydro facility, we have some small hydro on our canal systems. We also own a wind farm in Washington State, and we have a power purchase agreement with a solar field in Lancaster, California.

Irrigation Leader: To what degree is your source of water susceptible to cutbacks during drought years?

Michelle Reimers: Unlike the many fill-and-spill reservoirs in California, our system is built to weather droughts, and we manage it differently. In response to a drought, we can start making cutbacks earlier than others do. Our reductions aren’t as drastic as those you hear about at state and federal projects, where often the numbers are altered or adjusted monthly depending on what is happening with the hydrology, sometimes going down to a zero allocation. We have more flexibility because we own, operate, and manage our own resources. That’s proved to be beneficial to our growers.

Irrigation Leader: How has climate change affected TID’s operations, and how is the district seeking to better navigate drought cycles?

Michelle Reimers: Climate change is real. We’re finding that wet years are wetter, dry years are happening more frequently, and dry periods are longer in duration. In 2012, we started measuring the snow in our watershed with the help of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a company called Airborne Snow Observatories (ASO). Essentially, ASO takes a plane up in the watershed and uses lidar to take precise measurements that are 97–99 percent accurate.

That is dramatically different from the approach used by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), which puts a stick in the snow to measure its depth and takes maybe 17 measurements in a huge watershed. We’re also partnering with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and its forecast-informed reservoir operations program to learn more about atmospheric rivers, which are severe precipitation events. We are also one of the only agencies that use an hourly hydrological model. It was custom built for our watershed.

It takes all the data from our 135‑year history to help us understand how our watershed is handling the climate.

I’ll give you a couple of examples to illustrate how useful these predictive tools are. The year 2017 was really wet.

That was the year when Oroville Dam had a partial failure.

We, too, had to use our spillway. The difference, however, is that we had seen what was coming and what was up in the watershed, and we asked for a deviation from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to start releasing. We released water 17 days earlier than what the flood control manual would have told us to. Starting early allowed us to open just one of our three spillway gates, which is huge for us. We own the flood obligations on the Tuolumne, and our river channels are irrigationleadermagazine.com

Water is released from Don Pedro Dam.

narrow, so opening three spillway gates would have caused significant damage downstream. The next year, the same technology informed us that the snow content wasn’t as robust as everybody had thought, so again we asked the Army Corps for a deviation. We saved about 150,000 acre-feet of water that year. Finally, we did an ASO flight in February 2021 and again saw that the snow content wasn’t as ample as people thought. We were able to start making cutbacks. We brought the data to the TID board of directors, and they set the annual amount of available water for growers accordingly.

Our calculations were off by less than 2 percent. The state’s forecast, however, was off by 700,000 acre-feet.

Irrigation Leader: Given that you are in the third consecutive year of drought, what has TID done to conserve and most efficiently use the water that is available?

Michelle Reimers: We are investing more in the lower end of our system. It’s a gravity-fed system that is meant to spill, but in an era like this, every drop matters. We’re making a lot of investments in automatic gates. Turlock Lake is a regulating reservoir, and we constructed another reservoir downstream in our system that works on the same concept. It temporarily stores water so that we can start the system over again, which saves water. It has reduced the groundwater pumping in the area and gets water to customers more quickly. We’re looking at adding additional regulating reservoirs to our system.

Irrigation Leader: How have the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and other regulatory initiatives affected the district?

Michelle Reimers: I wouldn’t necessarily say that SGMA has hit us negatively, because we have basically been using surface water and groundwater conjunctively since our inception. We were one of the only areas that were not critically overdrafted.

We have a long history of flood irrigating and recharging the aquifer in wet years and then using that underground water in drier years. We’ve also been monitoring groundwater for June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

| 17

decades. One positive outcome of SGMA is that neighboring areas and cities included in our groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) have had to analyze their groundwater practices. Forming the GSA brought all the partners that pump groundwater into one room to have conversations about solutions for the future. If any reduction in pumping is required, we prefer that it is done in a healthy and balanced way to keep the aquifers sustainable.

A lot of state regulatory actions have affected us, specifically those that pertain to river flows and the relicensing of the Don Pedro Project. We’re in litigation over that. It’s made it challenging to understand how much additional water the state would like and whether it’s for the environment or to supplement the state’s supplies where they’re short. When you don’t have certainty, it’s hard to plan. With that said, we are moving forward on seeking additional water storage in our system. Initially, we were looking to increase storage in Don Pedro, and while that is still on the table, we are also taking another look at how we can add more storage throughout the system.

look at.” We reached out to the University of California, Merced, where researchers were working with a private firm that had developed this concept. We met all the selection criteria, which is how we were chosen for the pilot project. It is the first public-private-academic partnership in the United States. DWR is also involved because $20 million in the state budget was allotted to test this concept.

We have selected two areas in which to install the panels: one in the upper system over a canal with a 110‑foot span and the other in an area with a 20‑foot span. We are supposed to break ground by the end of this year, so the project should be up and running by our next irrigation season. The project will produce about 5 megawatts of renewable energy. We’ll be studying its effects on evaporation. More importantly, we’re hopeful that the shade will reduce the algae in our system.

It is really hot here, over 100 degrees at the height of the summer, and we get a lot of algae growth in our canals. That is expensive to treat both physically and chemically. We’re excited to see whether this approach helps solve that issue in addition to generating renewable energy.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your repair and modernization efforts.

Irrigation Leader: What are the district’s other top issues today?

Michelle Reimers: We’ve spent about $60 million on our irrigation system in the past 20 years. Drop automation is a priority for the district. We have about 400 drops and about 1,600 side gates in our system. We’ve permanently installed 122 Rubicon SlipMeters and have another 79 Rubicon FlumeMeters that rotate throughout the system. We are trying to automate in a thoughtful and affordable way, since all our costs are passed directly to our customers. We’ve implemented the regulating reservoir, which saves us about 9,000 acre-feet of water each year; we are working on building another; and when that is complete, we have another on the docket. About 90 percent of our canals are lined. It takes a huge amount of time and money each year just to make sure they’re maintained. The hydroelectric plant at the Don Pedro Project is over 50 years old and is at the end of its useful life.

We are in the process of replacing the turbines. The goal is to extend the life of the plant for another 50 years

Michelle Reimers: We’re relicensing the Don Pedro project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to hopefully receive a new 40–50 year license. We are in litigation with the state over the regulatory flow requirements of the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan Update. We’re also working through SGMA. Modernizing our system in a thoughtful way has been a top priority.

Climate change and regulatory uncertainties mean we need to think outside the box. We’re looking at additional storage.

On the energy side, we’re focused on reliability, making sure we’re resourced appropriately, and meeting all the mandated thresholds that have been placed upon us.

Irrigation Leader: You were selected to launch Project Nexus, a pilot to install solar panels over irrigation canals. Please tell us about this project.

18 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Michelle Reimers: I take pride in the fact that we were the first irrigation district in California. We want to continue to be a leader in both the water and energy landscapes. We’re taking advantage of new opportunities and modernizing our systems while also respecting what we’ve built and not walking away from that. We are striking the balance between honoring the past and adapting for the future. IL

Michelle Reimers is the general manager of the Turlock Irrigation District. She can be contacted at mareimers@tid.org.

irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF TID.

Michelle Reimers: California has imposed a goal of reaching 60 percent renewable energy by 2030 and going 100 percent carbon free by 2045. With our land valued at $50,000– $70,000 an acre, it wouldn’t make sense to take farmland out of production to install solar panels or other forms of renewable energy facilities. I came across an article about a study on installing solar over canals that the University of California, Merced, had just completed and thought, “We have 250 miles of those—maybe this is something we should

Irrigation Leader: What is your vision for the future?

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Oakdale Irrigation District’s Virtuous Cycle: Conserving Water and Selling It to Finance Modernization

Drop 10 of OID’s Cometa Lateral after the installation of a Rubicon gate and the TCC system.

O

akdale Irrigation District (OID) enjoys well-established water rights—from the Stanislaus River, deep wells, and water reclamation and drainage recovery systems—that allow it to provide abundant water to its growers even during times of drought. The district’s 2007 water resources plan mapped out a strategy for selling surplus water and investing the money into modernization and system rehabilitation, leading to more surplus. That cycle has generated about $75 million for the district and improved customer service, water reliability, and drought resiliency. In this interview, OID’s recently retired General Manager Steve Knell and Water Operations Manager and District Engineer Eric Thorburn tell us more.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

22 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

the general manager of OID. I’ve been here for 20 years, servicing the district, developing the water resources plan, and advancing the irrigation systems here by implementing technology with Rubicon systems.

Eric Thorburn: Upon graduating from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, I went to work as a civil engineer at a local engineering firm, designing utilities, street improvements, and grading plans to accommodate residential and commercial development. I grew up around agriculture in the Central Valley of California, so when the financial crisis and economic downturn occurred in 2008, I had the chance to return to my roots in agriculture as an engineer at OID. After the design and construction of OID’s Total Channel Control (TCC) pilot project was completed in 2011, I jumped at the opportunity to move over to the water department as the water operations manager to assist in the operational integration process.

I’m approaching 15 years at OID. My current role is water operations manager and district engineer.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about OID’s history and current services.

Steve Knell: OID and South San Joaquin Irrigation District (SSJID), which is to our north, were founded in 1909 under the Wright Act, which eventually evolved into the California Water Code. OID and SSJID are senior water right diverters on the Stanislaus River and share an equal stake in both water and developed infrastructure on irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF OID.

Steve Knell: I am a graduate of the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with a degree in ag engineering. I did internships during college and eventually went to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service in Madera, where I spent 6 years as a field office engineer, servicing various field offices in the Central Valley. Later, I was transferred to El Centro, California, as an irrigation and salinity management team leader, working to address Salton Sea issues and state concerns on water use in the Imperial Valley. We helped the farmers of Imperial Irrigation District (IID) evaluate their irrigation systems, manage their water, and manage irrigation as it relates to salinity control. I liked the work so much that I eventually moved over to IID and worked there for 16 years. I eventually left IID and took a job as

Almond trees in bloom in OID’s service area.

the river. Our water right is 1,816.6 cubic feet per second of direct diversion off the river.

Early on, the district began the construction of Melones Dam in the Stanislaus basin, which was completed in 1926.

Most streams in the Central Valley dried up in the summer, so storage was important to ensure irrigation supplies lasted into the fall. During the mid–20th century, the district developed the Tri-Dam projects, a series of dams in the Sierras that included Tulloch, Beardsley, and Donnells Dams. These dams all included hydroelectric units that the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) cooperated with the districts to build and finance. Under the contract, PG&E would get the electricity from those facilities for a 50‑year period and in turn pay off the debt that was incurred to build them. The Tri-Dam facilities added almost 300,000 acre-feet of storage to the district.

In the 1970s, the Bureau of Reclamation looked at building a facility on the Stanislaus River as part of the federal Central Valley Project. New Melones Dam ended up being the last dam built under that project. New Melones Dam is a 2.4-million-acre-foot facility just upstream of OID’s Lake Tulloch Reservoir. To maximize hydro potential for the federal government, the districts and Reclamation agreed to use Tulloch Dam as an afterbay downstream of New Melones so they could install a hydro facility as part of the construction of New Melones. Under an operation agreement, Reclamation and the two districts converted the usable storage that was lost by the districts at Tulloch into storage behind New Melones. The districts also agreed with Reclamation, as part of their senior water right position on the river, to an entitlement to the first 600,000 acre-feet of runoff each year. That amount is split equally between OID and SSJID. The basin has about 1.1 million acre-feet of runoff on an annual basis. We’ve been acting under that agreement with Reclamation since 1986. It has afforded the district a stable, reliable water supply for its growers, even in these recent historical droughts.

Irrigation Leader: How big is your district, and what are the main crops grown in it?

Eric Thorburn: OID’s service area is approximately 82,000 acres, within which about 65,000 acres are actively irrigated. The main crops grown in the district are almonds; walnuts; and forage crops, consisting primarily of pasture and corn.

Irrigation Leader: Does OID still produce power?

Steve Knell: OID is a wholesale power seller. We have a 120‑megawatt generating capacity. All that energy is sold under contract to a buyer. For 50 years, it was PG&E, but now Santa Clara Valley Power is our sole electricity customer. It buys it at a fixed rate, and we share those payments 50/50 with SSJID. irrigationleadermagazine.com

Irrigation Leader: Please describe your canals and delivery infrastructure and the modernization you’ve done with Rubicon Water’s technology.

Eric Thorburn: OID operates and maintains a total of about 200 miles of open ditch and 100 miles of pipeline. We also have two regulating reservoirs, strategically located approximately one-third of the way down on the north and south sides of our system, which is about 18 hours’ water travel time from the river diversion. Most inline drop structures above the regulating reservoirs are longcrested weirs that ensure that consistent upstream levels are maintained for the delivery points and lateral headings in those upper pools. We generally manage our regulating reservoirs within the middle third of their available storage volume to allow room to immediately store or supply already-stored water during unexpected demand fluctuations upstream and downstream.

Early on, following the adoption of our water resources plan, we also began automating our lateral headings. Typically, we’d install a FlumeGate, which is Rubicon’s automated overshot gate, in drop structures that were next to another OID lateral heading to maintain the water level in the upstream pool.

The adjacent lower-capacity lateral heading was then also automated with either another FlumeGate or a SlipMeter, which is Rubicon’s automated undershot gate, to maintain a desired flow rate down that lateral. Both automated gates provided real-time and historic flow measurement readings to the operator’s desktop or tablet over our SCADA system. Our operators were then able to monitor and manage these areas of the system remotely. The consistent upstream water level ensured a steady flow rate through all the offtakes in that pool, which resulted in significant improvements in efficiency and levels of service while also decreasing operational spill from the end of our system.

In 2010, after Rubicon approached OID with some new developments in its hardware and software, we were able to take it one step further with a pilot project. Rubicon’s new TCC technology allowed these automated gates to use water level and flow data from the pool immediately downstream to automatically adjust to maintain the water level in the downstream pool. In other words, rather than operate in upstream level control, they would operate in downstream level control. A total of 15 miles of OID’s open ditch system was automated as part of the TCC pilot project. Rubicon FlumeGates were installed in each of the new or retrofit inline drop structures in place of our old wooden dropboard weirs. After system integration, water levels in each pool were consistently maintained within 2 inches of the set point, and operational spill from the end of the automated laterals was nearly eliminated.

Given the success, we’ve been expanding our TCC system since that time and are now operating a total of almost 35 miles of completely automated laterals in downstream control. All our operators have tablets, and the district now June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

| 23

has over 300 automated or remotely monitored SCADA sites, including the Rubicon system as well as level sensors and flow meters at various turnouts and boundary outflow sites.

Conservation Service as a resource for growers who want to make improvements or repairs on farm or on private irrigation facilities.

Steve Knell: Before installing the TCC system, our district was on a rotation system in which water was moved through our infrastructure and then taken out. The ditch would then be dry until the next irrigation. With the TCC system, water is always in the canal. UC Davis conducted a study that showed that this results in increased infiltration into the aquifer, helping recharge the aquifer and benefiting the district.

Irrigation Leader: What is your vision for the future?

Irrigation Leader: Why did the district conclude that developing a water resources plan was necessary, and how was it implemented?

Steve Knell: We had 100‑year-old infrastructure in place that had never been improved or invested in. We knew that if we were going to replace it, we wanted to incorporate modern technology. We chose Rubicon as that technology.

The plan also envisioned that these improvements would conserve water that could be sold, creating a revenue stream so that we could keep water rates affordable for the landowners in the district. Of all the revenue generated under our water resources plan, 80 percent went to capital improvements and 20 percent went to operational expenses. The implementation of the water resources plan has generated about $75 million for the district. That investment went back into modernization projects that have advanced the district. Without that, we would have had to raise water rates for our growers.

Irrigation Leader: How has the district engaged with its irrigation customers to encourage modernization and water efficiency?

Steve Knell: Our farmers used to be on rotational deliveries and were required to irrigate on regular cycles, but with our TCC system, farmers can irrigate on a flexible schedule. Now, a farmer can give the water back when he’s done, and the district moves it to a reservoir rather than spilling it. Twenty years ago, we were using 255,000–260,000 acre-feet a year.

Today, it’s down to 225,000–230,000 acre-feet on a regular basis. We’ve also added 10,000 acres of agricultural land to our district through annexations, because we have the water to serve them. The flexible and reliable supply allows farmers to shift to higher-value crops. Almonds are now the biggest crop in an area that used to be primarily pasture.

24 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Steve Knell: We’re now in the second year of one of the deepest droughts we’ve had, and unfortunately, they’re anticipating a third year. The last 20 years have been the driest in the last 1,200 years. We don’t see that changing.

You have to believe that water is going to get more precious in this state, and we are all going to be asked to chip in and focus on how best to conserve water in our districts.

Agriculture controls most of the water, so there’s going to be a lot of pressure on agriculture to step up, to begin investing in modernization and technologies that can conserve water, and to make that water available. We believe in marketing that water. If a district is going to invest money in technology and automation, it should be compensated for the investment. That paradigm has worked for OID. IL

Steve Knell recently retired as the general manager of Oakdale Irrigation District.

Eric Thorburn is the district engineer and water operations manager of Oakdale Irrigation District. He can be contacted at ethorburn@oakdaleirrigation.com.

irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF OID.

Eric Thorburn: We consult with and assist growers who are high water consumers to improve their irrigation practices.

We routinely run reports to identify high water use and monitor in the field for excessive runoff, leaky pipelines, and similar things. We also keep a contact list of local irrigation design companies, contractors, and the Natural Resources

Eric Thorburn: We’re going to continue to automate, to become more efficient, to drive water savings, and to become more drought resilient by reducing diversions and improving operational efficiency. We are in an interesting predicament in this groundwater basin after the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014.

Our groundwater sustainability plans show that while OID is sustainable, there are areas east of us that rely solely on groundwater and are not operating sustainably. We want to drive water savings and reach sustainability, hopefully along with those areas. We want to put our water savings to use, ideally locally, by selling them at a price that makes sense for those areas and thereby generating the funding we need for continued capital improvements and modernization.

That’s the plan: more modernization and automation and a continued improvement of the operational efficiency, drought resiliency, and service we offer to our growers funded by the sale of the water we conserve.

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Jason Phillips of the Friant Water Authority: Tackling Drought, Subsidence, and Regulatory Issues

The excavation area for the new Deer Creek siphon and check structure, with crews backfilling the overexcavated areas of the new canal next to the existing Friant-Kern Canal.

T

he Friant Division of the Central Valley Project (CVP) includes Friant Dam and Millerton Lake, the Madera Canal, and the Friant-Kern Canal, which collectively store and deliver water to more than a million acres of farmland and several cities on the east side of the southern San Joaquin Valley. The Friant Water Authority, a public agency representing a majority of the Friant Division’s water users, operates and maintains the Friant-Kern Canal, which supplies San Joaquin River water stored at Millerton Lake to more than 30 irrigation districts that serve 15,000 family farms. Irrigation Leader spoke with Friant Water Authority CEO Jason Phillips about how the organization is dealing with drought, land subsidence, and regulatory issues.

Jason Phillips: I have been the CEO of the Friant Water Authority for just over 6 years. Before this, I spent 15 years with the Bureau of Reclamation’s Sacramento office in what is now called the California–Great Basin Region. Its territory stretched as far north as the Klamath basin and went down through California’s Central Valley to Kern County and included all the Reclamation projects within

28 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Irrigation Leader: Please introduce the Friant Water Authority.

Jason Phillips: About half a dozen water users formed the Friant Water Users Authority roughly 70 years ago, although our original name was slightly different. At the time, Reclamation was completing Friant Dam and the FriantKern and Madera Canals and was negotiating its first water contracts. The water authority negotiated the Friant Division water contracts. Today, it serves about 32 contractors. In 1986, Friant Water Users Authority, our predecessor organization, began operating the 152‑mile Friant-Kern Canal on behalf of the federal government. We recently renegotiated that work contract, so we’ll be operating the canal under the new agreement for the next 35 years. irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF FRIANT WATER AUTHORITY.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

that footprint. I had a variety of responsibilities, ranging from serving as a project manager in the planning division and as an area manager at the Klamath Project to helping to address the drainage issue on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side. I was the program manager for the San Joaquin River Restoration Program and finished my time at Reclamation as the deputy regional director in Sacramento.

Irrigation Leader: Where does the Friant Water Authority get its water, and what determines the allocation that it receives?

Irrigation Leader: Do those farmers mainly just use the water Friant delivers, or do they also use groundwater?

Jason Phillips: The Friant Division contractors that we represent get water from the San Joaquin River basin that is impounded at Friant Dam and stored at Millerton Lake.

This supply averages about 1.8 million acre-feet per year. In terms of how the water gets allocated, Reclamation first has to make releases to some riparian rightsholders immediately below Friant Dam. Then, there is an allocation based on the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement, a legal settlement among Friant contractors, the United States, and several environmental groups. The Friant allocation specifies amounts based on contractors’ rights to the river and their demands. It’s an estimate every year of how much they’re going to use. The legal settlement allocates a certain amount of water to river restoration based on a formula that takes hydrology forecasts into account; the rest of the supply in Millerton Lake goes to Friant contractors.

Jason Phillips: That varies. Some growers have large surface water contracts and can meet most of their demand that way. Others have a small amount of surface water and rely heavily on groundwater. In the San Joaquin Valley, that can vary from one parcel to the next. That’s one of the reasons we see subsidence issues throughout the east side. Even though there are good surface water contracts, I’d say that most of the farmers there are at least somewhat dependent on groundwater, which historically was viewed as a backstop supply during droughts. In dry years when less surface water is available, more and more people are pumping groundwater.

Irrigation Leader: How much water do you deliver per year, and who are the recipients?

Jason Phillips: We deliver water to more than 30 irrigation districts and cities and to 15,000 family farms. While the farms range in size from a few dozen acres to several hundred, the average farm covers about 100 acres. After the riparian amount is taken out and the river restoration settlement amount is determined, the first 800,000 acrefeet that are available go to what are called class 1 contractors. In some years, that’s all we have available.

When available, the next 1.4 million acre-feet go to class 2 contractors. There are some contractors who only have class 1 rights and some who only have class 2 rights, but many have both. Those contracts were designed specifically to reflect contractors’ capacity for groundwater recharge (typically using class 2 supplies) versus applying water directly to crops (typically using class 1 supplies). On average, we deliver about 1 million acre-feet a year, but that can vary a lot depending on the water year. It can sometimes be over 2 million acre-feet; this year, it might only be 100,000–200,000 acre-feet.

Irrigation Leader: What are the main irrigated crops in your service area?

Jason Phillips: In the San Joaquin Valley, which is the area we serve, there are well over a million acres of farmland that rely, at least in part, on Millerton Lake water. We service four of the top five counties in the country in terms of agricultural production. The top crops are almonds, citrus, milk and other dairy products, pistachios, and table grapes.

Historically, there was a bit more alfalfa and cotton, and there’s still at least a little alfalfa production that supports the dairy farms in our region. irrigationleadermagazine.com

Irrigation Leader: What issues has drought been causing for the authority and for local water users?

Jason Phillips: On the east side, and even to a certain extent on the west side, we’ve had less surface water. More recently, the drought and regulatory-induced shortfalls have resulted in Friant contractor supplies being delivered to riparian users downstream. There are two types of riparian users downstream of us. One group of users is immediately downstream; they always get the same amount of water.

Farther downstream, there are a couple hundred acres of farmland for which the federal government purchased water rights from Millerton Lake in the early 1900s and developed agreements to meet the landowners’ water needs using Sacramento River water pumped from the Delta through the CVP’s Delta-Mendota Canal. When Reclamation can’t deliver enough Sacramento River water to these landowners, who are known as the exchange contractors, it turns to Millerton Lake and delivers water directly out of the Friant supply. Because of the regulatoryinduced shortfalls affecting the CVP, exacerbated by the recent severe drought, these deliveries have occurred in 5 of the last 8 years. They had never before occurred during the CVP’s 70‑year history. That is worsening our surface supply situation, which in turn is causing more overdraft of groundwater aquifers. This overdraft is causing not just subsidence but a significant drinking water problem, especially for many vulnerable communities. Throughout the east side, dozens of farm communities rely completely on groundwater. Their wells are only so deep, and they don’t have the resources to drill new wells, and because the groundwater table has dropped over the last couple of decades, several of these communities are now going dry every summer. In fact, according to the State of California, more than 300 wells have gone dry in the past 12 months alone. Unfortunately, even more communities may literally have no safe water to drink this summer. The only water available to them may be either trucked-in bottled drinking water or water that is unsafe because the contaminants in the aquifers aren’t flushed out with surface supplies.

June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

| 29

Irrigation Leader: Tell us more about the subsidence issues in your area.

Jason Phillips: Groundwater overdraft has been a problem for 100 years, but it’s definitely gotten worse.

Land subsidence occurs as the groundwater table drops and formerly wet soil dries up and compacts, making the ground level drop. It doesn’t happen uniformly across the whole valley; it happens in the pockets where groundwater overdraft is worst. One of those pockets where it has been really bad is right underneath the Friant-Kern Canal, starting about 88 miles from where the canal starts and continuing along it for about 30 miles. That 30‑mile stretch has subsided substantially, and the subsidence has been most dramatic within the past decade. One of our most important projects right now is to restore the canal’s capacity so that we can move water supplies through that area. When we are not able to deliver, people have to turn to groundwater.

Irrigation Leader: Can you describe other efforts you’ve carried out to address that, such as the Friant-Kern Canal middle reach capacity correction project?

Jason Phillips: We’ve identified several areas along the canal that need repair. The middle reach is the worst affected, having lost more than 60 percent of its designed capacity. For the last several years, we’ve been partnering with Reclamation to get a major construction project started. Reclamation and Friant, working as partners, just initiated phase 1 of construction of what we call a parallel reconstructed canal. That 10‑mile stretch is scheduled to be completed in January 2024. Based on the engineering studies and the alternatives we compared for this particular reach, it made the most economic and engineering sense to realign the canal. Instead of replacing dozens of bridges at road crossings, we will move the canal underneath the roads in a siphon. When the project is complete, the tie-ins at the upper and lower parts of the new canal will be connected to the existing canal. When we start deliveries in 2024, it will be through the new reach. This project will restore the capacity to 2,750 cubic feet per second. We’ll restore the canal to its full capacity of 4,000 in phase 2.

Irrigation Leader: Is there anything you would like to add about how groundwater overdraft is being addressed in your area?

30 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Irrigation Leader: In addition to some of your infrastructure projects, are you engaging in any groundwater modeling or research into the functioning of the aquifers?

Jason Phillips: We mainly rely on the GSAs to do that. Most of the GSAs are made up of water districts and irrigation districts, and a lot of those entities are also part of our water authority. We do have our own groundwater modeling consultants, who are reviewing the models that are coming out and providing real-time input regarding whether we believe that the work that is being done is adequate.

Irrigation Leader: What are your strategic plans for the future?

Jason Phillips: We place a high priority on strategic planning. Our strategic plan, which we update each year, has goals for both how we operate and how we contribute to the valley and our partners. Continuing to correct and restore the capacity of the Friant-Kern Canal is a high priority. Like almost everyone else relying on the CVP and the State Water Project in the San Joaquin Valley, we are interested in turning the tide of the deterioration of water supply reliability in the Delta. We’re interested in working with Reclamation and the regulatory agencies to increase the reliability and sustainability of Delta supplies. Along with that, we want to better capture, move, and use surplus water when it’s available, both in the San Joaquin River basin and in the Delta.

We’d also like to minimize the amount of land retirement that’s required. The implementation of SGMA will require the halt of groundwater overdraft by 2040. The only way to do that will be to stop pumping in many areas, and that’s going to shut off water to a lot of farms. For many of those farms, finding an alternate surface water supply will not be realistic. We’d like to minimize the amount of land that is retired so that we don’t see our communities face unemployment and decline. We’re continuing to work with water policymakers in Sacramento and Washington, DC, to make sure they see the benefits of farms and farming communities in California. IL Jason Phillips is the CEO of the Friant Water Authority. He can be contacted at jphillips@friantwater.org.

irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF FRIANT WATER AUTHORITY.

Jason Phillips: Most of the areas with the greatest overdraft are affected because of a lack of surface delivery. The new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) will bring the groundwater basins into a sustainable balance by 2040.

That’s what we’re going to have to rely on over time to slow or halt subsidence. We probably have 20 or more groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) in the Friant-Kern Canal’s service area. We’ve been negotiating settlement agreements with the GSAs in the area of the canal most affected by subsidence

according to which the GSAs will closely manage how much groundwater overdraft is allowed between now and 2040.

The GSAs are also contributing to the fix financially. We’ve negotiated arrangements according to which they will continue to have some additional overdraft over the next 15–20 years and will help pay for the construction of the project.

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Professor Daniele Zaccaria: Applying Science-Based Solutions to Growing Water Concerns in the Central Valley

A

t the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and the University of California Cooperative Extension, researchers help growers adopt advanced water management solutions in the face of recurring drought and dwindling water supplies. In this interview, Irrigation Leader speaks with Daniele Zaccaria, an associate professor at UC Davis and an agricultural water management specialist at the University of California Cooperative Extension, about how his work helps growers, state agencies, and regulators.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Daniele Zaccaria: I’m an irrigation engineer by training. I completed a PhD in civil and environmental engineering at Utah State University in the irrigation engineering division.

Before that, I got an MS degree in land and water resources management for irrigated agriculture at the International Center for Mediterranean Agronomic Studies in Italy, focusing on engineering aspects of the performance of largescale pressurized water delivery systems. The distinctive feature of my background is that I have worked for a long time in irrigated agricultural production under limited and impaired water supplies in semiarid climatic conditions, and I have collaborated with professionals from a variety of fields, including hydrologists, civil engineers, agronomists, horticulturists, soil physicists, and crop physiologists. For the last 9 years, I have been at UC Davis’s department of land, air, and water resources, where I have been conducting applied research, extension education, and outreach activities on agricultural water management and irrigation.

Irrigation Leader: Please describe the geographical and hydrological characteristics of the Central Valley, particularly as they affect irrigated agriculture.

34 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

groundwater, and treated wastewater).

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) and the UC Cooperative Extension.

Daniele Zaccaria: The UC Cooperative Extension is the executive arm of the UC ANR. We engage with the community and the agricultural production industry to provide science-based solutions to their problems. We have about 700 academic researchers in 40 departments at 4 campuses, about 130 campus-based Cooperative Extension specialists, and 200 locally based Cooperative Extension farm advisors and specialists. We have nine research and extension centers throughout the state of California and 57 local county offices, where farm advisors and specialists provide support to the agricultural production industry and local communities. We tend to work from the bottom up to anticipate problems and to try to address them before they become too serious or complex.

Irrigation Leader: How do you engage with farmers?

Daniele Zaccaria: Sometimes, farmers ask for help or technical support, and we put together a solution to address their specific challenges. Sometimes, we work with crop commodity boards, such as the Pistachio Board, the Citrus Board, the Almond Board, the Walnut Board, or the Avocado and Table Grape Commissions, to address specific production and marketing challenges. We also work on irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE UC COOPERATIVE EXTENSION.

Daniele Zaccaria: Geographically, it’s a pretty large agricultural production area with a range of environmental conditions for growing a wide variety of high-value crops and is characterized by various hydrological setups that result in multiple water-related challenges, including water quantity and water quality issues. The scale and intensity of agricultural production in the valley is distinctive. I’ve seen a similar setup in the Central Valley of Chile, but the competition for water among the environmental, agricultural, and municipal sectors in the Central Valley of California is particularly intense and contentious. The heterogeneity of water use challenges and problems across California’s Central Valley is distinctive, as is the variability of water supplies and sources (surface water,

Daniele Zaccaria installing an energy flux station to measure grapevine evapotranspiration in a vineyard at the UC Oakville Experimental Station in the Napa Valley.

a regular basis with state agencies, such as the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), the California Department of Food and Agriculture, or the California State Water Control Board, to address specific problems, to help design or implement incentives for growers to adopt sustainable production practices, or to help enforce resourceefficient water management policies and strategies.

Irrigation Leader: What are the main challenges facing agricultural water users in the Central Valley, and how do those differ from challenges elsewhere in California?

Daniele Zaccaria: Water quantity, water quality, and the environmental and economic sustainability of agricultural water use are growing challenges in the face of rising weather and climate variability. The magnitude of these water-related issues in the Central Valley of California is greater than in other areas of the state. The effects of weather fluctuations and weather extremes (droughts, heat waves, and so on) on crop production could normally be mitigated through irrigation. However, the available water supplies are becoming increasingly limited and restricted as a result of more frequent and prolonged droughts and of increasingly stringent environmental regulations.

Irrigation Leader: What are the most important recent advances in water management, and how are UC Davis and the UC Cooperative Extension helping farmers to adopt them?

Daniele Zaccaria: What I see as the most promising water management advances in California are the correct use of microirrigation methods for water and nutrient applications, irrigation system automation, variable-rate irrigation, fertigation, and the use of novel flow regulation and control technologies for improved water distribution among the different zones of districts’ command areas and for on-demand water delivery to farmers. The ability to forecast weather conditions 1–7 days in advance also represents a breakthrough that will help enable prospective irrigation scheduling.

However, there is a large and increasing disconnect between the on-farm water delivery requirements needed to enable the efficient use of microirrigation (in terms of timing, frequency, duration, flow rate, and pressure heads) and the water supply delivery schedules of water agencies and purveyors. This disconnect can only be addressed with diagnostic evaluations of the actual performance of water delivery services relative to on-farm needs and an appraisal of the modernization needs of existing irrigation delivery infrastructure.

Irrigation Leader: How does the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) factor into your work?

Daniele Zaccaria: SGMA aims to enable various overdrafted aquifers across the state to reach environmental balance between water extractions and natural or artificial recharge. irrigationleadermagazine.com

That entails some readjustment of either the cropped acreage or of the water management practices for maintaining the current planted acreage. We are still coming to understand how SGMA will change the dynamics of water demand and use over space and time across the state. Some research-based information that I am collecting will help the agricultural and regulatory communities find viable water management solutions to match the available water supplies with the cropped acreage that can be farmed profitably and avoid further environmental degradation. Alternatively, land use will have to be changed to align with the available water supply and to comply with the environmental regulations. Specifically, my research findings aim to increase water productivity (more crop per drop) or to reduce the water footprint of agricultural production through the implementation of resource-efficient farming practices through optimized irrigation management, deficit irrigation practices, the use of winter cover cropping, and reduced tillage, among other methods.

Irrigation Leader: Would you discuss your other recent research?

Daniele Zaccaria: With my team at UC Davis and in collaboration with other UC faculty and academics, I conduct applied research to provide science-based information to help growers respond to drought. We also work on drought preparedness. In addition, I conduct research activities in commercial production fields to measure the actual evapotranspiration of different agronomic and horticultural crops, especially high-value specialty crops such as almonds, citrus, pistachios, and wine grapes. Over the last 6–7 years, my research team has been measuring the actual evapotranspiration in commercial production fruit and nut orchards and vineyards. We help the farming community find new ways to schedule and manage irrigation and implement efficient irrigation systems and practices to reduce the environmental footprint of irrigated agriculture. In 2018, I helped establish the California Crop Coefficient Science Collaborative (3C Science Collaborative), which is coconvened by the UC ANR and DWR and aims to improve the quality and dissemination of crop coefficient information for California crops. In 2020, I received a research grant award from a federal funding program that will enable the 3C Science Collaborative to develop a web repository of quality-ensured crop coefficient information for the 10 most water demanding crops in California, which will enhance agricultural water demand estimations and irrigation scheduling in the water-limited context of California. IL Daniele Zaccaria is an associate professor in the department of land, air, and water resources at the University of California, Davis, and an agricultural water management specialist at the University of California Cooperative Extension. He can be contacted at dzaccaria@ucdavis.edu.

June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

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Modesto Junior College: Training the Next Generation of Irrigation Professionals

A Rubicon BladeValve on Modesto Junior College’s demonstration farm.

L

ocated in the heart of California’s Central Valley, Modesto Junior College plays an important role in training students to work in today’s agriculture industry. As part of that process, it promotes new agricultural methods and technologies. In this interview, Irrigation Leader speaks with agriculture instructor Ryan Patterson about Modesto Junior College’s irrigation and agriculture mechanics programs, which are giving students hands-on experience with new technologies, such as Rubicon gate systems.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Ryan Patterson: I grew up in Penn Valley, California, a small foothill community 2 hours northeast of Modesto. I’ve spent the last 17 years as a high school agriculture instructor, focusing primarily on agriculture mechanics, which includes welding, fabrication, electricity, plumbing, and various other mechanical skills. Over the past 6 or 7 years, I’ve also been an adjunct teacher at Modesto Junior College, where I work in the welding and agriculture departments.

Ryan Patterson: One word to describe Modesto Junior College is broad. The college can help students who want to take general education classes before they transfer to a 4‑year university as well as those who want to gain technical training, complete their associate’s degrees, and move directly into their careers. Other students attend Modesto to add to their skill set through a certificate program before starting a new job. Modesto Junior College is well known

38 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Irrigation Leader: Would you tell us about the demonstration farm at Modesto Junior College?

Ryan Patterson: The farm is the home of our production beef, dairy, swine, and sheep units as well as an equestrian unit. On the back corner of the pasture, along the canal, is our irrigation unit, which includes a holding pond with four pumps and two filter systems. We have a full solar setup and a submersible pump running off 100 percent solar energy or, if need be, a utility power unit provided by Modesto Irrigation District. All our pumps are controlled by variablefrequency drives and have sensors to monitor pressure and flow for each pump output. The unit is constructed to run any type of irrigation system commonly found in California on a small scale. The newest system includes the Rubicon high-performance surface irrigation system. We installed a Rubicon SlipMeter; Rubicon BladeValves; a gateway, which is a communications device; and a weather station.

We converted our existing flood-irrigated pasture to the Rubicon BladeValve system.

The farm, the irrigation system, and the agricultural pavilion are on the West Campus. The pavilion is a central meeting place where the college holds livestock shows, tractor pulls, fundraiser dinners, and other community events. The pavilion also holds our plant and animal science classrooms, a full kitchen, a lobby, and meeting areas. Our welding and power mechanics classes are taught on the irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MODESTO JUNIOR COLLEGE.

Irrigation Leader: Please introduce Modesto Junior College.

for the quality of our agriculture and environmental sciences department, which includes ag mechanics, plant and animal sciences, and horticulture.

East Campus, along with our agricultural business and environmental science classes. I teach a variety of agriculture mechanics classes, including welding and agriculture fabrication, as well as irrigation and drainage classes.

Irrigation Leader: Does the Rubicon system on campus use the FarmConnect software?

Ryan Patterson: Yes, the Rubicon system is on the FarmConnect software. The BladeValves are all individually connected directly to the gateway system. The BladeValves have a battery pack and a FerIT Solar Node, so they remain charged and able to communicate with the gateway, which is located on top of the holding pond. The gateway is an Internetbased device that receives weather data from the Rubicon weather station and regulates the BladeValves and FerITs. In the future, our gateway will be able to monitor soil moisture.

The other part of the system is the SlipMeter, which is installed directly into the canal. The SlipMeter is a computer-controlled Rubicon product that operates by tilting a gate open a certain number of inches to set an appropriate flow rate. This morning, we’re running our system at approximately 16 cubic feet per second (cfs) through 4 BladeValves (traditionally, we would run 16 cfs through 16 valves). The SlipMeter allows our farm manager to adjust the flow rate, and depending on the ditch level, the gate will open or close to maintain that flow rate.

We also use a web-based program called FarmConnect that sets an irrigation schedule, so we can adjust timing, manually open and close valves, and monitor soil moisture.

This tool predicts irrigation needs based on weather patterns, soil moisture, and plant transpiration rates.

FarmConnect is working toward creating a completely automated program to schedule SlipMeter openings online; however, we currently open the SlipMeter manually.

The last main part of the system consists of ultrasonic water depth sensors called SmartFront sensors. SmartFront sensors are installed at the halfway point of each check, where they collect water depth data and determine the needed duration of the irrigation. Currently, we are running our fourth irrigation with this system, so we are still collecting data from the SlipMeter and SmartFront sensors so that we can make the most efficient use of this system.

Eventually, the SmartFront senor will automatically adjust the duration of the set.

Irrigation Leader: What are you learning about the Rubicon system?

Ryan Patterson: There’s only one other BladeValve system in the United States, so I’m excited to see the results of this automated system. Efficient water usage is extremely important in California. We applied for and received a grant to install the Rubicon system. Being centrally located, our campus was a great place to experiment with the new irrigationleadermagazine.com

concept of high-velocity surface irrigation. We are excited to see all the technology perform.

Recently, we retrofitted an existing 30‑inch pipeline from the 1950s. We experienced some challenges during that process. But Rubicon claims that its system and high-flowrate method irrigates more efficiently and uses less water.

Traditionally, we open all 16 valves, let the water run for 3–4 hours, close the valves, and lower the gate on the ditch to keep the pressure equalized. With the Rubicon system, we’re still running water at the same rate, 16–18 cfs, but we’re pushing it through 4 rather than 16 valves, meaning that the velocity of the water is much higher. The water pushes across the check more quickly, which means there is less waterlogging at the beginning of the field and a more consistent distribution of water across the check. During the first couple of irrigations, we replicated the method we’ve used in the past to review the system a second time.

We discovered that the water moves through the pasture more quickly; we’re able to push water faster; and the overall irrigation time is decreasing, meaning we’re using less water.

That is essential in California, since we’re faced with this drought. In the past, flood irrigation demonstrated 40–50 percent usage efficiency, but Rubicon claims that it has reached 85–90 percent. Rubicon originates in Australia, but the company is modifying some of its technology to work in the Central Valley environment. Although we’re learning along with Rubicon, we’re excited to take part in this process as we adjust to its retrofit system. The company’s representatives accept input well and make necessary changes to the program when we ask. We’re thankful to be able to work with Rubicon, and we’re excited to continue developing this relationship.

Irrigation Leader: Why is it important to introduce students to new technology, and what sorts of technology do you want to introduce them to?

Ryan Patterson: I think a big part of education is being attuned to industry trends. Students need to learn about what they will see when they enter the workforce and learn skills that are viable for their industry. When choosing the technology that should be incorporated into a learning environment, we need to ensure that it is accepted by the current industry. Our students are more receptive to technology than many in older generations, simply because they’re more accustomed to using it. They recognize the benefits that come along with efficient technology—water conservation, lower water costs, and lower labor costs. IL Ryan Patterson is an agriculture mechanics instructor at Modesto Junior College. He can be contacted at pattersonr@mjc.edu.

June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

| 39

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Daniel Cozad of the Central Valley Salinity Coalition: Addressing Salts and Nitrates in Central Valley Groundwater Irrigation Leader: Please give us an overview of CVSC’s activities.

Daniel Cozad: We formed CVSC to work with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board and the California State Water Resources Control Board, which are state agencies, to rewrite regulations in a way that provides clean drinking water while ensuring the long-term sustainability of the region’s agriculture. That requires both a scientific and a technological approach. We also conduct legal and legislative efforts to set policy. In the long term, the biggest challenge for us is to build the salinity management infrastructure for the Central Valley. This effort is likely to cost billions of dollars over the next 25‑plus years.

Irrigation Leader: Please introduce the issue of salt and nitrate concentrations in the Central Valley.

A Central Valley orchard.

F

armers in California’s Central Valley grow around 250 crops and provide one-quarter of the nation’s food. That intensive land use means a big thirst for water. But nitrates and rising salt levels threaten the clean water that communities and agriculture depend on. Irrigation Leader spoke with Daniel Cozad, the executive director of the Central Valley Salinity Coalition (CVSC) and the program director of the Central Valley Salinity Alternatives for Long-Term Sustainability (CV‑SALTS) program, about the coalition’s efforts to create a sustainable future for the region—and for the nation’s food supply.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

42 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

Irrigation Leader: How does CV-SALTS address that problem?

Daniel Cozad: Nitrates are addressed within CV‑SALTS by groundwater subbasins called management zones. The management zones are organized as coalitions or nonprofit corporations. The board of each is made up of permittees in those areas. Farming and industry entities that need to be able to discharge nitrate generally join management zones for compliance in areas of high priority. As a group, they irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CVSC.

Daniel Cozad: I am a chemist by training, so water quality was my entrée into working in the broader water industry. I have managed a couple of regional public water agencies. In 2006, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board initiated the CV‑SALTS program as a cooperative effort among regulators, permittees, environmental interests, and other parties interested in Central Valley water quality.

In 2008, I launched CVSC to supervise the study and business aspects of CV‑SALTS. CVSC is a nonprofit composed of about 25 members. About half of them represent either irrigated agriculture or related industries, such as food processing, wine, and dairy. The other half include cities, counties, special districts, and industry associations. I’m the executive director of CVSC.

Daniel Cozad: Nitrates from dairy and irrigated agriculture, septic wastewater treatment, and other sources already impair portions of the Central Valley’s groundwater used for drinking water and pose a potential health risk to a segment of the population. Rising salt levels threaten to turn this productive basin into a land where the water is not fit to drink and soils are not capable of growing highvalue crops. The water that moves through the Sacramento Delta into areas like the Tulare Lake basin and the San Joaquin Valley contains salt. With respect to irrigation, if you bring in irrigation water and not much of it leaves— in other words, if you’re farming efficiently—you’re going to increase the amount of salt through evapotranspiration.

Previous agricultural practices were not as refined as today’s with regard to nitrates, and more nitrates were left in the root zone of crops and got into the groundwater below. If you use that groundwater for agriculture, there’s really no problem, but if you drink it, high concentrations can pose a problem.

figure out the best way to manage nitrate, test domestic drinking water wells, and offer clean drinking water at no cost to those who have contaminated wells. We have six priority 1 management zones and another four or five priority 2 management zones coming next year. They test individual domestic wells and offer free clean drinking water to people with affected wells in their areas. The CV‑SALTS process rewrote the regulations to allow farming and community water use to continue rather than be prohibited or severely restricted.

For salt, we’re doing a prioritization optimization study to figure out the most cost-efficient and cost-effective process to deal with excess salt and the most efficient place to remove it. In places where salts occur in too high a concentration, water can be put in large evaporation basins.

The water evaporates, and the salt is left behind without affecting high-quality water. We’re doing a bunch of that as a group, and as long as you’re participating in the study, you don’t have to make any draconian changes to your operations or changes to permits to quickly come into compliance. We believe that the combination of these two approaches— nitrate management zones and salt management—will allow the water’s beneficial uses to continue.

Irrigation Leader: What water quality regulations or permits are already in place, and how do those affect your members?

Daniel Cozad: The members of CVSC all have discharge permits issued by the state. Farmers join a coalition under a general order, and the coalition works directly with the farmers to comply with the permit’s permissions. Individual communities have wastewater permits that are also issued by the state, which dictate how much nitrate or salt can be discharged. We have two options in each program: Permittees can comply with a conservative permitting approach or they can participate in alternative programs that aim to improve drinking water quickly and develop salt sustainability plans.

Under the former approach, you document that you discharge so little salt or nitrate that your facility has a minimal effect on the groundwater or surface water you discharge to. Few people have taken that path, as the requirement is difficult to meet. Alternative compliance is more cost effective for most permittees. That involves joining a management zone or participating in the prioritization optimization study to refine the long-term solutions for salt.

Irrigation Leader: In addition to working with state and local agencies, have you had to lobby for new legislation?

Daniel Cozad: We’ve operated within existing state laws.

The changes are under the purview of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. Our members have opposed legislative proposals that would make it more difficult to implement these new regulations we’ve been working on for so long. Obviously, we have a huge irrigationleadermagazine.com

investment in making regulations work both for the water board and for our members. On the nitrate side, getting clean drinking water to people who need it is not just a regulatory problem. In many cases, these are small, disadvantaged rural communities that grew up around agriculture or agriculture-related activities. Nitrates aren’t their only problem. They have many other contaminants in their water, including arsenic, perchlorates, and 123‑TCP. Many of our members worked with environmental justice groups to create a funding source to help address those water contaminants. The management zones that are addressing nitrates are now using that funding to help get clean water to many of those communities.

Irrigation Leader: What are CVSC’s main accomplishments thus far?

Daniel Cozad: CVSC funded and produced a salt and nitrate management plan that was finished about 4 years ago. It looked at all the problems and potential solutions and proposed the best ideas to the water board. Then we worked with the Central Valley Water Quality Control Board, the California State Water Resources Control Board, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to write and approve a new amendment to the basin plan. That basin plan amendment took the salt and nitrate management plan and adapted it to regulatory requirements. Those are the two major accomplishments. We also helped our management zones get off the ground and got this new prioritization optimization study underway. There are more than 3,000 participants in the study, all of whom contributed funding and will participate in this study over the next 10 years.

Irrigation Leader: Do you have a message for legislators and regulators at the national level?

Daniel Cozad: We want legislators at the national level to know that finding solutions to salinity in the Central Valley for the future is as critical as any of the investments that have been made in California. Farming just won’t be viable here if these programs don’t succeed in the long term.

We’re looking over the next few years to identify long-term funding to support these regulatory and water quality needs.

It’s going to take some investment to ensure that farming meets all the environmental rules and regulations for the next 100 years. It’s going to require national funding for us to continue to feed the nation. IL Daniel Cozad is the executive director of the Central Valley Salinity Coalition. He can be contacted at dcozad@cvsalinity.org.

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Mapping Aquifers From the Sky: California’s Statewide Airborne Electromagnetic Surveys

T

o implement the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), local and state water managers need better information on groundwater.

In response to that need, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is conducting airborne electromagnetic (AEM) surveys to map the subsurface beneath the state’s highand medium-priority groundwater basins. Irrigation Leader spoke with DWR’s Katherine Dlubac and Steven Springhorn about the surveys, which will help refine hydrogeologic models and identify potential areas for recharging groundwater.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

Katherine Dlubac: I am an engineering geologist in the Technical Assistance Section within the Sustainable Groundwater Management Office at DWR. I’m also the project manager for DWR’s statewide AEM surveys. I hold bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a PhD in geophysics with a focus on using geophysical methods to characterize groundwater resources. After completing my graduate work at Stanford University, I went into private consulting and then started working with the California State Water Resources Control Board’s groundwater management program to support the implementation of SGMA. I then moved to DWR to work with Steven and the rest of the team to start up the statewide AEM surveying project.

Steven Springhorn: I am a supervising engineering geologist at DWR. I am a program manager within DWR’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Office and lead our groundwater technical assistance activities. I hold undergraduate and master’s degrees in geology. In 2005, I took a job as a graduate student assistant at DWR, and I’ve been working on basin characterization and groundwater monitoring and management efforts at DWR ever since.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the general issues of groundwater and hydrogeology in the Central Valley.

44 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022

information about a specific spot, but it’s expensive to drill and collect that type of information. In addition, the boreholes are widely spaced, so you have to interpolate, and there is uncertainty about conditions between those points. This new technology, by contrast, gives us a continuous view of the subsurface.

Irrigation Leader: When did DWR decide to conduct AEM surveying?

Steven Springhorn: The passage of SGMA in 2014 created a paradigm shift in groundwater management. It sparked significant action in the groundwater community to work toward meeting its new requirements. One of DWR’s principal roles is providing technical assistance to local groundwater managers. When we asked them what they needed, they told us they needed better information about the subsurface. irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF DWR.

Steven Springhorn: Groundwater is a critical resource in California, especially in times of drought like right now.

During droughts, up to 60 percent of the entire state’s water supply comes from groundwater. This underscores how important it is to understand and analyze groundwater basins across the state. We need to continue providing upto-date groundwater information to local and state agencies to help them manage groundwater sustainably.

In the past, information about groundwater was gathered by drilling boreholes in various locations. That can provide good

A helicopter with AEM equipment, seen here at a DWR event in Acampo in San Joaquin County.

We knew that AEM surveying had already been used successfully for water resources mapping in other countries (Demark and Australia) and states (Nebraska), and we wanted to see how it would work in California. In 2018, a pilot project was launched by Rosemary Knight at Stanford University in partnership with the Danish government, DWR, the state water board, and local water managers in three areas of California. The success of the pilot project enabled us to secure funding from the governor and the legislature to survey many more groundwater basins across the state. We’re almost done collecting AEM data in almost 100 groundwater basins as part of DWR’s statewide AEM survey project. All of this has happened rapidly.

Irrigation Leader: Would you provide an overview of the statewide AEM survey project?

Katherine Dlubac: DWR is conducting AEM surveys across California’s high- and medium-priority groundwater basins where data collection is feasible. We’re focusing on those basins because they are the ones that are required to develop and implement groundwater sustainability plans under SGMA. In these basins, we’re collecting data in a coarse grid, which allows us to cover the entire groundwater basin and provides us with an improved understanding of the large-scale aquifer structure within and across basins. The first surveys were conducted in summer 2021, and surveys are planned to continue into 2023. We conduct the surveys for a few months at a time within specific basins. This past spring, we completed a 3‑month campaign to conduct surveys across the entire Central Valley, which was quite a large undertaking. After the data are collected, they are processed and interpreted and then made available to the public on the California Natural Resources Agency Open Data Portal on a rolling basis about 6–12 months after the surveys are complete. Currently, data reports have been published for the Salinas and Cuyama Valleys, and AEM datasets are available for the Salinas and Cuyama Valleys, Northern California, and the North San Francisco Bay. The data that we collected this past spring in the Central Valley will begin to be posted at the end of 2022. The data and data reports are available at https://data.cnra.ca.gov/dataset/aem.

Irrigation Leader: How does AEM work?

Katherine Dlubac: AEM involves a large loop that is towed beneath a helicopter. As the helicopter flies across the surface of the earth along defined flight lines, it tows the large loop at a height of about 100 feet above the earth’s surface. During the survey, a signal is sent through the loop down into the aquifer. The signals from the aquifer bounce back and are measured on equipment mounted on that loop. We’re measuring the electromagnetic properties of the aquifer materials, specifically their electrical resistivity, which describes the material’s ability to resist an electric current. irrigationleadermagazine.com

We know that coarse-grain-dominated materials, such as sand and gravel, are more resistive. Those are the parts of the aquifer that typically store water and are where water can more easily flow. Fine-grain-dominated materials, such as silt and clay, are less resistive. Those materials tend to inhibit or slow water flow within the aquifer. With the data that we’re collecting, we can provide continuous images that show the distribution of materials throughout the aquifer down to a depth of about 1,000 feet.

Irrigation Leader: Does DWR contract with a company to do this?

Katherine Dlubac: Yes; a diverse national and international contracting team is supporting DWR in this work. We contract with Ramboll and SkyTEM, two companies based in Denmark. SkyTEM is the geophysical company that collects the data and Ramboll is a consulting firm with specialized geophysicists who process and interpret the data.

Denmark is one of the countries that pioneered this work, and it is quite advanced in using it. The team also includes GEI, which supports DWR in compiling existing data, and Sinton Helicopters, which is a helicopter company with highly experienced pilots. Our team at DWR coordinates with the local groundwater sustainability agencies and state and federal agencies on areas of interest within their basins, develops the plans for the data collection, provides the flight lines to the contractors, conducts presurvey public outreach, publishes the data, and communicates the data to the public.

Irrigation Leader: After identifying the soil types in the aquifers, do you need to cross-check to ensure that the soils in a given aquifer actually contain water?

Katherine Dlubac: We interpret our data with the aid of the information we already have about the aquifers. That includes lithology information from well completion reports, resistivity logs, and e-logs; information on groundwater levels; and information on total dissolved solids concentrations.

Irrigation Leader: Do you create a user-friendly map of the aquifers for the use of local authorities?

Katherine Dlubac: Yes. We’re excited to announce the very recent launch of an innovative new tool that allows the public to view the data: the AEM Data Viewer. This GIS-based tool displays AEM data in a three-dimensional space and allows the user to zoom in and view the data from various angles. The tool is quite nimble and can be accessed on a computer or mobile phone. What’s especially great about this tool is that it does not require the user to download data or to use specialized software, so it can easily be accessed by groundwater managers and groundwater stakeholders. The tool currently displays AEM data for the Salinas and Cuyama Valleys, Northern California, and the North San June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

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Irrigation Leader: You mentioned that the statewide survey is almost complete. What are the next steps?

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irrigationleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF DWR.

Katherine Dlubac: First, we’ll be finishing up the statewide AEM surveys by collecting data in fall 2022 and spring 2023 in the remaining basins. After that’s complete, we’re going to go back and collect additional AEM data or other types of geophysical data in specific areas to answer defined questions or for specific applications. We may go back to some areas DWR's AEM Data Viewer is a GIS-based tool that displays AEM data in a three-dimensional to collect additional AEM data to fill in the space and allows the user to zoom in and view the data from various angles. coarse grid of data we collected as a part of the statewide AEM surveys. We may also collect towed transient electromagnetic data. This Francisco Bay. As the data from the statewide AEM survey method is essentially the same as AEM except continue to be published over the coming months and years, that the equipment is towed behind an all-terrain vehicle. It we’ll continue to add them to the viewer to keep it up to date. can provide a higher-resolution picture of the subsurface. We Stakeholders and groundwater sustainability agencies alike might also collect other types of geophysical borehole data, will have access to the data reports through the California like nuclear magnetic resonance logging. This is all to say Natural Resources Agency Open Data Portal and the online that the statewide AEM surveys were the first step in getting AEM Data Viewer. a large-scale understanding of our aquifers, but there will be more work that we will do throughout the state over the next Irrigation Leader: How will this work support SGMA and several years to refine and improve that understanding. the creation of groundwater sustainability plans?

Irrigation Leader: Is there anything you would like to add?

Steven Springhorn: One area where we’re seeing a lot of interest is groundwater recharge projects. The AEM surveys Steven Springhorn: If any of your California-based readers are giving us new information about how the surface is are not yet involved in SGMA implementation in their connected to the subsurface, helping water managers areas, we would highly encourage them to connect with their identify the best pathways and areas for recharging local groundwater sustainability agencies. It’s important for groundwater. They need to know where the gravels and landowners and other local voices from the community to sands are and how they connect to the surface so they be involved in these groundwater policy decisions. Local can get water into the ground. They also need to know planning and decisionmaking efforts are continuing to where the clays are, because if you pump out more than is happen in basins across the state, and we highly encourage recharged in certain types of clays, you can have subsidence, participation at the local level. IL or the sinking of the land. This is already occurring in parts of California. AEM survey data will help us better identify areas that are susceptible to subsidence. Local agencies are Katherine Dlubac is an engineering already using this information to update their hydrogeologic geologist in the Technical Assistance conceptual models and other parts of their sustainability Section of California’s Department of plans under SGMA, which is encouraging.

Water Resources and the project manager of the statewide AEM surveys.

Irrigation Leader: How might this information be directly relevant to irrigation districts and irrigating farmers?

Steven Springhorn is a supervising engineering geologist leading the Technical Steven Springhorn: Local groundwater sustainability Assistance Section at DWR. agencies are working with landowners and communities in groundwater basins and making tough decisions For more information about the statewide about how groundwater is going to be used in coming AEM surveys, visit the project website at years. The survey data will help these local water https://water.ca.gov/programs/sgma/aem managers, working with farmers and other members of or e-mail aem@water.ca.gov. the water community, to implement their groundwater sustainability plans.

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JOB LISTINGS

Does your organization have a job listing you would like to advertise in our pages? Irrigation Leader provides this service to irrigation districts, water agencies, and hydropower facilities free of charge. For more information, please email Kris Polly at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

FLATHEAD RESERVATION WATER MANAGEMENT BOARD WATER RESOURCES MANAGER/ENGINEER Salary: $120,000–$150,000 annually Location: Ronan, MT Deadline: Until filled Summary: The water resources manager/engineer is responsible to the board to accomplish the work necessary to meet the goals of the water compact by performing, facilitating, delegating, and reviewing the work product of others. The water resources manager/ engineer is the lead staff person with ultimate authority for the operation of the office and inherent functions.

Apply: Please submit a letter of interest along with your resume or curriculum vitae to Flathead Reservation Water Management Board, c/o Chairman Clayton Matt, P.O. Box 37, Ronan, MT 59864 or by e-mail to cmatt4wmb@gmail.com.

ARVIN-EDISON WATER STORAGE DISTRICT DISTRICT ENGINEER Salary: Based upon qualifications Location: Arvin, CA Deadline: Until filled Summary: Under the supervision of the engineermanager and deputy general manager, the district engineer supervises the engineering department, including watermasters.

Apply: https://aewsd.org/job-openings/job-openings/

ARVIN-EDISON WATER STORAGE DISTRICT GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT Salary: Based upon qualifications Location: Arvin, CA Deadline: Until filled Summary: Under management direction, the general superintendent plans, organizes, directs, and coordinates the operations and maintenance (O&M) functions of the district, including, but not limited to, environmental compliance, safety compliance, repairs and construction.

Apply: https://aewsd.org/job-openings/job-openings/ irrigationleadermagazine.com

ARVIN-EDISON WATER STORAGE DISTRICT HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGER Salary: Based upon qualifications Location: Arvin, CA Deadline: Deadline: Until filled Summary: Under the supervision of the engineermanager and deputy general manager/assistant secretary-treasurer, the human resources manager assists in the development and administration of human resources related programs, policies, and procedures and performs responsible administrative work in the areas of recruitment and selection, benefits, administration, classification, compensation, labor negotiations, employee relations, and training and development.

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For more job listings, please visit: irrigationleadermagazine.com/job-board/.

June 2022 | IRRIGATION LEADER

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Upcoming Events June 6–7 Idaho Water Users Association, Water Law and Resource Issues Seminar, Sun Valley, ID June 9–10 Tristate Tour and Meeting (Idaho, Oregon, Washington), Bend, OR June 13–16 Nevada Water Resources Association, Well and Water Week, Reno, NV June 15–17 Texas Water Conservation Association, Summer Conference, Round Rock, TX June TBD North Dakota Water Users Association, Summer Meeting, Fargo, ND July 4–8 I.S. Rivers, International Conference, Lyon, France July 11–13 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association and North Dakota Water Education Foundation, Joint Summer Water Meeting and Executive Briefing, Fargo, ND July 20–22 Groundwater Management Districts Association, Summer Conference, Copper Mountain Resort, CO July 21–24 National Association of Counties, Annual Conference and Expo, Adams County, CO July 25–27 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Seminar, Fairmont, MT July 28 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association, Water Day at the North Dakota State Fair, Minot, ND August 1–3 National Conference of State Legislatures, Legislative Summit, Denver, CO August 8–11 Tristate Seminar, Las Vegas, NV August 10–12 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Seminar/Tour, Hot Springs, MT August 17 The California-Nevada Section of the American Water Works Association, Water Education Seminar, Santiago Canyon, CA August 23–24 Colorado Water Congress, Summer Conference, Steamboat, CO September 13–15 Husker Harvest Days, Grand Island, NE September 14–17 European Irrigation Association, GaLaBau Landscaping, Maintenance, and Construction Expo, Nuremberg, Germany September 15–16 World Academy of Science Engineering and Technology, International Conference on Drip Irrigation for Agriculture, Zurich, Switzerland September 16 Agribusiness and Water Council of Arizona, H2Open Golf Tournament, Casa Grande, AZ September 19–20 Nevada Water Resources Association, Fall Symposium, Reno, NV September 26–28 National Drilling Association Convention, Pittsburgh, PA September 26–29 National Rural Water Association, WaterPro Conference, National Harbor, MD

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