Water-demanding farms looked at as resources vanish

YUMA – Along its final miles, the Colorado River snakes through a dizzying series of dams, canals, siphons and ditches, diverted to hundreds of users in Arizona and California until barely a trickle remains.

What flows through this watery Grand Central Station could fill the needs of all the homes and offices in Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas and much of Southern California.

But it doesn’t.

The water, more than a billion gallons a day, irrigates vast fields of wheat, alfalfa, cotton, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, melons and a produce aisle of other fruits and vegetables, feeding an industry tilled from the desert more than a century ago.

In Arizona, the crops yield about 1 percent of the state’s annual economic output, yet the fields soak up 70 percent of the water supply. That outsize allotment has painted a target on the farms as urban water managers search for the next bucket of water to meet future demands.

Because so much of what farmers use flows from renewable surface supplies, such as the Colorado River, agricultural water seems like a good pool to tap. Using that water would reduce the pressure on the state’s vanishing groundwater resources and reduce the need to pay for expensive alternatives, such as desalinated seawater.

But the issues have grown more complicated than transferring water from one user to another. The conflicts have evolved from the clearly defined us vs. them – cities vs. farmers – to more nuanced sustainability issues, such as trading future urban water supplies for locally grown food.

The Arizona Republic