Reclamation Launches Basin Studies

WATER: Reclamation launches basin study program to plan for future challenges
April Reese, E&E reporter

With climate change, population growth and the needs of endangered species stressing water supplies in the West like never before, the Bureau of Reclamation has launched a new program aimed at studying some of the West's hardest-hit basins to help prepare them for the unprecedented challenges that lie ahead.

Last week, Reclamation Commissioner Mike Connor announced the first three basins to receive federal funding under the agency's new Basin Study Program: the Colorado River Basin, the Yakima River Basin in Washington, and the Milk and St. Mary river systems in Montana. Reclamation will provide $1 million for the Colorado River Basin study, which will quantify supply and demand; $1.3 million for the Yakima project, which will focus on infrastructure restoration; and $350,000 for the Milk and St. Mary study, which will explore how to meet future needs. All three grants will be augmented by matching funds from states, local governments and tribes.

All of the studies will measure existing supplies and determine whether water supply infrastructure is sufficient to meet future demands. The studies will also include recommendations on how to optimize operations to supply adequate water and power while accounting for environmental values, according to Reclamation.

The two-year studies will "help lead us down the road to adaptation strategies," Connor said during an address to the Colorado River Symposium, held in Santa Fe, N.M., last week. Given the shrunken snowpacks, earlier runoff and more severe storms and droughts that are expected to beleaguer the West as a result of climate change, it is important to understand how much water is available now and how to manage those supplies to meet future demands, he said.

The new Basin Study Program is part of a larger effort within Reclamation and the Interior Department to meet water needs for both people and wildlife in the face of climate change and population growth, Connor noted. He added that it is also a key part of Reclamation's implementation of the SECURE Water Act, which was passed as part of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.

"It's unclear whether our usage and management is sustainable," he said. "That's what I see Reclamation's role is moving forward: [providing] certainty and sustainability."

Connor's Sept. 17 announcement came on the heels of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's signing of an order earlier in the week outlining the department's strategy for addressing the current and future impacts of climate change on the country's natural resources, including water.

Connor said he hopes the basin studies will provide a model for how to assess available supplies and how to respond to the inevitable changes that will place new demands on river basins. Reclamation has asked for another $4 million in Interior's 2010 budget request to fund more basin studies next year, Connor said. "There are a lot of river basins out there" that need such studies, he said.

The three basins awarded funds were chosen from more than two-dozen letters of interest amounting to about $10 million in requested funding.
Praise for the basin-level approach
Tony Willardson, executive director of the Western States Water Council, a project of the Western Governors' Association that focuses on water issues, commended Reclamation for taking a basin-level approach to addressing the unprecedented demands on water supplies.

"Instead of the federal government addressing a problem here and a problem there, they're looking at the whole basin and trying to get ahead of the game," Willardson said.

Reclamation chose the Colorado, Yakima and Milk and St. Mary basins because they face some of the most pressing water challenges and all need to be better studied. For instance, the Colorado River Basin provides water across seven states for 27 million people -- up from 25 million just a few years ago -- but there are significant data gaps in how the basin's water is used and how its supplies can be stretched to meet future needs. It is also one of the regions that will be hit hardest by climate change.

And in the Yakima River Basin, one of the most intensively irrigated basins in the United States, aging infrastructure has managers worried about the reliability of the system, as well as whether existing supplies there will be adequate down the road.

The potential failure of that system, built in the early 1900s, "has implications for the farmers there but also environmental and social impacts," Willardson said. Two fish species in the basin are listed under the Endangered Species Act: bull trout and mid-Columbia steelhead.

In the Milk and St. Mary river systems, which extend into Canada, managers face a tangle of issues relating to changing natural flows, leaking diversion facilities, international commitments and requirements for bull trout.
With all three basins already grappling with huge challenges, the basin studies will be crucial in determining how they will continue to provide water for people and wildlife in a climate-altered future, Willardson said.

"We really don't have a good idea how much more water we'll be using," he said. "So we need to look at water policies in the West and look at growth, climate change and demand now."