Water securityOverhauling the Circulatory System of the American West
It might be tempting to think of cowboys and cattle drives, but the real story of the American West can be summed up in one word: water. While the costs might be daunting, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) has teamed up with the Oregon-based Farmers Conservation Alliance to radically reimagine the role of irrigation systems in the West.
It might be tempting to think of cowboys and cattle drives, but the real story of the American West can be summed up in one word: water.
Since the 1870s, water and irrigation in the West have been source material for countless books and movies like “Chinatown” and “The Big Valley,” but today’s realities are leading to new ways of thinking. Irrigation infrastructure has exceeded its design life by decades and needs massive reinvestment.
While the costs might be daunting, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) has teamed up with the Oregon-based Farmers Conservation Alliance to radically reimagine the role of irrigation systems in the West. The effort seeks to transform a critical piece of agricultural infrastructure into a system that encompasses energy conservation and renewable power generation, broadband communications, and wildlife habitat conservation.
Building off of the FCA’s Irrigation Modernization Program, two of DOE’s national labs – Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) – are developing a decision-making tool that uses historic data and geographic information systems (GIS) to help inform key decisions about modernization. Together, the national labs are working to produce a case study that uses real world data to demonstrate the visualization tool’s functionality.
“After we prove the usefulness of the tool, the plan is to develop it into an open source public tool,” said Thomas Mosier, INL’s Energy Systems group lead. “The hope is to accelerate reinvestment in these systems to benefit farmers, local communities and the environment. There used to be this one-size-fits-all modernization model. The approach we’re seeing today is much more nuanced.”
History of Irrigation in the West
INL notes that beginning in the late 19th century, a sprawling network of dams and canals transformed roughly 40 million acres of sage-covered desert in 17 Western states into arable cropland. After passage of the 1902 Reclamation Act, Congress appropriated millions of dollars over decades for large-scale irrigation development. Projects such as Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia were hailed as modern wonders of the world, but the West is dotted with smaller dams and reservoirs.
