WYOMING/COLORADO – Wyoming’s water chief wants emergency funds for hydrologists to measure flows in the state’s portion of the troubled Colorado River Basin, documentation he said is vital to preserving irrigation and other uses.

State Engineer Brandon Gebhart asked for $167,210 in supplemental budget funds, a piddling amount in the world of western water finances, but a critical sum necessary to launch the work this spring. He called parts of the proposed allocation an “emergency,” a designation that would enable disbursements to begin this fiscal year.

Among other things, the money would employ three full-time hydrographers to measure flows in the Green and Little Snake River drainages. The total figure covers money specifically directed toward Colorado River issues as Wyoming girds to protect irrigators and other water users.

Climate change and drought have upset basin flows and could upend allotments agreed to in the seven-state 1922 Colorado River Compact. That, in turn, could threaten Wyoming’s water rights.

“You’re not going to hear me in the press,” Gebhart told irrigators in Baggs last summer, but he’s outlined Wyoming and upper basin states’ position in several public meetings.

“We have less water than was ever anticipated when the compact originated,” Gebhart said. “The last 22 to 24 years are the driest, the least flow in that basin in over 1,000 years.”

The 1922 Colorado River Compact requires upper division states to allow 75 million acre-feet to flow past Lees Ferry, a gauging station just below Lake Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam, during a rolling 10-year span. Wyoming’s responsible for about 14% of that and, conversely, can use a similar percentage of what doesn’t run past the gauge.

Wyoming believes it hasn’t fully tapped its 1922 share and is pursuing three significant water storage projects to fulfill its rights. Those are at New Fork Lake, Fontenelle Reservoir and a proposed reservoir on the West Fork of Battle Creek above the Little Snake River.

Those plans would primarily increase water available to Wyoming irrigators and other users. Enhanced storage could also help fulfill Lees Ferry flow obligations, but Gebhart has made clear Wyoming is unwilling to contribute “more than what we’re already under obligation for in the compact,” unless that comes from conservation, including paid-for voluntary conservation.

Unlike the lower basin states that rely on Lake Mead, “We don’t have a large reservoir to supply our releases,” Gebhart said. Instead, Wyoming’s Colorado River Basin reservoirs provide only late-season irrigation, not years of backup.

“We’re dependent on whatever Mother Nature gives us [in] the run of the river,” Gebhart said. But, “the hydrology is drying out. We have less.

“We already suffer what they refer to as shortages,” he said. “Every year we go out, we regulate off users because there’s not enough water.”

Enhanced measurements

For Wyoming to protect its share, it needs to know how much water diverted from rivers makes it to agricultural fields. Without documentation that can withstand legal challenges, others might say Wyoming is consuming more water than it puts to beneficial use.

Beyond what water makes it to the alfalfa field, hydrologists could also document how much leaks from irrigation canals and flows back to the main waterway, thereby remaining in the system.

They can also measure how much of the water applied to fields eventually seeps back to a river or stream and down toward the lower basin. Rules of thumb that previously served water managers may not stand up in court.

For example, Wyoming has long operated its dam, reservoir and irrigation systems, assuming that half of the water applied to a field eventually rejoins the river as return flows. The state also acknowledges that up to 80% of the water running through a canal, depending on its construction and underlying geologic composition, can leak before arriving at its destination.

The amount of seepage and phreatophytic losses – canal-side, plant-used water – is an “area of agriculture data collection that need[s] to be updated and verified,” the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said in 2022. Toward that end, Wyoming recently directed a study on canal loss from long and porous irrigation aqueducts.

More hydrographers and scientific measures would buttress Wyoming’s claims.

“We recognize that it is very tough for us to conserve a large amount of water,” Gebhart told irrigators last summer. A paid-for voluntary conservation program would allow the state to put water savings on a ledger. In Gebhart’s words, Wyoming would “stash it away in a federal facility with our name on it until it’s needed,” to satisfy 1922 compact requirements at Lees Ferry.

Although upper and lower basin states are at odds, Gebhart said it’s not too late to reach a consensus on how to operate the complex system before the federal government steps in and forces a compromise. Those negotiations, if they happen, are not going to be done in public, he said.

Despite his reluctance to make direct statements to the press, that “doesn’t mean that we’re not here,” Gebhart said.