USDA Salinity Programs in the Colorado River Basin

Remarks by Thomas A. Weber, Associate Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service
at the 68th Meeting of the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Forum
Midway UT

May 21, 2003


Thank you, Larry (Dozier). Good Morning.

Thank you for this opportunity to talk about what USDA has done in the past year to address salinity issues in the Colorado River Basin and what we plan to do in the coming years.

I know Mark Berkland, Director of the Conservation Operations Division, traditionally gives you the USDA perspective at these meetings. As many of you know, Mark retired this year, so you get me instead. We are in the process of selecting a new Division Director, but until then, Charles Whitmore, Regional Conservationist for the Midwest, has come to Washington, DC, to help us out.

Before I take up accomplishments and plans in the Colorado Basin, I would like to say a few words about the overall outlook for Conservation.


Conservation Outlook

These are exciting times for conservation on private lands all over the United States. The 2002 farm bill provides an increase of more than $18.5 billion for conservation on private lands over the next 10 years.

To give you an idea of how great an increase that is the EQIP budget in 2005, all by itself, will be greater than the combined budgets of all conservation programs for the entire 7 years of the previous farm bill. That translates into more opportunities to help more farmers and ranchers reach their conservation goals than ever before, including those in the Colorado Basin.

I don’t want to imply that the funding is unlimited. As many of you know, we built up quite a backlog of applications in EQIP and most other conservation programs in the years leading up to the 2002 farm bill. Last year, after the new farm bill became law, we distributed more than $700 million in farm bill funds, which allowed us to sign contracts with many landowners who had been waiting for quite a while.

Even while that money was going out, thousands of additional applications were coming in. The result is new backlogs in most programs. EQIP alone now has a backlog of $1.4 billion nationwide. WRP has 2,800 pending applications, amounting to 475,000 acres. FRPP has more than $100 million in pending offers for easements.

In the Colorado Basin, we continue to have more requests from farmers and ranchers than we can fund. The good news is that this year, we have already released nearly $1.9 billion in farm bill funds. And the President’s budget request for next year includes nearly $3.9 billion for conservation programs.

In terms of our work in the Colorado Basin, we had nearly $10.5 million in EQIP funds in FY 2002, which will rise to nearly $13.7 million this year, an increase of more than $3 million. Overall, we are allocating about 2.5% of the total EQIP allocation to Colorado Basin salinity control.

In addition, at the end of FY 2002, there were still 40 active CRCSP contracts. Work on all but one of these contracts should be complete be complete by 2005


A Strategic Investment

Even with this tremendous Federal investment in conservation, the demand for financial assistance is so large that we will have to be very strategic in how we spend this money – in the Colorado Basin and all around the country.

On the plus side, we are making progress in reducing the cost of reducing salinity. The cost of reducing salinity over all our projects thus far is about $36 per ton. But some of our earlier projects ran nearly $50 per ton, and some of the newer ones are less than $20 a ton. These efficiencies stretch the Federal dollar to get more done, and they make additional projects more economically feasible.

So we do need to be strategic in how we invest the money we do have. We have to make sure that all farmers and ranchers –including minorities, women, beginning farmers, and limited resource farmers – have access to assistance. We have to make sure that the contracts we award are consistent with national and local priorities. We have to bring in more partners to add to the Federal dollars and enable use to get more conservation done. And, we have to make effective use of technical service providers to get all the planning and implementation done to put this conservation investment to work.

If we are strategic about investing the conservation dollar, we can make lots more conservation happen on the land.


Accomplishments

So, what did we do last year?

We have been able to accelerate treatment in the six existing project areas because of the funds from the 2002 farm bill. As I said, USDA allocated $10.5 million in EQIP funds during FY 2002 for salinity control activities. Thanks to the 2002 farm bill, that amount was double the previous year. Forty-three cents on the dollar in matching funds from the Bureau of Reclamation’s Basin States Account made this money go quite a bit farther.

These funds were used to share the cost with landowners and operators to install conservation systems that include salinity control and wildlife habitat replacement and to provide increased NRCS technical assistance.

We have continued to use EQIP funds to fund the basin salinity coordinator position. Travis James has been doing a fine job in this position for three years, as I am sure you all know.

Our six current project areas in the Colorado Basin are in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. We have been moving forward toward reaching our acreage goals in all three states.

In Colorado, the McElmo Creek Project is at 96%, and we have reached 38% of the salt reduction goal. The Grand Valley Project has 83% of the targeted acres under contract for salinity measures. Our largest unit – the Lower Gunnison – is at 52%.

In Utah, the Uinta Basin Unit has 80% of the targeted acres under contract, and we have continuing demonstration plot activities on Ute Tribal land. In the Price-San Rafael Unit, Reclamation is installing underground pipelines to deliver water to participating farms, and USDA is assisting with sprinkler irrigation systems and gated pipelines.

In Wyoming, the Big Sandy River Unit has reached 84% of the acreage goal.


What the Future Holds

I would like to talk a bit about the future of USDA’s salinity efforts in the Colorado Basin.

First, as I mentioned, there is nearly $13.7 million for salinity control in EQIP this fiscal year. We anticipate at least the same level of funding for FY 2004, provided Congress adopts the President’s budget proposal.

We have some new project possibilities in Colorado and Utah. Sponsor interest is growing in the Mancos Valley of Colorado, and we are proceeding to determine salt loading, pipe routing, and overall costs. This year, we will be looking into implementing salinity control in the areas near Manila and Green River, Utah. In addition, we can look into the potential for cost-effective salt control on non-irrigated grazing lands.


Conclusion

The last thing I want to talk about this morning is a few things those of you here today can do to get the most out of USDA programs.

First, work closely with your State Technical Committees and your State Conservationists to make sure the State priorities for EQIP match your needs. NRCS relies heavily on local leadership and local decision making in everything we do. So it is important to participate in the local processes. You are the best advocates for salinity control in the Colorado Basin.

Second, be alert to new partnerships. With a backlog in applications and an aging infrastructure, the Colorado Basin needs greater involvement – and more sources of funding – in order to reach and sustain the desired reduction in salinity.

Third, utilize technical service providers. The Farm Bill both increased the investment in conservation and set the requirement that we increase the use of outside consultants to get the work done. We have set aside a minimum of $20 million this year for technical service providers. But many states will need to spend more for these services.

The work required to invest farm bill funding is simply too great for us to do in-house. We need technical service providers to get the work gone. NRCS employees will still have plenty of valuable work to do, so this is not an effort to reduce our own workforce.

We already have more than 500 certified technical service providers in place nationwide. In addition, we have completed a national cost survey, which we will use to set the not-to-exceed rates for various technical services. We got more than 3,000 responses to the survey.

You can help us make this system work by encouraging the natural resources professionals you know to apply for certification if they have not already done so, and by letting landowners know that technical service providers will play an important role in helping them reach their conservation goals.

By working together, we can make great progress toward Salinity Control in the Colorado Basin over the next few years.

Thank you.