The central colorado water conservancy district (central or district), and its two subdistricts, the groundwater management subdistrict (GMS) and well augmentation subdistrict (was) are located in…

The central colorado water conservancy district (central or district), and its two subdistricts, the groundwater management subdistrict (GMS) and well augmentation subdistrict (was) are located in northeastern colorado in weld, morgan and adams counties. Agricultural producers in weld, morgan and adams counties contribute over 3.0 billion annually to colorados economy. Centrals water management strategy is to increase water use efficiency of irrigation wells within the south platte alluvial aquifer through advanced monitoring equipment. The implementation of telemetry and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) equipment on 150 irrigation wells will provide real-time data for the augmentation plans, eliminating waste and efficiently conserving irrigation water. The augmentation plans operated by GMS and was require protection of senior water rights, and that protection is satisfied by GMS and was delivering water to the river to replace depletions caused by well pumping in time, location, and amount. If sufficient replacement water is not available, then well use is curtailed by state water administrators. In recent years, well owners in the central district have been curtailed by 50 75 percent because replacement supplies have not been sufficient. Central currently owns and operates dozens of senior water rights, storage vessels and recharge projects in the south platte river basin. Existing projects include senior water rights, reservoir storage projects (bentonite lined gravel pits converted to water storage after gravel mining operations), alluvial wells that pump directly back to the river, and recharge structures used to conjunctively manage centrals replacement water supplies. The water supplies and water projects owned and operated by central are the backbone which grant the authority for groundwater pumping on an annual basis. Available supplies and prior years pumping data are evaluated each april to determine this annual groundwater allotment, or quota as defined by central. Market value of water rights and projects have been heavily influenced by the explosion of urban growth throughout much of centrals district. The growth has created a market which is nearly infeasible for agriculture to continue to purchase senior water rights and build new storage to replace this groundwater consumption. Installing telemetry units on irrigation wells will give central access to important water quantity measurements with incredible speed and accuracy. Central proposes to install 150 flowconnecttm telemetry units, manufactured by mccrometer, INC. The flowconnecttm devices continually collect the total volume of water pumped from the alluvial aquifer and will be programmed to submit daily pumping data to ccwcds servers via satellite connection. Digital data collected from these 150 irrigation wells will be processed daily and incorporated into centrals water accounting program. Having the greatest accuracy when measuring aquifer pumping ensures central is not over-replacing the depletions caused by pumping alluvial wells. With real-time groundwater pumping data the river accounting for the south platte river will be a true representation of the groundwater consumed by centrals members, instead of estimating monthly depletions from previous years pumping data, which is currently centrals management option system for nearly 150 irrigation wells which impact streamflow within 30 days of pumping.centrals engineer evaluated the early pumping estimates for the 1,300 wells in centrals plans of augmentation and compared those results to the actual pumping. IT was found that 6,996 acre-feet of over replacement was estimated in the early projections. Central estimates annual water savings by installing flowconnecttm equipment on 150 wells in centrals augmentation plans to be up to 1,800 acre-feet per year. Development of new supplies of an equal amount would cost approximately 36,000,000.