MID to seek more water income for higher-tech meters

Whether Modesto-area farmers are willing to cover the cost of fancy water delivery meters – about $4.5 million – will be seen next year in a vote of Modesto Irrigation District growers.

Particulars, including how much farmers might expect to see water bills rise, are unknown. They are bracing for a separate rate hike, probably in January.

State laws enacted before and during the drought require higher-tech measuring. MID this year tested several models at various spots on its canals, and the district is developing a strategy to make sure the district doesn’t get in trouble with California water enforcers.

The strategy, including a voting procedure asking customers to weigh in, is expected out in three or four months. Its framework became public when MID released a draft update of the district’s Agricultural Water Management Plan, with a public hearing scheduled for Dec. 15.

Farmers have been expecting this since a groundswell of opposition killed a proposal for selling MID water to San Francisco in 2012, said Jake Wenger, who farms west of Modesto. He was among critics then and since has been elected to the MID board.

“The threat at the time was, ‘If we don’t sell this water, your rates are going to go up.’ Growers said they would gladly pay for improvements if they kept the water here,” Wenger said. So the upcoming vote has been “on growers’ radar since,” he said.

MID relies on ditchtenders’ estimates for measuring water being delivered from district canals to private canals or pipelines and on to fields or orchards. It’s an imperfect science, partly because calculations have a manually noted time component and no instrument verifies ditchtenders’ records.

The Water Conservation Act of 2009 allows a margin of error of up to 12 percent for existing meters and 5 percent for new, and “the current measurement methods may not comply with regulated accuracy requirements in all circumstances,” MID’s ag-water management plan says.

The district this year tested various devices made by different companies at eight locations to get a sense for which work best. Upgrades are needed at 300 points, and staff came up with a strategy for installing about 60 a year over five years.

If most MID growers agree, the district could float bonds and use money collected from higher water rates to repay that debt, the ag-water management plan says. If not, “the district may not have sufficient funding” for new devices, the document says.

Board member Nick Blom said growers won’t be surprised because most are aware of similar upgrades introduced a year or two ago by the neighboring Turlock Irrigation District, costing about $11 million. TID is roughly twice the size of MID.

“This shouldn’t be a stunner,” said Blom, who farms land in both districts.

In unrelated news, he is curious about the emerging idea for a future small reservoir in his district holding canal water that could be pumped back upstream through a pipeline 3 or 4 miles in something akin to recycling. That would be expensive, but the high value of water could justify the expense, Blom and Wenger said.

The ag-water management plan is meant to satisfy Gov. Jerry Brown’s April edict for coping with the drought, as well as previous water conservation legislation. It mentions that MID is conducting environmental studies needed for a separate Comprehensive Water Resources Management Plan, which would outline a schedule for replacing aging parts of MID’s system, among other things.

The ag-water management plan says growers have been converting from flood irrigation to micro-drip and sprinklers at a rate of about 130 acres a year. That trend could produce an unspecified “negative impact” on groundwater as flood irrigating, which is best for replenishing aquifers, declines, the report says.

Of the 66,451 acres served by MID in 2012, more than one third – 23,758 acres – were almond orchards, and other non-row crops such as vineyards brought permanent-crop acreage to 36,266, the report says.

The document also quotes a San Francisco climate change study predicting that snow-free portions of the mountain basin draining into the Tuolumne River watershed will rise from 13 percent in 2000 to 57 percent by 2100. Fruit crops such as apples, cherries and pears could suffer from not having enough winter chill as temperatures rise, the study says.

A public hearing for MID’s draft ag-water management plan is expected at 9 a.m. Dec. 15 in the chamber at 1231 11th St., Modesto.

This story was originally published November 29, 2015 at 7:01 PM with the headline "MID to seek more water income for higher-tech meters."