Agricultural Water Conservation Planning & Pricing-Tools & Technologies

Hydrosphere was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to develop two manuals for agricultural water users: a water conservation planning guidebook and a conservation pricing handbook. The manuals are now being distributed to irrigation districts all over the West. What is the next step?Both of the manuals require that districts collect a fair amount of data to characterize water use and water costs, to evaluate conservation potential, and to measure the effects of conservation. Very sophisticated methods for collecting and processing data exist and many of them may be discussed at this meeting. This paper describes technologies available to facilitate the use of data in the development of conservation plans and conservation pricing programs. Applications of computer models, spreadsheets, databases and other systems that help planners develop and compare different conservation solutions are presented.