Effort underway to
insure Delta’s water
supply remains plentiful
Voluntary conservation efforts paying dividends

BY DOREEN MUZZI
DBJ Contributing Writer

While declining water resources remain a concern for the region, the Delta remains in an “enviable position,” a Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Joint Water Management District official told farmers attending a recent Bolivar County rice growers meeting in Cleveland.

Voluntary conservation practices implemented by the area’s farmers are stemming the tide on water loss, but the threat of a potential water shortage remains, and there is more work still to be done, according to YMD director Dean Pennington.

“There are many ways to voluntarily reduce groundwater use through irrigation efficiency, and to maintain stream flows through conservation efforts,” Pennington says. “Rice farmers are working in the right direction, and they are watering more efficiently through land forming, new irrigation methods, and irrigation well pump timers.”

Pennington says his agency wants to highlight and document how farmers have made land improvements to become more efficient in their use of water. By doing so, he hopes to discourage the Department of Environmental Quality from using regulations as a water-savings tool.

“If we take care of our business in how we use water, the prospect looks bright for us to be left alone by government regulators.”

The potential is there, he says, to reduce groundwater use by 300,000-acre feet simply by irrigating row crops more efficiently.

As a rice and soybean farmer, Ed Hester of Benoit, Miss., has seen the results of water conservation first-hand. “We are being proactive instead of reactive on this issue. I know I’m not wasting nearly the water that I have in past years, and I know that water used for irrigation on my farm is headed somewhere south of my operation – it isn’t lost water.”

Statewide averages put water use for rice production at about three water feet per acre, with use rates ranging anywhere from two to five water feet per acre. Other Delta crops, such as soybeans, cotton and corn, require less water to produce.

Water is not a private property right in Mississippi as it is in some states. Instead, it is considered a state resource, and as such its use is controlled through a state permit system. In the agriculturally-rich Delta, nearly 18,000 of the state’s 20,000 water use permits allow farmers to access the natural resource through wells or surface water pumps.

Although declines in the aquifer seem the most prevalent in the Delta, everyone in the state contributes to the problem, Pennington says.

“The Department of Environmental Quality uses this data to say that there is a trend downward in aquifer levels that cannot be allowed to continue. It is troublesome in that it suggests that the use of well water can be correlated with the low flow problem in the Sunflower River, especially along the Leflore-Sunflower County line. That’s the area we lose the most sleep over,” he says. “However, the state’s water would flow down into the Delta if it weren’t stopped along the way.”

The bottom line is that as long as the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality can show a connection between water use and low stream flows, and as long as the agency’s only recourse is regulatory, farmers and landowners must continue their water conservation efforts.

According to Pennington, of the total water pumped out of the aquifer each year, all but 300,000-acre feet naturally recharges back into the aquifer. For much of the Delta, the deficit results in an average annual decline of 0.63 foot per year of water.

To conserve that water, landowners and farmers are more efficiently watering their crops through the use of new technology and new irrigation methods, but more can be done.

“There is lots of potential to save additional water in rice production. Other Delta crops aren’t as water intensive, and can sometimes be successfully grown in those years with sufficient rain flow,” he says. “There are 250,000 acres of rice in the Delta. If we could reduce irrigation by one foot of water per acre, we could erase our water debt through voluntarily conservation efforts alone.”

Those efforts are also paying off in water quality. Quality tests of the Delta’s ground water routinely show that there are basically no agricultural chemicals or agricultural-related pollutants present in the region’s ground water, Pennington say.

“What happens on an individual field is not as important as what happens in an entire watershed, but we’re trying to give growers credit for what they’re doing. We don’t need regulatory agencies to meet our water savings goals. There are plenty of ways to make sure we never get to increased water regulations that make sense both environmentally and economically,” Pennington says. “Landowners and water users appreciate the Delta’s water quantity situation and that fact is not lost on the Department of Environmental Quality. We’re not home free, but I’m fairly optimistic.” DBJ