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Show 76 PREPARED STATEMENT OF RONALD C. SIMS AND MAC MCKEE COMMENTS BY THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE UTAH WATER RESEARCH LABORATORY ON DROUGHT RELIEF IN UTAH AND THE WEST BY RONALD C. SIMS, DIRECTOR, AND MAC MCKEE, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR UTAH WATER RESEARCH LABORATORY UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY, LOGAN, UTAH 84322- 8200 Introduction The water supply in Utah is subject to high year- to- year variability, and drought is often a multi- year phenomenon. These conditions adversely affect many sectors of Utah's economy, especially agriculture, and place restrictions on the management of valuable environmental resources ( e. g., wetlands, endangered species, recreational resources). Development and implementation of better water management policies and science- based technological capabilities to deal with drought- and other water problems- will benefit all of Utah's water users. The Utah Water Research Laboratory ( UWRL) at Utah State University ( USU) can assist in this effort. Utah's Drought- Related Information Needs and Problems Drought conditions can be managed in Utah by application of a wide array of water conservation measures. For many large- scale water supply systems- such as the numerous irrigation systems in Utah that account for the vast majority of the state's water use- more efficient water use can be achieved through improved water management. However, more intensive water management places new data collection and analysis burdens on water agencies. In addition, individual water users of all types- especially farmers and ranchers- require better information about current and future drought conditions in order to make informed individual management decisions. At present, both individual water consumers and water system managers are hampered in their ability to make better drought- related management decisions because there are many gaps in the available database and in the analytic tools used to forecast future conditions. Among the most critical of these gaps are these: Data Collection: There is a lack of a consistent recognition on the part of Federal, State, and local agencies of the strategic importance of data collection. For example, investments in the collection of streamflow data are declining through time, even though demands for water are increasing. This is also the case for some types of meteorological data, such as snowpack data for which funding support for USGS data collection programs has been reduced and/ or threatened in recent federal budgets. In Utah, there is very little investment in the collection and dissemination of soil moisture data, even though soil moisture information is critical for forecasting future streamflows for both drought and flood conditions ( for example, our ignorance of soil moisture played a major role in our failure to correctly forecast the floods that struck the Colorado River Basin in the 1980s and caused substantial economic damage). Generally, government agencies at all levels have failed to recognize that the value of hydrometeorological data is increasing as the demand for water grows, and investments in data collection have not kept pace with the need for data. Long- term Forecasting: Increased investment in data collection will only have value if the data can be analyzed and effectively used to improve our knowledge of the present and future condition of our water systems. At present, we lack the scientific capability to utilize available hydrometeorological data to make good long- term forecasts ( say, 3 to 12 months in advance) of snowfall and streamflow. This seriously limits the ability of water system managers and individual water consumers to plan for future water shortages. Short- term I Real- time Management of High- volume Water Systems: Large water supply systems in Utah, especially irrigation systems, account for much of the state's total water use. Therefore, a small improvement in the efficiency of water use in these systems can result in the savings of relatively significant quantities of water. Accomplishing this, however, will again require investment in data collection and development of analysis and forecasting techniques. With the help of the Provo Office of the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation, reservoirs and water conveyance systems throughout the entire Sevier River Basin have been instrumented in recent years, and the data made available through this investment have enabled the system man- |