It was meant to help the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River, so why isn’t anyone using it?
It was an idea crafted by the Utah State Legislature to help ensure that water saved through conservation and other efforts could make it downstream to places like the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River. But so far, no farmer has taken the state up on it. “The truth is that we haven’t had the upswelling of support and the response for a lot of change applications. And it’s something, I think, that we are looking into, making sure that we understand why,” said Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed. The Utah State Legislature has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on “agriculture optimization,” which are incentives to get farmers and ranchers — Utah’s top water user — to switch to new technologies that grow crops with less water. … “Change water applications” then allow a water rights holder who saves water through conservation to donate or lease it to someone downstream or places like the Great Salt Lake or Colorado River.
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