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That's a great post about the Law of Unintended Consequences at work: efforts to use agricultural water more efficiently lead to more overall water consumption.
Beyond that, I'm not sure I'm a fan of efficiency. Among the pleasant parts of our landscape are the wending rows of cottonwoods growing along the older irrigation ditches.
Cottonwoods are "phreatophytes" -- a scientific term for plants that love water. A Colorado Supreme Court decision 35 years ago may have saved them.
In brief, a landowner calculated how much water the trees consumed, cut down the trees, and claimed the right (called a "salvage right") to use the water that had formerly gone to the trees.
A water court granted the right, but the Supreme Court reversed that decision, mostly on the grounds of administrative complexity relating to the priority dates of salvage water. Any water developed that way, the court held, should go to the river system, not the landowner.
The court did not rule on this as a matter of constitutional principle, and held that the Colorado legislature was free to find a way to put these salvage rights into the existing priority system.
My farmer friend John Mattingly suggested that the legislature do just that, as it would be a cost-effective way to eliminate the water-guzzling tamarisk (or salt cedar) from Colorado -- the landowners would do it at no cost to the public if they could acquire water rights in the process.
If efficiency rids of the tamarisk, fine by me. But I would miss those cottonwoods.
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