Wisdom of farming in desert questioned

Farmers and politicians call Utah's fourth straight year of below-average snowpack a disaster. But a University of Utah political science professor who writes on Western water issues says that ignores a simple fact: Deserts are supposed to be dry.

"It's a mistake to talk about the drought as a crisis," said Dan McCool. "We are always in a drought. That's the definition of a desert. It's ignoring that Utah is a desert that's causing the problem."

McCool isn't alone in his thinking. Volumes have been written criticizing the West's water subsidies that began with the 1902 creation of the Reclamation Act, which guaranteed water for Western farmers and ranchers no matter the cost. But the practice continues: 82 percent of Utah's water goes to an industry that accounts for 1 percent of the state's economy.

This year's water shortages are focusing new attention on those figures and the wisdom of farming in the desert. The drought means farm water cutbacks of 50 percent in northern Utah, and up to 100 percent in the southern desert.

While Salt Lake City, with an average annual rainfall of 16 inches, isn't considered desert, much of the rest of the state meets the criteria: an empty arid region with fewer than 10 inches of rain per year, where evaporation exceeds rainfall.

And drought, said National Weather Service hydrologist Brian McInerney, is in the eye of the beholder.

"We try to stay away from that word, because it means different things to different people," McInerney said.

There are three kinds of drought: climatic, hydrologic and agricultural.

The first two rely on 100 years of statistics but evaluate snowpack levels only for the preceding 30 years when deciding what is average — a tiny timespan in general weather patterns, but practical for agricultural and municipal water managers.

An agricultural drought means farmers and ranchers are getting less water than they need to function — a subjective measurement McCool finds irrational, especially for southern and eastern Utah.

"That's like saying Canada is short of palm trees," he said. "We don't have a water problem in the West. We have an agricultural subsidy problem."

An acre-foot of residential water — about 326,000 gallons and roughly enough to serve the needs of an average family of five for one year — costs Utah households about $320, said Larry Anderson, the state's director of water resources.