CENTER — Accurately predicting the weather can have more serious consequences for area farmers than knowing when to wear a heavier jacket.

It can result in less irrigation water when they need it most.

The San Luis Valley Irrigation District board this week voted unanimously to sponsor an effort that will give area water officials one more tool to more accurately predict snow runoff and curtailments to water users based on those predictions.

Irrigation District Superintendent Travis Smith explained to the board that satellite imagery modeling efforts to help with forecasting began in this area last year. He said this year he received a commitment from the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) for about $80,000 in additional funds to assist with this snow forecasting model. The CWCB is contracting with Riverside Technology to perform the work. Riverside Technology has performed similar work on the Colorado River system for four or five years, Smith said, so the company has a proven track record.

“It is another tool,” Smith said.

He explained that satellite imagery can provide a real-time picture of the snowpack that can be “married” to the SNOTEL data to hopefully provide an even more accurate forecast of the amount of water available to meet the state’s Rio Grande Compact obligations, the amount of water available to Valley farmers and ranchers and the amount of water the water users will have to be curtailed or give up to meet the Compact obligations.

Smith, who serves on the CWCB, said he has told the state board for years that the Rio Grande Basin needs help with forecasting, so the CWCB was willing to put up the $82,000 for this effort. A local cost share will be required, however, Smith explained. (He said last year CWCB funded the entire amount of $25,000 but wants to see a local commitment this year.)

Smith said he will be asking the Rio Grande Water Conservation District Board next Tuesday for the $24,000 local cost share. The total amount of the contract will be $106,000. Smith said the Rio Grande Water Conservation District represents the Conejos and Rio Grande river systems, and this modeling effort will assist the entire basin, not just the Rio Grande. It will also help the Conejos with forecasting. “That’s the effort, to try to get more tools to help with river administration for the Compact, hopefully get our curtailment flattened out and not deal with under estimation or over estimation,” Smith said.

He told the board that although he will be asking the Rio Grande district for the cost share, that district cannot receive the CWCB funds because the district is subject to TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) restrictions, so he asked his board, the SLV Irrigation District, to serve as the contracting entity to receive the CWCB grant money and administer it to the contractor. The irrigation district is not restricted by TABOR. The district would have a work order with CWCB to receive the money and would serve as the contracting entity with Riverside Technology that will actually perform the work, Smith explained.

He said Riverside will take the random satellite information and develop a model run from that information using regression analysis and some ground truthing. Smith said he expected this type of work to be ongoing over a period of years with the project gaining more and more credibility as it accumulates data over multiple years.

“You have to have enough years of record to have trends,” Smith said.

He said in the future the information received through this model might be weighed as heavily as the current SNOTEL forecasts through the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

He said he had spoke with Mike Sullivan and Craig Cotten with the Division of Water Resources and they were pleased with the initial work performed last year. “It was a starting place to get data assembled and make sense of it,” Smith said. “This year is an expansion of what was done last year.”

The irrigation district board members discussed any possible liabilities to them for serving as the contracting entity for this project and ultimately decided to sponsor the project.

The board members said the more and better tools that can be used in forecasting, the better. “We need a better way to gauge how much water we are going to have,” said Irrigation District Board Vice President John Slane.

Smith added, “Forecasting is key for us.”