GREEN RIVER, Utah — Most travelers, including Utahns, know the town of Green River as a convenient stop on Interstate 70. With stands advertising the region's famous Green River melons, many wonder if they could really grow in such a dry part of the world.
"If you look at the history of melons, they're a desert plant. They're native to Africa where it's dry and they store a lot of water," said Lee Thayn.
Thayn is a third generation farmer working 2,700 acres in Green River with his son.
It's true that Green River and it's surroundings in East-Central Utah are arid, receiving well below an inch of precipitation in an average month. But Green River's namesake waterway is a perennial source of water, allowing the Thayns to grow crops with measured precision, especially with modern irrigation systems like sprinklers fanning out from central pivots.
"We've gone from open ditches to gated pipe and now to this. And this is, by far the the best and most efficient way to put the water down," explained Lee Thayn's son, Nathan.
Even with modern techniques, Utah State University says agriculture uses 79 percent of the Utah's water.
In the case of Green River, saving water means keeping it in the Colorado River system which sustains an estimated 40 million people living in the American Southwest.
"Trying to wrap your head around Utah water is a little bit challenging," said Jordan Nielson, the Utah State Director for Trout Unlimited.
Nielson is one of the architects and proponents of what's called the System Conservation Pilot Program (SCPP). The SCPP just finished it's first year, paying for water that would normally be used by large consumers in the Upper Basin of the Colorado, including the states of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah.
"We have to find ways to recover our lakes and reservoirs, using what we have, which means doing smart agriculture, using water as a part of the rotation of crops, and allowing people that have rights to use water to become a part of the solution. And let them be the heroes," Nielson said.
Water rights in the West create seemingly endless obstacles for policymakers trying to address the challenges of climate change on a regional level. Nielson says that's especially true in the Upper Colorado Basin States where rights were granted on the local level over time.
"In the lower Colorado River Basin, we're looking at like six different major water users," said Nielson. "And in the Upper Basin, it's something like 4,000. So to coordinate that, even at the agency level, it's really, really challenging."
The Thayns understand, and volunteered to be part of the SCPP, fallowing a massive field that would normally be green with alfalfa meant to feed livestock.
"At some point, we're gonna have to recognize the we may have to change some practices," said Nathan Thayn.
The Thayns joined the program with help from Lily Bosworth , a staff engineer for the Colorado River authority of Utah.
"They want to be part of the solution and recognize that they are a major water user. And so this is a way to bring the state and the farmers to the table, and test or pilot things that might work for water conservation, that keeps farmers in production, but can also generate some wet water for the system as a whole," Bosworth explained.
The term wet water sounds silly, but it's a way to distinguish reality from legality. Water rights exist for more water than actually exists in today's Southwest.
Because the Thayns are adjacent to the Green River, they have access to all of their water every year, making them perfect participants in the program. When they leave a field to fallow, it saves actual water, or what Bosworth calls "wet water."
"There's no supplement for water, no matter what you do," said Lee Thayn. "Water is the number one issue."
