Would farmers receive payments for storing water on agricultural lands?
Because the focus of the current project is to determine the feasibility of the Waffle plan, it is impossible to anticipate what kind of payments (if they are needed) would be made to landowners for storing water on their lands. There are simply too many variables at this point, such as the amount and types of land needed, the length of storage, the effects on productivity, etc., to allow us to speculate about what types of compensation landowners might receive for storing water. These questions will be answered by the work now under way, and one of the products of this project will supply policymakers with the information they need to develop plans for compensation if that is necessary. One of the guiding principles of the project is that methods can only be employed if they have a positive, or at least neutral, impact on agriculture and the region’s economy in general.
