Adapting to Our Changing Hydrology

Wyatt Penfold. Photo by Camrin Dengel

Wyatt Penfold is a lifelong Teton Valley farmer, just like his father and grandfather. He grows potatoes, quinoa and other grains in the fertile soil that abuts the west slope of the Tetons. Wyatt is feisty and entrepreneurial and struggles to sit still. He lights up when he talks about water. With a combination of flood irrigation and center pivot sprinklers systems, Wyatt can produce amazing crops even in our extreme conditions.  

Early in spring and summer in the Tetons, water is abundant. With longer days and warm sunshine, the snowpack melts and water fills streams and creeks. For as long as Wyatt can remember, he and his family have redirected as much of that water as possible onto their fields, saturating the soil, slowing down the rush, and recharging the aquifer. The valley’s aquifer is like an underground tub that fills each year as some of that snowmelt soaks in. The water Wyatt and others spread in the spring percolates through the permeable soil into the aquifer and slowly moves down to the river, emerging months later. For years Wyatt has been turning abundant early season flow into cold, clear and highly valuable late season flow. Wyatt has understood how this complicated process works his whole life.

More than five years ago, Wyatt approached Friends of the Teton River (FTR) with the idea of measuring the aquifer recharge benefits of flood irrigation. At the time, a multi-generation farmer approaching an environmental group about a partnership was hard to imagine. Amy Verbeten and the team at FTR were looking for common ground with farmers and were eager to improve later season flows in the valley for fish and wildlife. Wyatt and other farmers in the area had seen the impact of the practice for years but didn’t have proof that late season flows benefited from their springtime diversions. FTR could assist their efforts by doing the research and undertaking the science to back it up. 

The hydrology of the valley is changing because of accelerated development, the shift away from flood irrigation to center pivot sprinklers, the loss of beavers and the wetlands their dams created, along with the intensifying impacts of climate change and longer droughts. While historically the Teton river was the basin’s only real drain, now hundreds of wells pump water out too. The aquifer and river are suffering. As Wyatt notes,

“When everybody was flood irrigating, the river was about four times higher and we used to see a spike in flows in August.”

 Now, August is a harsh time for the river, when flows are low, temperatures are high, and fish suffer.

Over the past five years, FTR along with LegacyWorks and the Henry’s Fork Foundation (HFF) have worked with Wyatt and other irrigators, forming the Teton Water Users Association, to measure how much water recharges into the aquifer from spreading early season flows in hopes of validating and expanding the practice. LegacyWorks brought its experience with conservation finance and market based solutions, and HFF brought its acumen in science and hydrological modeling. Together we have designed and administered a program that signs farmers up, measures how much water they deliver to ditches and fields, and rewards them based on how much they recharge. The initial results are promising but the science is not robust enough yet. We still have some distance to go to quantify the late season impact of early season recharge, but the results so far are validating. Wyatt says,

“Having the science behind this gives us some authority to keep doing what we’re doing. A lot of folks downstream don’t understand why we’re using the water this way, and this helps justify our work. The funding we receive in return helps support the work to maintain these canals.” 

Photos by Camrin Dengel

Wyatt reached out across a divide, FTR and its partners were receptive and welcoming, and we all got to work and have stuck with it for years. Together we’re making a difference for the Teton Valley aquifer and late season flows in the Teton River, which in turn help build the region’s resilience in the face of a changing future. 

At LegacyWorks Group, we are here to support people like Wyatt and Amy who are willing to bridge divides to find and advance solutions to the complex challenges we face as development accelerates and the climate crisis intensifies. Perhaps recognizing the key role our farms and farmers play in maintaining groundwater supplies and healthy river flows will help us all find the way forward to ensuring the region’s farms and farmers are with us for generations to come. The partnership that began with Wyatt and Amy gives us hope we just might make it happen together. It’s now or never.

This summer, for the third year, LegacyWorks is honored to be participating in the Old Bill’s fundraiser community tradition. Gifts from generous supporters like you provide the unrestricted capacity for LegacyWorks to keep showing up in support of folks like Wyatt and Amy and partnerships like this in the region. Time is short, so please join us in supporting this transformative work by visiting cfjacksonhole.org/old-bills and making a donation to Teton LegacyWorks before Friday to have your gift matched through the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole. We’re grateful for your support!