Every year, 9 million tons of it - half of which is generated by human activity - flows downstream throughout the vast Colorado River Basin. Salt levels reach such high concentrations at the final diversion point, California's Imperial Dam, that both municipal and agricultural water users wind up paying a steep price. Economic damage to the basin states - Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California - totals about $330 million a year in reduced crop yields and increased water-treatment costs.

But project by project, federal and state agencies, and local communities, are taking on the issue. Earlier this month, Bureau of Reclamation officials and farmers from this eastern Utah town unveiled the Ferron Salinity Control Irrigation Project, one of the first large-scale attempts to deal with the problem - and perhaps the most collaborative.

"We've been doing these projects up and down the river. This one is significant because farmers here have been irrigating the same way for the last 100 years, and you had the government coming in pulling a lot of the strings. It took a real cooperative effort to pull this off," said Dave Sabo, the Bureau of Reclamation's assistant regional director for the Upper Colorado Region.

Indeed, convincing Ferron's farmers to switch from their traditional ditches and canals used for flood irrigation to a high-tech sprinkling system wasn't easy - "We don't even like to change our underwear around here," joked Ferron farmer James Nelson - especially with the pitch coming from the federal government, not the most popular outfit in rural Utah, or the rural West, for that matter.

"It was a tough sell at the beginning. Really tough. It was, 'This is the federal government, and they're going to steal our water and sell our children,' '' recalled Tracy Behling, president of the Ferron Canal and Reservoir Co. "But once we got the first leg of the project in, it really began selling itself."

Today, with 10,000 acres now being irrigated by the new sprinkler system (and the 175 miles of pipe that connects it), farmers are not only keeping 47,000 tons of salt out of the Colorado River system annually; they're also improving:

l Water efficiency from 30 percent to 67 percent.

l Soil conditions.

l Crop yields.

l Wildlife habitat.

The biggest bonus of all: A longer irrigation season. Because of the system's increased efficiency, a water supply that used to give out by late summer now extends well into fall. Last year, a significant amount of irrigation water remained in the reservoir until November, and beyond.

"We used to lose half our water through seepage and evaporation," farmer Merrill Duncan said. "And it's not only water savings. When we put it in the pipe, we can move it around to where it can be utilized."

In the process, the Salt Flats-like alkaline that used to collect on Ferron's farmlands has now given way to flourishing crops. Area farmers used to have to import their alfalfa because it simply wouldn't grow in the salt-laden soil. Now they not only grow it, but export it.

"Last year I sent hay to South Korea, California and Texas. It's opened up a whole new set of possibilities," Behling said.

Today, nearly all of the area's farmers have bought into the salinity-control irrigation project, and local entities have kicked in about $2 million of the project's $12.7 million cost.

Collectively, the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program has blocked about 1 million tons of salt annually from flowing to southern California, where the agriculturally rich Imperial Valley produces so much of the nation's food supply.

Bureau of Reclamation officials hope the Ferron project becomes a model for future salinity-control initiatives around the interior West.

"This is a huge concern for the federal government," said Sabo, the bureau's assistant regional director. "Salinity diminishes our ability to use the water. If we can improve the quality of the water, we can use more of it throughout the system."

In that sense, Sabo added, the farmers of Ferron are visionaries. "They're geniuses in terms of how they've been able to pull all of this together."

jbaird@sltrib.com

Ferron salinity project

The problem: Tons of salt flow into the Colorado River from agriculture, harming water quality and agriculture downstream.

The solution: New, high-tech, efficient irrigation systems.

The result: Better water quality, more efficient use of water, longer irrigation season.