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4 CapitalPress.com February 6, 2015 Heather Smith Thomas/For the Capital Press Lemhi County, Idaho, rancher Bill Slavin is involved in a stream flow project on Carmen Creek. Effort returns year-round flow to Idaho creek By HEATHER SMITH THOMAS For the Capital Press W15-2/#14 An effort that began last fall will make Carmen Creek near Lemhi, Idaho, a year- round stream again, aiding fish passage and helping ranchers receive the irrigation water they need. Dan Bertram, project man- ager for the Upper Salmon Basin Watershed Program, is working on the effort, which involves moving the point of irrigation diversion for two ranches. This will allow a minimum of 1.2 cubic feet per second to be transferred down Carmen Creek from a nearby ditch, making it a perennial stream again, Bertram says. In the past, part of the creek went dry almost every summer during irrigation season. Bill Slavin is one of the ranchers involved. “Our water has always come out of Carmen Creek. ... We’ve had trouble with some of that ground the ditch goes through, with a lot of subdivi- sions,” Slavin says. “Those people think it’s like a faucet they can turn on or off whenever they want, rather than according to their water right,” he explained. Their erratic use makes it hard to regulate the amount downstream, he says. The ranchers do most of the work to maintain the ditch. “Everyone tried to get together in the spring to do some maintenance before we turn water on, but then it was up to ranchers to adjust the headgate when the creek went up or down. We end up doing the work and they get the ben- efit. They are on the front end of the ditch and we are on the tail end,” he says. “That’s the main reason we looked into this change to sprinklers instead of flood irrigating. We will be able to rely on how much water we’ll actually have, and when,” Slavin says. “Before, we’d set a dam, but when we come back either the water is not there, or it’s a lot more than we expected be- cause screens on the subdivi- sion sprinkler systems hadn’t been cleaned and are plugged up. Then all the water would come down to us. My ground is steep, and this could wash the hillside away,” he says. “Now we’ll have to deal with pumps and more me- chanical problems, but we should be able to get a better crop,” he says. The project will pump wa- ter to Bill and Derrold Slavin from a canal on Big Flat. “This will allow more flow to stay in Carmen Creek — from our headgate on down to the river. This was what was attractive to people interested in the fish,” he says. “Ours wasn’t the last head- gate, but close to it, and the next rancher had to put a dam across the creek to get his wa- ter right, which pretty much shuts the flow off for fish pas- sage,” Slavin says. “The plan is to have it finished before we start ir- rigating this spring,” he says. “We are optimistic it will work. I worry about having trouble with pumps, but we’ve had trouble with ditches, too.”
