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February 6, 2015 CapitalPress.com 7 Low snow readings bring sense of doom to Calif. growers By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press SACRAMENTO — The season’s second meager snowpack readings reinforce to growers and weather watchers that drought this year will be at least as severe as it was in 2014. As expected after a month of vir- tually no precipitation in Northern California, state Department of Wa- ter Resources officials found scant amounts of snow during their second manual survey at Echo Summit on Jan. 29. Snow surveys chief Frank Geh- rke found just 2.3 inches of snow water equivalent at the station about 90 miles east of here, or 12 percent of the average for this time of year. Statewide, the snow water equiva- lent was 25 percent of normal. As the snow surveys are key to determining how much state and federal water will be allocated to farms, growers are facing the sink- ing feeling that water shutoffs that hampered their crops last year will be repeated this spring and summer. “I’ve heard growers say, ‘I just don’t see them sticking to 15 percent (of State Water Project requests) with the lack of rain that we’ve had,’” said Richard Matoian, execu- tive director of the American Pista- chio Growers in Fresno. “Growers are telling me as they’re looking at the pricing of water, that it continues to go up even to buy water or make trades to get water down to where they need it,” he said. A continued lack of water “could Water supply outlook bleak for E. Oregon farmers By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press ONTARIO, Ore. — Eastern Oregon farmers’ hopes for a normal water year in 2015 are fading fast. There are about 30,000 acre- feet more water stored in the Owyhee Reservoir than at this point in 2014, and snowpack levels are slightly ahead of where they were this time last year. But last year was disastrous for farmers who depend on the Owyhee Project, which supplies water to 118,000 acres of irrigat- ed land in Eastern Oregon and parts of Southwestern Idaho. The annual allotment for farmers who get their water from the Owyhee Irrigation Dis- trict was slashed from the usual 4 acre-feet to 1.7 acre-feet last year. Despite that, the system stopped delivering water in Au- gust, two months earlier than normal. An estimated 20 percent of farm ground in Eastern Oregon was left idle last year in anticipa- tion of the low water year. “The good news is we’re a little better than last year,” said OID Watermaster J.L. Eldred. “The bad news is we’re still not in good shape.” Basin-wide, total snowpack was at 74 percent of normal Feb. 2. While there are about 114,000 acre-feet of available ir- rigation water stored in the reser- voir, there is typically more than 300,000 acre-feet at this point during a normal water year, said Bruce Corn, a farmer and mem- ber of OID’s board of directors. “We’re in a little better po- sition than we were last year at this time but we still need a lot more snow to have an ade- quate irrigation season,” he said. “Right now, there is a lot of un- certainty and concern.” High-pressure weather sys- tems over the Treasure Valley area have mostly kept storms at bay this winter, said OID Man- ager Jay Chamberlin. “We’re really losing ground out there pretty fast,” he said. “We need to ... get rid of these high-pressure systems and get some storms. It’s getting kind of serious.” The only real good news is that Owyhee River flow levels near the reservoir have risen quickly following rain storms, which is an indication the ground is wet, Corn said. “That’s something we did not see last year.” Courtesy of Calif. Department of Water Resources Meager snow levels are evident in the mountains above Phillips Station east of Sacramento, where the California Depart- ment of Water Resources conducted its second manual snow survey of the season on Jan. 29. be devastating to our community,” said Melodie Johnson, executive manager of the Colusa County Farm Bureau. The lingering drought makes it all the more important to educate urban dwellers about the importance of water to food production, she said. “We all need to get proactive (in saving water), not just the farmers,” Johnson said. “We’re creating twice as much food with half as much wa- ter as we did 20 years ago, and we have twice as many people.” The sense of doom comes af- ter the wet season began with great promise, as abundant storms in No- vember and December began to replenish reservoirs, turned grass- es green and pushed many areas in Northern California to well above their normal seasonal rainfall totals. However, hardly a drop of rain has fallen since New Year’s Day as the stubborn high-pressure ridge that stymied rainfall in past winters has returned, sending approaching storms on a detour through the Pacif- ic Northwest. Little relief appears in sight, as the federal Climate Predic- tion Center envisions warmer and drier-than-normal conditions throughout the state in the first two weeks of February. The center’s three-month outlook still calls for a chance of above-normal precip- itation levels south of Sacramento, powered by a weak El Nino atmo- spheric system. Water officials and National Weather Service forecasters have said California needs at least 150 percent of normal precipitation — in- cluding 150 percent of normal snow- pack — to avoid a fourth straight year of drought in 2015. Achieving such an abundant snowpack appears unlikely now, said Michelle Mead, a NWS warning coordinator here. “Thursday’s manual snow survey numbers make it likely that Cali- fornia’s drought will run through a fourth consecutive year,” Mead said in an email. The winter’s fast start prompted state officials recently to boost antic- ipated water deliveries to contractors from 10 percent to 15 percent of re- quests, but they warned more drastic water-saving measures could still come this summer. Federal officials will make initial allocations of Cen- tral Valley Project water in mid-Feb- ruary. Many growers are bracing for the worst. “Many of our guys are in the cit- rus belt ... and we have many guys on the west side who had very low or nil water allocations last year,” Ma- toian said. “They’re expecting the same thing again this year.”