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.”