Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (April 17, 2015)
April 17, 2015 SW Idaho water supply ‘marginally adequate’ By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press BOISE — The 2015 irri- gation season should be ad- equate for most farmers in Southwestern Idaho, but only if natural river flows hold up. “I still think we’re OK. The wild card is the river flow,” said Greg Curtis, superintendent of Nampa & Meridian Irrigation District, the valley’s largest. Water supply managers said most reservoirs in the region started the season with a decent amount of storage water. How- ever, snowpack levels were well below normal and unusually warm temperatures in February and March caused the snow to melt much quicker than normal. That resulted in an early bump in river flows, before ir- rigators need the water. The big question now is how far into the season those flows will hold up, Curtis said. Most irrigation districts in the region typically get by on natural flow rights well into the summer before switching over to water they have stored in res- ervoirs. If river flows drop below a certain level too early in the sea- son, those districts would have to turn to stored water much sooner than normal and that could cause reservoir levels to get depleted quicker. How the weather fares over the next several months will determine if Pioneer Irrigation District has to reduce deliveries to its 5,800 patrons later in the season, superintendent Mark Zirschky said in a news release. “Spring rains would really Capital Press Upgrading the Northern spotted owl to “endangered” status may bring more scrutiny to timber sales on public land but probably won’t effect com- panies that already have owl conservation plans in place, experts say. The Environmental Protec- tion Information Center, based in Arcata, Calif., asked that spotted owls be reclassified as endangered. The group said the owl’s status has not im- proved in the past 25 years due to habitat loss and competition from larger, more aggressive barred owls. The group be- lieves enhanced protection is necessary. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the federal Endangered Species Act, agreed a review is war- ranted and will do that over the next year. While that process would seem to carry the threat of in- creased regulation, most ma- jor timber companies already have federally-approved spot- ted owl Habitat Conservation Plans (HCP) in place, said 5 Farm groups split on grass seed reporting Bill would authorize production data collection By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press rean Ellis/Capital Press Water from Pioneer Irrigation District’s Phyllis Canal flows by a farm field in Southwestern Idaho April 13. Water supply managers in the region say most farmers should have an adequate supply of water this year, if natural river flows hold up. help by delaying demands on the system, but ultimately we are going to have to rely on our patrons to be as conservative as possible in their water use to help make our storage water last as long as possible,” he said. Boise Project Board of Con- trol Manager Tim Page said the water supply outlook for the Treasure Valley is “marginally adequate.” The project delivers water to five irrigation districts and 165,000 acres on the Boise Riv- er system. BPBC usually supplies wa- ter until the first part of October but whether the project will be able to keep the water flowing beyond September this year de- pends on how river flows hold up, Page said. Water from the project start- ed filling canals on April 1 and irrigation deliveries should start going full-bore about April 15, Curtis said. Snowpack in the Payette River basin is less than half of normal, but the system’s reser- voirs are in good shape, said wa- termaster Ron Shurtleff. There won’t be any surplus water this year, he said, “but we’re looking fine.” The Weiser River basin is a different story. Although carry- over in most reservoirs on the system was good, snowpack is only 10 percent of normal. The Weiser system provides irrigation water for about 55,000 acres. Those who own storage wa- ter rights will probably be OK this year, said watermaster Brandi Horton, but the bulk of the water users in the ba- sin get their water rights from natural stream flow provided by snowpack. Owl conservation plans aid companies By ERIC MORTENSON CapitalPress.com Gary Rynearson, forest policy and communications manager for Green Diamond Resources. The company owns timber- land in Washington, Oregon and principally in Northern California, including 400,000 acres covered by an HCP. Such plans detail how logging and other activity can be car- ried out in areas inhabited by spotted owls. “We don’t think an uplist- ing would have an impact on us,” Rynearson said. “Our pro- tection measures are in place. We have a long history of un- derstanding how we manage for owls across the landscape.” Among other things, Green Diamond pioneered barred owl removal research with approval from Fish and Wild- life. The work showed spotted owls returned to nesting sites in nearly every instance when barred owls were killed. The work is controversial — kill- ing one species to benefit an- other — but it convinced USF- WS to experiment with barred owl removal in other West Coast forests. Tom Wheeler, legal coor- dinator for the Environmental Protection Information Center, agreed with Green Diamond’s assessment that HCPs proba- bly protect timber companies from additional regulation. He believes the “jury is still out” on whether they improve con- ditions for spotted owls, how- ever. The group has an “evolv- ing” position on barred owl removal, Wheeler said. “We can’t shoot our way out of this problem,” he said, but as an interim strategy it may be necessary to help spotted owls recover. The bird’s population throughout its range is declin- ing 2.9 percent per year, with up to a 5.9 percent annual de- cline in some areas. The Northern spotted owl is the ESA poster creature. It’s been listed as “threatened” since 1990, a decision many link to the steep decline of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest and the decima- tion of rural towns that once depended on logging and mill jobs. Logging on federal land plummeted sharply from the mid-1980s on as timber sale lawsuits, protests and policy changes unfolded. rop-15-2-7/#4 Legislation that would em- power Oregon farm regula- tors to collect data about grass seed supplies has divided ag groups, which see it as either a market stabilizer or intrusive. The Oregon Grass Seed Bargaining Association sup- ports House Bill 3435, which authorizes the Oregon Depart- ment of Agriculture to gather information on grass seed in- ventories from licensed deal- ers. Knowledge encourages market discipline, as farmers can adjust their production to prevent shortages and sur- pluses, said Mark Simmons, executive director of OGSBA. “Data is not a silver bullet but it will allow us to react more quickly to change,” he said during recent legislative hearings on the bill. Better data would have helped the industry weath- er the plunge in demand for grass seed after the housing collapse and financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, Simmons said. The USDA’s statistics branch doesn’t collect data about grass seed and informa- tion from state seed commis- sions only provides a “rear- view mirror,” he said. Seed contracts were tight- ened up by lawmakers in 2011 with legislation that estab- lished deadlines for payment after harvest. Before then, grass seed farmers often held the crop for years without getting paid, which put some growers out of business but did not pro- vide dealers with an incentive to manage production, said Simmons. Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press A forklift operator moves grass seed products at an Oregon ware- house. Lawmakers are considering legislation that would require seed dealers to report inventories to state farm regulators. HB 3435 serves as a nat- ural extension of that legisla- tion, he said. Now that dealers must pay for contracted seed, improved transparency would mitigate the industry’s boom-and-bust cycles, he said. However, ODA does not currently have the legal au- thority to collect supply in- formation from dealers, Sim- mons said. The Oregon Seed Council, which represents dealers and growers, is opposed to the bill because the industry can voluntarily share informa- tion to promote market sta- bility, said Roger Beyer, the group’s executive director. “Let us solve it internal- ly,” Beyer said. Data collected by Oregon State University about grass seed production is accurate and can be used to extrapo- late inventories, he said. Growers and dealers can figure out how to recon- cile the information they’re already gathering without ODA’s intervention, which is unnecessary and lacks industry consensus, Beyer said. “A lot of people feel it’s not the role of government to be calculating private in- formation about seed com- panies,” he said. The Oregon Farm Bu- reau is against HB 3435 for the same reason, said Jenny Dresler, government affairs associate for the group. “It doesn’t need a legisla- tive fix,” she said. The bill would only ap- ply to contracted acreage in Oregon, which does not rep- resent the entire grass seed supply, she said. “It would not give the full picture.” ROP-16-4-1/#14