May 29, 2015
CapitalPress.com
3
Drought
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
TWIN FALLS, Idaho
— Idaho Ground Water Ap-
propriators Inc., Executive
Director Lynn Tominaga is
hopeful that recent rains may
erase a debt his members owe
this season in response to the
Surface Water Coalition’s de-
livery call.
On April 1, in the midst of
a long period of unseasonably
warm, dry weather, Idaho De-
partment of Water Resourc-
es Director Gary Spackman
ruled Eastern Snake Plain
groundwater users owe two
Coalition canal companies
89,000 acre feet this season
under the amended methodol-
ogy order for the decade-old
call. The Coalition filed the
call based on declining spring
flows into the Snake River,
caused by wells with junior
groundwater rights.
When IGWA couldn’t find
the necessary mitigation wa-
ter in time to meet this sea-
son’s obligation, it reached a
tentative, longterm agreement
with the Coalition earlier this
month.
It offered 110,000 acre feet
in mitigation this season, con-
cerned continued dry weath-
er would otherwise prompt
Spackman to increase the
obligation at mid-season and
require IGWA to provide a
minimum reservoir storage car-
ryover after the season.
IGWA also agreed to reduce
its groundwater consumption
in the future and to pay a flat
mitigation amount each year,
regardless of the moisture out-
look.
But May brought 4 to 6 inch-
es of rain throughout Southern
Idaho and changed the outlook.
Now, Tominaga is hopeful
Spackman may reduce or elim-
inate the original 89,000-acre-
foot obligation. Mitigation
water should be much easier to
find if the debt remains, though
Tominaga fears IGWA’s leased
water would flow through the
system unused.
“The longer this rainy
weather hangs on, the more
it looks like Palisades and the
other major reservoirs are go-
ing to fill,” Tominaga said. “If
we have a full reservoir system,
our obligation should go away.”
However, as Tominaga
travels the state meeting with
IGWA groundwater districts,
he’s encouraging his members
not to let a shift toward wetter
weather deter them from press-
ing forward with a longterm
agreement.
Ron Abramovich, water
supply specialist with USDA’s
Natural Resources Conser-
vation Service, said Northern
Idaho had received just a third
of its usual May precipitation
through May 26, but basins
further south were inundat-
ed with moisture. The Little
Wood, Big Lost and Little lost
basins received 130 percent of
normal precipitation; the Wil-
low, Blackfoot and Portneuf
basins in Eastern Idaho were at
185 percent of normal, as were
the Salmon Falls and Bruneau
basins near the Nevada border;
and the Bear River basin was at
166 percent of normal.
Abramovich said stream-
flow forecasts, which didn’t
change much following the
first week of rain, as moisture
soaked into dry soils, have
come up considerably more
recently. Willow Creek near
Ririe, for example, had a fore-
cast for 20 percent of normal
stream flow through July on
April 1, which has increased to
45 percent of normal.
“With the rain and stream
flows coming up, we know
irrigation demand is going
down some,” Abramovich said.
“That’s allowing more water to
be stored in reservoirs for use
later this summer when we’re
more likely to be dry.”
Abramovich said sunny,
warmer weather should return
on Saturday, when the fore-
cast calls for a 90-degree high
in Treasure Valley, about 14
degrees above normal.
Some fear SJ Valley ag could
go the way of timber industry
Analysis
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
FRESNO — Is agricul-
ture in the iconic San Joaquin
Valley going the way of Cali-
fornia’s once-abundant timber
industry?
As nearly 1 million acres of
farmland could be fallowed this
summer because of drought-re-
lated water shortages, some
farmers are beginning to draw
comparisons with the wood
products industry, whose decline
was hastened by protections for
the Northern spotted owl.
Jay Gillette, a Dinuba, Ca-
lif., orange grower and packer
who’s received no federal water
for the past two seasons, fears
that agriculture in the region
is in a “new normal” of water
shortages, farmland being tak-
en out of production and farm-
worker layoffs.
“I think we’re there. I think
this summer is it,” Gillette said.
“I’ve pushed out 30 percent of
my home ranch this year. My
brother pushed out half his or-
chard. As volume goes down,
if there’s less fruit to pick and
pack, it’s going to require less
labor to do it.”
Farm layoffs and processing
plant closures could rekindle
memories of lumber mill shut-
downs after the spotted owl’s
1990 listing as threatened under
the federal Endangered Species
Act.
Since then, more than 80
sawmills have closed in Cali-
fornia alone because of various
factors, including the spotted
owl. In 1978, more than 4.4 bil-
lion board-feet of lumber valued
at $699 million was produced
in California, according to state
Board of Equalization tax re-
cords. In 2009, in the heart of
the Great Recession, only 805
million board-feet was produced
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Jay Gillette, owner of Gillette Citrus Co., in Dinuba, Calif., stands near a downed orange tree in his orchard in late April. Many farmers in
the San Joqquin Valley fear water shortages are the “new normal” for the region.
with a value of $99 million.
“When it comes to these
kinds of issues, when you get to
court, the environment trumps
people and jobs every time,”
said Mark Pawlicki, spokesman
for the Anderson, Calif.-based
Sierra Pacific Industries. “That’s
what we’ve learned.”
Since the early 1990s, Cen-
tral Valley Project water allo-
cations to farmers south of the
Delta have declined with each
new environmental protection
— from winter run salmon tem-
perature controls in the San Joa-
quin River to biological opin-
ions further protecting salmon
and the Delta smelt, grower
groups say.
Among San Joaquin Valley
commodities that have suffered
a similar fate to timber is cotton.
California has gone from 1.6
million acres of cotton in the
1980s to somewhere between
150,000 and 170,000 acres this
year, largely because of a steady
drop of water supplies from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River
Delta, said Roger Isom, who
runs a trio of organizations for
nut and cotton growers and pro-
cessors.
Amid the drought, the Cen-
tral Valley Project has shut off
agricultural water to junior
rights holders, including the
prime citrus growing region in
Fresno, Tulare and Kings coun-
ties, for the second straight year.
California Citrus Mutual has es-
timated as many as 50,000 acres
of orchards could be removed as
a result of the zero allocation.
“We’re in a situation that’s
never been seen before,” said
Ryan Jacobsen, executive direc-
tor of the Fresno County Farm
Bureau. “It’s worse than we ever
probably thought possible.”
However, the difference
between timber and ag in the
valley is the water can come
back, Pawlicki said.
“We can have rains again,”
he said. “With the spotted owl,
there are many other factors that
have kept its population from in-
creasing … The rains returning
will make a big difference.”
Arlen Miller, an Orosi, Ca-
lif., orange grower, agrees.
While wood can be purchased
from elsewhere, many fruits and
vegetables grown in the valley
can’t, he said.
“What we’re going through
right now is a drought,” Mill-
er said. “It’s not a man-made
drought … We are subject to the
rain.”
Extra days may be added to Owyhee Project water season Governor
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
ONTARIO, Ore. —
Recent rainstorms have
bought farmers in Eastern
Oregon who get their water
from the Owyhee Project a
little more time this year,
but not much.
“It sure hasn’t hurt but
it hasn’t done a whole
lot of good either,” said
dairyman Frank Ausman, a
member of the Owyhee Ir-
rigation District’s board of
directors.
The region has been hit
by four straight years of
drought conditions and the
1,800 farms that get their
irrigation water from the
project had their annual
allotment slashed to 1.5
acre-feet this year, well
below the normal 4 acre-
feet.
There are 158,000 acre-
feet of water stored in the
project’s reservoir system
available for irrigation right
now, slightly more than this
time last year but well be-
low the 30-year average of
500,000 acre-feet, said OID
Manager Jay Chamberlin.
OID hopes the wa-
ter will last until the first
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
A wheat field near Nyssa, Ore.,
is irrigated May 26. A recent
string of rainstorms may add
7-10 days to the irrigation sea-
son for farmers who get their
water from the Owyhee Project
in Eastern Oregon.
add another 7-10 days to
the end of the water season,
Chamberlin said.
The rains weren’t a
game-changer but they did
help, he said.
“At least we picked up
some (water) and we’re
grateful for that,” he said.
“They are little blessings
along the way.”
The storms were hard
on some hay fields and re-
duced their quality signifi-
cantly, Chamberlin said,
“but I don’t hear a lot of
complaining because of the
seriousness of the situation.
The positive is greater than
the negative.”
For farmers who are try-
ing to barely get by with
the relatively small amount
of water they will get this
year, those extra days
“might make all the dif-
ference in the world,” said
Oregon State University
Cropping Systems Exten-
sion Agent Stuart Reitz.
Onion farmer Reid Saito
said the rains have inter-
fered with the later season
planting of some crops
and threw off the timing of
some fertilizing and weed
control activities.
“But it’s been welcomed
rain,” he said. “Anything
we can get that adds to the
end of the season is going
to help a lot of guys.”
Like last year, a lot of
farmers in the region left
ground idle this year and
planted more crops that
require less water, such as
grains, peas and dry beans.
Besides leaving some
ground idle, Ausman also
planted the shortest-day
corn he could find and
planted it early, hoping to
stretch his water into Au-
gust.
If it gets down to crunch
time, “I might let some of
my hay suffer because I can
buy hay from somewhere
else if I have to, but ... I
have a dairy and I have to
have corn,” he said.
declares
drought in
8 Oregon
counties
SALEM, Ore. (AP) —
Gov. Kate Brown has issued
drought declarations for
eight more Oregon counties,
bringing the total to 15.
The action allows in-
creased flexibility in how
water is managed to ensure
that limited supplies are used
as efficiently as possible.
Brown said May 22 that
hot, dry weather this sum-
mer will likely lead to a dif-
ficult fire season and water
shortages.
It applies to eight coun-
ties in central, southern and
eastern Oregon. They are
Deschutes, Grant, Jackson,
Josephine, Lane, Morrow,
Umatilla and Wasco coun-
ties.
week of August, which is
how long it lasted in 2014
but two months earlier than
normal.
The recent rains helped
reduce demand and might
rop-6-26-5/#17
Moisture
could help
Idaho
groundwater
users
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