August 21, 2015
CapitalPress.com
5
Drought
Wenatchee Valley irrigation district wins drought relief
Water from alpine lake to be sent to orchards
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — A Wenatchee
Valley irrigation district will re-
ceive $41,000 in drought-relief
funds to help it tap an alpine
lake to nurture more than 2,300
acres of orchards through the
summer.
The Icicle Irrigation Dis-
trict in Chelan County will
match the state Department
of Ecology grant and airlift
equipment to pipe up to 850
acre-feet of water from Eight-
mile Lake in the Alpine Lake
Wilderness.
The water will go to pear,
apple and cherry growers
served by the Peshastin Canal,
which is actually in the Peshast-
in Irrigation District, which has
a close relationship with Icicle.
Farmers along the canal
had their water deliveries cut
by one-third in July because of
low stream flows. Tony Jantzer,
who manages both districts,
said tapping the lake won’t re-
store the cutbacks, but should
prevent further rationing and
limit damage to trees.
“If we can get this Eightmile
thing going, we can get both
districts through to the 25th of
September,” he said Monday.
DOE has now awarded
funding to five drought-relief
projects. Tapping Eightmile
Lake will be the first project
that will immediately increase
water supplies to an irrigation
district.
DOE
also
awarded
$133,000 to the city of Moxee
in the Yakima Valley to install
new pumps in two municipal
wells.
Aquifer pressure and levels
have been reduced as farmers
ramp up irrigation to relieve
drought conditions, according
to the city.
Previously, DOE funded
a municipal well in Stevens
County, a fish-passage project
on the Olympic Peninsula, and
the advertising and enforce-
ment of water restrictions in the
Kennewick Irrigation District.
DOE has awarded a to-
tal of $324,302 for the five
drought-relief projects. The
agency is reviewing 10 other
proposals and is still taking
applications, DOE spokesman
Dan Partridge said Monday.
“We’re working through
them as quick as we can,”
he said. “We’re looking for
projects that will provide re-
lief for hardships as quickly
as possible.”
Jantzer said the district,
which must match the state’s
$41,000, probably would
have gone ahead without state
funding. “It’ll save our district
a significant amount of mon-
ey,” he said.
Since 1926, Icicle has held
rights to draw 2,500 acre-feet
from Eightmile Lake, but it
can only draw 1,650 acre-feet
before the lake drops below
the outlet. Icicle proposes to
install about 800 feet of pipe
to siphon water from lower
levels. The district hopes to
avoid running pumps in the
wilderness area, which is in
the
Okanogan-Wenatchee
National Forest. “We want to
be more environmentally and
people conscious if we can,”
Jantzer said.
Jantzer said he hopes to
have water flowing by Aug. 31,
though he said he’s concerned
about lining up a helicopter to
fly equipment to the lake. He-
licopter contractors are current-
ly occupied fighting wildfires,
Jantzer said.
Water deliveries via the Pe-
shastin Canal were cut from
6.75 to 4.5 gallons per minute
beginning July 20. In its appli-
cation to DOE, Icicle said that
without drawing more water
from Eightmile Lake, those
farmers could be cut back to
2.25 gallons per minute before
the summer is over.
Drought
Owyhee Project Oregon irrigators nearly out of water
fallows
for almost two weeks longer
than it did last year will signifi-
cantly help the long-term condi-
half-million ONTARIO, Ore. — Farm-
tion of his permanent crops like
ers who get their irrigation wa-
mint and asparagus.
acres in
ter from the Owyhee Project in
“That will make a huge dif-
Eastern Oregon are almost out
ference for me,” he said.
California of earlier water, than nearly
two months
Vill Vuhrig, an Oregon State
normal.
University cropping systems
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
— California’s now 4-year-
old drought will cost state
agriculture $1.84 billion in
2015, researchers estimated
in a study Tuesday from the
University of California at
Davis.
The biggest chunk of that
cost will come from the fal-
lowing of 542,000 acres that
lack water for irrigation, the
study said. That’s about one-
fifth more land than drought
forced out of production last
year, researchers noted.
Agriculture, water and
economic experts at the uni-
versity stressed the extent to
which farmers in California
— the country’s leading ag-
riculture state — are relying
on groundwater pumping
to make up for dwindling
stores of water in state riv-
ers, creeks, reservoirs and
snowpack.
Overall in 2015, farmers
have nearly 9 million fewer
acre-feet of surface water for
irrigation, out of the 28 mil-
lion acre-feet that state wa-
ter officials say California
agriculture uses in an aver-
age year. An acre foot is the
amount an average Califor-
nia household uses in a year,
and it is one of the standard
units of measurement for
water.
To make up for that,
farmers and ranchers are
pumping an additional 6
million acre-feet of wa-
ter for irrigation out of the
state’s underground water
aquifers this year, Tues-
day’s study said. The study
adds to findings — from
sources ranging from over-
booked drillers of water
wells to groundwater stud-
ies by NASA scientists —
that California, in drought,
is pumping up its ground-
water at an alarming rate.
The study calls the rate
of pumping of groundwater
in the drought unprecedent-
ed. While California law-
makers in 2014 passed the
state’s first legislation to
try to protect key aquifers
from getting pumped dry of
usable water, the state’s 27-
year timeline for bringing
groundwater pumping under
regulation is likely too long,
the University of California
at Davis researchers said.
The drought will hit farm
workers as well as farm own-
ers in 2015, costing 10,100
seasonal farm jobs, the study
said. Agriculture overall em-
ploys more than 400,000
workers in California.
The study noted one area
of agriculture that is boom-
ing despite the drought. The
state’s acreage of almonds
and walnuts has grown by
200,000 since 2010, despite
constraints on water, the study
said. Economists say growing
demand from consumers in
China for nuts as snack food
is driving the almond-orchard
boom here.
Agriculture
consumes
about 80 percent of all avail-
able water from rivers, lakes
and other sources that Cali-
fornians use, and it accounts
for about 2 percent of the
state’s economy.
The Owyhee Reservoir’s
gates are completely open and
the last of the system’s available
storage water is flowing out,
said Owyhee Irrigation District
Manager Jay Chamberlin.
The project provides water
for 1,800 farms and 118,000
acres of irrigated land in East-
ern Oregon and part of South-
western Idaho.
“The system might be able
to run about another (10 days),”
Chamberlin said. “We’re on the
last of our water.”
The system, which has 400
miles of canals and laterals, has
about 20,000 acre-feet of us-
able storage water left.
“That might sound like a lot
of water but when you have a
system as big and long as ours,
that’s a small amount,” Cham-
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
A sugar beet field near Ontario, Ore., is irrigated June 11. Oregon farmers on the Owyhee Irrigation
District will run out of water within 10 days.
berlin said.
Farmers in this region can
count on receiving irrigation
water from the Owyhee system
into October during normal
years but the water has run out
in August the past two years
because of a lingering drought.
Washington falls deeper
into ‘extreme’ drought
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Drought conditions cat-
egorized as “extreme” have
spread over nearly 43 percent
of Washington state, an 11 per-
cent increase in one week, the
U.S. Drought Monitor reported
Thursday.
The other 58 percent of the
state is classified as being in a
“severe drought,” the next cat-
egory down.
The one-week jump contin-
ues a trend. Three weeks ago,
no part of the state was in ex-
treme drought, which has now
enveloped large sections of
Western, Central and Eastern
Washington.
Drought conditions have
been driven by below-average
rainfall and record or near-re-
cord temperatures.
Washington had its 13th
driest and fourth hottest July
on record, the National Centers
for Environmental Information
reported Wednesday. This fol-
lowed the state’s hottest and
third driest June ever, according
to records dating back to 1895.
The June-July combination
put 2015 on course to surpass
1934 as the state’s warmest
year. Oregon also had its warm-
est June-July period on record
and also has had its warmest
calendar year to date.
A warm water mass, nick-
named “The Vlob,” remains
OID patrons receive an al-
lotment of 4 acre-feet of water
during a normal year but the al-
lotment was slashed to 1.6 acre-
feet this year and 1.7 acre-feet
last year.
Even though water is still
flowing through the system,
many farmers have already
used up their allotment for this
season.
This year’s water supply
will last about 10 days longer
than it did in 2014, mainly due
to timely May rains that re-
duced demand and improved
in-flows into the reservoir
slightly, OID officials said.
“It’s a little bit better (this
year) mainly because of those
timely rains we had earlier
this (season),” said OID board
member and farmer Vruce
Corn.
Nyssa farmer Craig Froerer
said the fact that water will flow
extension agent in Malheur
County, said the far reaches of
the Owyhee system, where he
farms, went dry July 22 last year.
“We still had water in the
ditch this morning,” he said
Aug. 12. “You’re looking at
three weeks longer this year than
last year. That’s a long time.”
Vut the water situation in
this area is still difficult and
the combination of the reduced
allotment and early end to the
irrigation season has made
things challenging for farmers,
Corn said.
Corn, like other farm-
ers in the region, left a lot of
ground idle the last two years
and planted more crops that
require less water but are also
less profitable.
“It’s not a good situation
but people got by the best they
could,” he said. “It looks like
the crops that are growing for
the most part are going to be
able to be finished.”
anchored off the Washington
and Oregon coasts, heating up
inland temperatures, Washing-
ton State Assistant Climatolo-
gist Karin Vumbaco said. The
Blob’s influence on tempera-
tures weakens as air moves far-
ther inland, she said.
High humidity levels are
keeping nights relatively warm,
raising overall average tem-
peratures, according to the cli-
matologist’s office.
Portions of Western Wash-
ington set July heat records.
Extreme drought has now
spread throughout the Olym-
pic Peninsula, according to the
Drought Monitor, a partnership
of the U.S. Department of Ag-
riculture, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
and the University of Nebras-
ka-Lincoln.
Extreme drought also now
covers more of Central Wash-
ington. Wenatchee sweltered
through its second hottest July
on record, while Yakima ex-
perienced its third hottest, ac-
cording to the NCEI, a division
within NOAA.
Washington’s
average
temperature statewide in July
was 68.6 degrees, 4.5 degrees
above the 20th century average.
Through the end of July, the av-
erage temperature for the year
had been 50.8 degrees. At the
same point in 1934, the average
temperature was 49.1 degrees.
34-7/#4
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
ROP-33-2-2/#4x