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CapitalPress.com
April 1, 2016
Growers urged to get involved in local agencies’ groundwater plans
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — Growers
worried about the impact of
new state groundwater reg-
ulations should get involved
in local agencies’ discussions
about how to implement them,
a state water official advises.
Landowners can check
the California Department of
Water Resources’ website to
track which agency is devel-
oping a groundwater sustain-
ability plan in their area and
how it’s coming along, said
Trevor Joseph, the DWR’s
sustainable groundwater man-
agement section chief.
“As a grower you might be
interested certainly in which
agency is going to represent
your area” in implementing
the 2014 Sustainable Ground-
water Management Act, Jo-
seph said in a March 24 we-
binar.
He added that landown-
ers will be able to enter their
street address and be directed
to their local Groundwater
Sustainability Agency. Such
agencies must be identified in
the state’s most important or
troubled basins by the middle
of next year.
“Ultimately, this ground-
water (effort) is best accom-
plished locally,” Joseph said,
Online
For more information about
the regulations, visit http://
groundwater.ca.gov.
adding that the state’s role
will be limited.
The webinar came amid
a week of public meetings
at which DWR officials pre-
sented technical information
about how the sweeping new
groundwater regulations will
be put into effect and to gath-
er input.
The DWR was also
taking written comments
through April 1 on emer-
gency regulations to quickly
implement the plan.
During the webinar, Jo-
seph and other water reg-
ulators first gave technical
details of how they will eval-
uate local plans and then took
questions and comments. One
domestic well owner said she
attended two local meetings
that offered little opportunity
for input and suggested the
state consider an agency’s
public outreach efforts when
evaluating its plan.
Keith Freitas, a San Joa-
quin Valley grower, said he
was concerned about the
regulations’ impact on water
rights.
“I’m wondering how the
state environmental agency
plans to protect the sustain-
ability of small family farms
under the emergency regula-
tion and under the code itself
and the act itself,” Freitas
said.
Woodland city public
works director Greg Meyer
lamented that the emergency
regulations put some burdens
on local agencies that may be
unnecessary and could drive
up costs.
“I’m
concerned
the
proscriptive nature of the
document is going to lose
the local-control nature of
what the original intent of
the act was,” Meyer said.
Others said that agencies
that oversee important but
healthy groundwater basins
face the same required in-
vestments and other efforts
as agencies in basins that are
overdrafted, creating a “one-
size-fits-all” approach.
Under a series of bills
passed in 2014, sustainabil-
ity plans for the 21 most
critically overdrafted basins
must be in place by 2020,
while plans for other high-
and medium-priority ba-
sins must be established by
2022 and sustainability in all
high- and medium-priority
basins must be achieved by
2040.
U.S. hop stocks up 10 percent over year ago
YAKIMA, Wash. — A 10
percent increase in the invento-
ry of U.S. hops over a year ago
shows production is doing bet-
ter toward meeting demand, an
official of a leading hop compa-
ny says.
Hop supplies have been
tight for several years even as
U.S. hop acreage, predomi-
nately in Washington state,
has increased considerably in
response to increased demand
from the growing craft beer
market.
The latest stock report indi-
cates supply continues to keep
up with demand “although
we have not yet achieved the
desired breathing room in the
supply chain, in particular with
many of the high-demand aro-
ma varieties,” said Pete Ma-
honey, director of supply chain
management and purchasing
for John I. Haas, a leader in
hop production, processing, re-
search and development.
The USDA’s National Ag-
ricultural Statistics Service
issued a report March 21 stat-
ing the U.S. held 131 million
pounds of hops on March 1, up
10 percent from 119 million a
year earlier.
Stocks held by growers
and dealers were up 16 per-
cent at 88 million pounds
while inventory of brewers
was unchanged at 43 million
pounds.
Oil from hop cones is used
to flavor and stabilize beer.
Just last Sept. 1 U.S. stocks
were down 8 percent from a
year earlier. That reflected an
oversupply of alpha hops com-
ing down to more normal lev-
els while some aroma varieties
were sold out, Ann George,
administrator of Hop Growers
of America and the Washing-
ton Hop Commission, both in
Moxee, said at the time.
While U.S. production rose
11 percent in 2015, German
and worldwide production was
down.
George said a small part
of the March 1 increase could
be that more of the expanding
number of smaller dealers and
brewers are reporting to NASS.
She said she believes acreage
will continue to expand this year
at about a “solid 10 percent.”
Expansion continues to oc-
cur around Moxee near Yakima
and in the lower Yakima Valley,
Idaho and Oregon. Michigan
likely will pass 1,000 acres this
year, she said.
Mahoney said brewers have
done more forward contracting
because of tight hop supplies.
Typically, smaller brewers run
with a leaner cushion of supply
while larger brewers some-
times carry up to a year’s
worth of supply, he said.
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Hops vines are seen growing last May 20 near Benton City, Wash.
U.S. hop stocks are up, according to a new report.
Idaho Supreme Court water ruling supports Rangen trim line
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
BOISE — Water law ex-
perts say a March 23 Idaho
Supreme Court ruling regard-
ing the Rangen Inc. water call
reaffirms the importance of
putting the state’s water to
its maximum beneficial use,
setting a precedent that could
limit the scope of future calls.
Rangen, a Hagerman trout
farm, filed its call in 2011. In
January of 2014, Idaho De-
partment of Water Resourc-
es Director Gary Spackman
ruled in Rangen’s favor, de-
ciding that irrigation by junior
groundwater users within the
Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer
had reduced flows from the
spring that supplies the trout
farm’s water.
But Spackman applied a
so-called trim line, restrict-
ing the call to 157,000 acres
in which curtailment of wells
would result in a significant
increase to Rangen’s flows.
Spackman set the trim line at
a volcanic feature known as
the Great Rift, crossing the
aquifer downstream of Amer-
ican Falls Reservoir, noting
curtailment of 322,000 acres
to the east would result in
only 1.5 cubic feet per second
of additional water reaching
Rangen’s spring.
A district judge later over-
turned Spackman’s use of the
trim line, reasoning it ran con-
trary to the Idaho concept of
“first in time, first in right,”
and applied the call to the en-
tire area of common ground-
water.
The Supreme Court’s
recent 3-2 decision found
Spackman was justified in us-
ing a trim line to ensure max-
imum beneficial use of the
state’s water and to account
for uncertainty in the depart-
ment’s groundwater model.
“The director conclud-
ed there is a point where
Rangen’s delivery call would
require curtailment of vastly
more acreage to produce a
very small increment of addi-
tional water, and at this point,
Rangen’s right to seek addi-
tional curtailment must give
way to the public’s interest in
optimum development of the
state’s water resources,” the
ruling explains.
Idaho Ground Water Ap-
propriators Executive Direc-
tor Lynn Tominaga said the
ruling means his organization
won’t have to add an addition-
al 1.5 cfs to the 9 cfs of spring
water it’s currently delivering
to Rangen through a pipeline
for mitigation.
Tominaga also believes the
ruling’s precedent “gives a lot
of discretion to the director in
terms of who can be involved
or not involved with a deliv-
ery call.”
Rangen attorney Fritz
Haemmerle declined to com-
ment on specific details of the
case, noting two additional is-
sues on appeal are scheduled
for oral arguments before the
Supreme Court on April 4.
Preliminary route for B2H line pushed farther south
By GEORGE PLAVEN
EO Media Group
14-1/#4x
Capital Press
14-2/#7
By DAN WHEAT
A final Environmental
Impact Statement on the pro-
posed Boardman, Ore., to
Hemingway, Idaho, transmis-
sion line won’t be released
until later this summer, but at
least one potential route shows
the Bureau of Land Manage-
ment is heeding local concerns
in Oregon’s Umatilla and Mor-
row counties.
The BLM updated its pre-
liminary preferred alternative
for the 300-mile line, which
reflects two major changes
sought by the counties: first,
the line in Morrow County was
shifted onto the west side of
Bombing Range Road south of
Boardman, onto Navy land as
opposed to high-value farms
SAGE Fact #128
The SAGE Center offers free educational
tours for school groups all year. Contact the
SAGE Center today to book your visit and
learn more about Eastern Oregon
agriculture, industry, and technology.
14-1/#5
14-2/#6
across the road. Second, the
alignment was pushed farther
south through Umatilla Coun-
ty in order to avoid impacting
additional farmland where
growers worried the line could
take acres of crops out of pro-
duction.
Tamara Gertsch, national
project manager for the BLM,
said they are continuing to
work with all agencies, includ-
ing the counties, and haven’t
made any final decisions yet.
But the preliminary preferred
alternative does provide a
glimpse into the route analysis
so far.
“There’s no such thing as a
route without impacts. That’s
just the way it is,” Gertsch
said. “It’s a balancing act to
do the best thing that we can
to eliminate most impacts with
our cooperating agencies.”
Boardman to Hemingway,
proposed by Idaho Power, is
a 500-kilovolt line that would
run from just outside Board-
man to Melba, Idaho, near
Boise. It would allow the two
regions to share electricity
during times of peak demand.
Estimates for the project have
ranged between $890-$940
million.
A draft EIS was released in
2014, and the BLM continues
to analyze comments that were
submitted from the public. The
final EIS will include analysis
of the agency preferred route
and alternatives. Once it is is-
sued the public will have 30
days to review and provide ad-
ditional comments.