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12 CapitalPress.com CONTINUED from Page 1 work. Some of them, I wait until June to start up. Some, it doesn’t help.” Fifteen to 20 years ago, Johnson’s seven wells would provide 8,000 to 9,000 gallons a minute. Today, they pump a little more than half that, and less by the end of each season, he said. Like the more than 175,000 other farmers in the West, Johnson and Lyle depend on water produced by the massive natural and man-made water- works that spans the region. Their irrigation water comes from the Odessa Aqui- fer on the federal Columbia Basin Project. When the proj- ect fi rst opened to farming in 1948, the plan was to tap the massive Columbia River for water. Use of the aquifer was intended to continue only until the river water was available. Now, nearly seven decades later, the aquifer is running out. Johnson and Lyle hope to replace the declining ground- water from their wells with water from the Columbia Riv- er. That could happen between 2019 and 2023, “if everything goes right,” Johnson said. Can they wait until then? “Do I have an option?” Johnson said. “We need it to- day.” The two farmers raise high-value crops such as con- ventional and organic pota- toes, wheat, canola, corn, bar- ley, seed peas, grass seed and organic onions, spelt, aspara- gus and mint. Without the water, Johnson and Lyle said they would like- ly have to raise dryland wheat every other year on their thou- sands of acres. The Water Cycle Dam CONTINUED from Page 1 Snowmelt runoff to streams Evapotranspiration: Water transpired from plants and evaporated from the soil rises. Evaporation: The sun heats water in the oceans, causing some of it to evaporate as vapor. Surface runoff Streamflow Evaporation Spring Water storage in oceans Freshwater storage Gr ou ndw ate r di sch arge Ground water sto Source: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, USGS Alan Kenaga/Capital Press rage All the world’s water: Where it’s found Freshwater: 2.5% Surface/other freshwater: 1.2% Other saline water: 0.9% Ground- water: 30.1% Oceans: 96.5% Glaciers/ ice caps: 68.7% See detail Living things: 0.26% Atmosphere: 3% 1 Of all the world’s water, estimated at 332.5 million cubic miles, More than 97 percent is saline. Only 2.5 percent is freshwater. Source: USGS Swamps/marsh: 2.6% Lakes: 20.9% Soil moisture: 3.8% Ground ice/ perma- frost: 69% Of that 1.2 percent, approximately 22,300 cubic miles of freshwater (found in lakes and rivers) is what all living things rely on to survive. That’s about 1/150th of one percent of all the world’s water. The rest of the freshwater is trapped in permafrost or contained in swamps, marshes, soil and the atmosphere. 2 Of that 2.5 percent, only 1.2 percent is accessible on the surface or in the air. Alan Kenaga/Capital Press NOTE: Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding. The average daily fl ow of the Colorado River is about 15.2 billion gallons at Lee’s Ferry, Ariz., upstream from most of the major diversions. Much of the Columbia’s water comes from snowmelt in the mountains of Canada and the Pacifi c Northwest. Its main headwaters are at Columbia Lake in British Columbia, Ro- jas-Rocha said. The Snake is the biggest tributary of the Colum- bia. Its headwaters are just in- side Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. The Colorado River begins at LaPoudre Pass, near Grand Lake in Rocky Mountain Na- tional Park, Colo. More than 60 dams provide fl ood control, electricity, naviga- tion aid for barges and water for irrigation in the Columbia River watershed. The Snake River has 25 dams, and the Colorado Riv- er has 15 dams on its main stem and more on its tributaries. According to the California Department of Water Resourc- es, roughly 50 to 60 percent of the state’s surface water goes to the environment for fi sh and native vegetation while the re- maining 40 to 50 percent goes to urban and agricultural uses. and signed the agreements atop a fi sh-cleaning table. The event was streamed online by the Yurok Tribe. The amended Klamath Hy- droelectric Settlement Agree- ment will maintain the timeline for dam removal in 2020 and use the same funding as before — $200 million from Pacifi - Corp ratepayers and $250 mil- lion from California’s Proposi- tion 1 water bond, which voters passed in 2014. The separate agreement — called the 2016 Klamath Power and Facilities Agreement — aims to help Klamath Basin irrigators avoid any adverse impacts from the return of fi sh runs to the Upper Klamath Ba- sin after dam removal, propo- nents said. Removing dam removal from the equation could make it more politically palatable for lawmakers to support other aspects of the agreements. In December, Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., introduced a bill to Klamath River dams proposed for removal agricultural water, according to the state’s Department of Water Resources. Overall, 38 percent of the state’s total water supply comes from groundwater. In Idaho, an average of 22 inches of precipitation falls on average every year, accounting for more than 75 percent, or roughly 98 million acre-feet, of the state’s water supply. Rough- ly half of that goes to vegetation or is lost to evaporation. The remaining 49 million acre-feet is surface water or goes to re- charge aquifers, according to a 2010 report by Idaho Depart- ment of Water Resources. An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons. Oregon’s average annual precipitation is about 30 inches, but that varies widely, from as much as 200 inches per year at several points along the Oregon Coast Range to less than 8 inch- es in parts of Eastern Oregon. Oregon expects roughly 100 million acre-feet of water Water from below Besides the rivers, ground- water is a major source of water for farmers and cities. The U.S. Geological Survey does not track the total amount of groundwater available to the West, said spokesman John Clemens. The agency monitors supplies on a regional, county and snapshot basis, but the total amount changes over time and would not have any scientifi c or technical meaning, he said. In much of California, now in the fi fth year of drought, groundwater has been a god- send. Parched portions of Cen- tral California and elsewhere rely on wells for up to 100 percent of the municipal and 101 Rivers: 0.49% 3 Klamath Basin watershed 42 CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK Copco dams 1 & 2 OREGON Upper Klamath Lake 140 Crescent City REDWOOD NATIONAL PARK al John C. Boyle Dam S on m Pacific Ocean 299 Eureka Iron Gate Dam Ore. Tr init in ork Tr N 25 miles R. CALIFORNIA S. F The governors and Jewell were joined in the morning cer- emony by Pacifi c Power Pres- ident and CEO Stefan Bird, National Oceanic and Atmo- spheric Administration chief Kathryn Sullivan, Yurok Tribe Chairman Thomas O’Rourke, Karuk Tribe Chairman Russell Attebery and representatives of nongovernmental and water us- ers’ groups. The ceremony was to sign off on a fi nal version of the 133- page agreement announced Feb. 2 by Pacifi Corp, the states of Oregon and California and the federal Departments of the Interior and Commerce. The new agreement was reached af- ter Congress failed to authorize the original 2010 Klamath Ba- sin water-sharing pacts by the end of 2015. The offi cials stood near the mouth of the Klamath River Precipitation: Cloud particles collide, grow, and fall as rain. Water storage in ice and snow Infiltration: Some water soaks into the ground to replenish aquifers. Condensation Sublimation: Some ice and snow convert to vapor. Volcanic steam Rivers run through it Most water reaches the West as rain and snow through the natural water cycle, said Xochitl Rojas-Rocha, science communicator with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Ecological Research Center. The rain and spring and summer snowmelt fl ow into streams and rivers, but before it reaches the ocean, massive networks of dams, canals and pipelines divert a portion of it to cities and farms. In addition to natural sourc- es of water, a $1 billion desali- nation plant is being pressed into service near San Diego in Southern California to treat ocean water and provide fresh water to nearby cities. The problem in much of the West is precipitation — or the lack of it. “With maybe the exception of the coastal, temperate rain- forests, the West, in general, is a desert,” Rojas-Rocha said. “Pre- cipitation numbers are much lower here than, say, the Mid- west or East Coast.” Most of the West’s water supply is from aquifers, such as the Odessa, and from rivers. Three major rivers — the Columbia, the Snake and the Colorado — provide much of the region’s surface water. Com- bined with the Klamath, Sac- ramento and other rivers, they supply trillions of gallons of wa- ter to the West each year. For example, the average fl ow of the Columbia River at The Dalles, Ore., which is downstream from its confl uence with the Snake, is about 128 bil- lion gallons — a day. The Earth’s water is in constant motion, changing states between liquid, vapor and ice above, on and below ground. Known as the water cycle, this repetitive process has been happening for millions of years. Water storage in the atmosphere: Lower temperatures cause vapor to condense into clouds. Kl Water April 8, 2016 it y R. 5 Sources: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; www.klamathrestoration.org Alan Kenaga/Capital Press move forward on other aspects of the agreements. Another bill by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has so far lan- guished in the upper chamber’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Most of the 42 original sig- natories have been working for the past two months to iron in an average year to fi ll lakes and streams and recharge aqui- fers, according to the Oregon Water Resources Department’s Integrated Water Resources Strategy report. That doesn’t include water that evaporates or originates outside the state. Only 9 percent is diverted for farms or other uses, according to the report. Washington doesn’t mea- sure its fl ow of water, since there’s no purpose for the in- formation, said Brook Beeler, communications director for the state Department of Ecolo- gy in Spokane. Instead, Ecolo- gy determines if water is avail- able at a given time at a given location for various needs, such as people, farms and fi sh. For fi sh, the department determines the minimum in- stream fl ows needed to protect habitat, which varies by season, Beeler said. “In relationship to surface water we have fl ow data for many priority river systems, but we have more than 70,000 miles of streams and rivers — not all of these are monitored or measured,” Beeler said. Future of water “Like always, we could do a lot of stuff better, use water more effi ciently, more cooper- atively, but I think all in all, we live in a pretty good place,” said Aaron Wolf, professor of geog- raphy at Oregon State Univer- sity’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. He believes the Colum- bia-Snake River System is a “terrifi c” example of water be- ing shared across nations, states and economic sectors. “It unites fi ve states, a Ca- nadian province, ranchers and environmentalists, ecosystems and tribes,” he said. Michael Campana, profes- sor of hydrogeology and water resources at OSU, specializes in sub-surface water and teaches classes on water management. “It’s not like it used to be, out details of the new pact, and the parties held a public meet- ing March 16 in Sacramento to gather input. The process has drawn criticism from dam removal opponents, who in re- cent weeks have accused pro- ponents of meeting in secret and claimed the private entity created under the new plan would still need congressional approval. One of the most vocal crit- ics has been Lawrence Kogan, a New York-based water-rights attorney hired by the Klamath Irrigation District. Kogan al- leges the government agencies are violating the original agree- ments by not giving the district enough time to study the new proposal and failing to disclose key elements of the pact, in- cluding an economic impact study he said Oregon and Cal- ifornia utilities regulators will rely on in considering dam-re- moval permits. Kogan sent an email April 4 urging Klamath Basin Coor- but I think overall, given the tenor of the times and the fact global warming paints an un- certain future for us, farmers are in fairly good shape,” Cam- pana said. But forecasts call for warm- er, wetter weather, which means more rain and less snow, Cam- pana said. The snow that does fall will melt sooner, which re- quires more man-made storage for summer use. Campana expects junior water right holders and farmers growing low-value crops to be impacted most. “The days of ‘I can take all of the water out of the stream I want’ are long gone, and they’re not coming back,” he said. “The farmers are real easy targets, so when people talk about drought and cutting wa- ter use 25 percent, (they) look right away at the farmers,” Campana said. “Sure, we need to cut out water use in the cit- ies and tear out the green lawns and everything. If we don’t like agriculture using a lot of water, we have a lot of decisions as stakeholders — who’s going to replace the food that is taken out of production, do we want to have to pay higher prices, do we want to truck or ship in food from the Southeast, which is wetter?” The future Johnson, Lyle and their neighboring Washington state farmers anticipate getting water from the Columbia River via the East Columbia Basin Irriga- tion District’s planned pipeline. In the meantime, they won- der if their luck will continue. If they have an electrical interrup- tion in June, there’s a chance they may not be able to prime their well pumps again, John- son said. “Every day we’re concerned about how much water we’ve got the next day,” Johnson said. “Every day when (we) go to sleep, we don’t know if there’s going to be a well shut off.” dinating Council facilitator Ed Sheets to postpone the signing ceremony until the irrigation district’s questions are resolved. He said he didn’t receive a re- sponse. “We are objecting to the process that they violated and continue to violate,” Kogan told the Capital Press, add- ing that the district may sue to block the agreement. At the ceremony, Jewell said the district’s meet-and-confer request has put the Upper Ba- sin agreement into question, but “we are as committed” to the agreement “as we were on the day we fi rst signed.” The Karuk Tribe’s Tucker said in an interview the tribes and environmental groups were going to push for the dams’ removal to save beleaguered salmon runs regardless of whether an agreement was in place. He said it would be better for Klamath Basin irrigators if a water-rights settlement could be put in place.