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.