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April 22, 2016 CapitalPress.com 11 Washington WSU creamery adding whey processing facility University seeks industry partners for equipment funding By MATTHEW WEAVER Capital Press Dan Wheat/Capital Press Keechelus Lake is shown along Interstate 90 just east of Sno- qualmie Pass, Wash., on April 3. It is 95 percent full and is one of five reservoirs serving Yakima Basin irrigators. Snow doesn’t do much to bolster water supply By DAN WHEAT Capital Press WENATCHEE, Wash. — A storm that struck the Washington Cascade Moun- tains before daylight April 14 dropped snow but didn’t alter the statewide snowpack or alle- viate water worries for August and September. The storm hit after mid- night and left a fresh dusting of snow in the foothills above Wenatchee and on the Water- ville Plateau among other plac- es on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. Natural Resource Conserva- tion Service measurement sites at 5,400 feet elevation along Na- num Ridge between Wenatchee and Ellensburg picked up 2 to 4 inches of new snow, said Scott Pattee, NRCS water supply spe- cialist in Mount Vernon. Lyman Lake, at 5,900 feet above Lake Chelan, received 4 inches and Stevens Pass had 5 inches, Pattee said. Fresh snow blanketed the Cascades and the northwest side of the Blue Mountains above Dayton but missed the Olympics and the northeastern corner of the state, he said. Statewide snowpack was 107 percent of normal on April 5 but it’s been rapidly melting since then because of hot weath- er, Pattee said. Statewide snow- pack was 93 percent of normal on April 13 and the storm didn’t change it, he said. The storm did not change the probability that orchards along parts of the Wenatchee, Entiat and Methow rivers and other eastern slope basins with little or no reservoirs could run low on irrigation water in August and September, Pattee said. “Once the snowpack is this ripe and has begun the melt cy- cle even cooling off and a light snow is not going to slow the melt,” he said. “It adds moisture but fresh snow on top of the old is mostly lost to evaporation as soon as the sun comes out.” Nonetheless, Washington still has the best snowpack in the 11 Western states, Pattee said. Odds are this was the last snowfall of the season at mid-el- evations in the Cascades, he said. April through September streamflows are forecast at nor- mal or slightly above with the exception of the Spokane River forecast at 98 percent of normal, Pattee said. The upper Colum- bia is 125 percent, the central Columbia 110 percent and the upper Yakima Basin at normal, he said. The Yakima Basin, which saw the most severe drought in 2015, continues to expect full water supply for junior and se- nior water right holders, said Chris Lynch, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation hydrologist in Ya- kima. The five reservoirs serving the Yakima Basin — Keechelus, Kachess, Cle Elum, Bumping and Rimrock — totaled 89 per- cent of capacity on April 14 up from 76 percent on March 7 and 57 percent on Feb. 1, according to the USBR. Keechelus, the one Interstate 90 motorists see, is at 95 percent. The five reser- voirs now are storing 943,681 acre-feet of water and total ca- pacity is 1,065,400. Ideally the reservoirs won’t fill until late May or early June right before drawdown for irri- gation starts, Lynch said. They will top off sooner if snowmelt accelerates, he said. Diversions for the Kittitas Reclamation, Roza and other irrigation districts has start- ed but is mostly coming from points below reservoirs, he said. Some water is being re- leased from reservoirs but is being replenished by inflows. Washington State Univer- sity’s creamery is adding a $4 million whey processing facility. The creamery processes 15,000 pounds of milk per day, resulting in 1,500 pounds of cheese, according to WSU. The remaining liquid, called whey, is a waste product. The facility will use mem- brane filtration processing, said John Haugen, manager of the WSU creamery. “If a student that works here goes out into the dairy industry to work in a cheese plant, they will be working with membrane filtration systems,” Haugen said. “A Courtesy Washington State University Creamery An architectural rendering shows Washington State University’s new whey processing facility, which could allow the university’s creamery to gradually double its production capacity and give students experience with filtration processes found in the dairy industry. big part of what we do at the creamery is give college stu- dents some experience they can take out there and make them more valuable to the dairy industry.” Whey powder or protein concentrate is used in energy drink mixes. Larger compa- nies can use this outlet, but the WSU creamery doesn’t produce enough whey to dry. The membrane filtration unit will reduce the whey to a third of its present volume, Haugen said. The creamery will pump the whey into a tanker truck, which will haul it to WSU’s Knott Dairy Farm, where it is stored in a lagoon and eventu- ally sprayed onto nearby farm fields as fertilizer. “We don’t have a current plan for (the whey), except it will reduce our hauling costs,” Haugen said. “There are definitely potential uses for it, anything from animal feed to some graduate student coming up with a drink you could make from that part of the process.” Berry farm fined $20,000 for polluting river By DON JENKINS Capital Press A Whatcom County berry farm in northwest- ern Washington has been fined $20,000 for twice letting manure-polluted water run into the Sumas River last fall, the state De- partment of Ecology said Monday. Sarbanand Farms LLC applied a manure-sawdust mulch to newly planted blueberry fields in Sumas, near the Canadian border, according to DOE. Precipitation washed the manure into Saar Creek, a tributary of the Sumas River, which runs into British Co- lumbia, Canada. DOE collected water samples near the farm twice. Fecal coliform bacteria con- centrations were 30 times greater than acceptable lev- els on Nov. 17 and 175 times greater on Dec. 9, according to DOE. Sarbanand Farms was fined $10,000 for each day. The farm’s chief admin- istrative officer, Cliff Wool- ley, said the farm had made the one-time application of mulch in October. “Unfortunately, runoff was caused by heavy rains that flooded our fields,” Woolley said. The farm will not ap- Courtesy of Washington Department of Ecology Manure-tainted water flows from a Whatcom County berry farm into a creek leading to the Sumas River near the Canadian border in December 2015. The Washington Department has fined Sarba- nand Farms $20,000. peal the fine to the state’s Pollution Control Hearings Board, he said. “Our poli- cy is to comply with every- thing,” he said. The applications were poorly timed, according to DOE. “Applying manure in the fall, at the start of our rainy season, is always risky,” said Doug Allen, manager of Ecology’s Bellingham of- fice. In setting the fine, the DOE says it took into ac- count that the farm had been previously fined for contam- inating Saar Creek. The farm applied manure within 10 feet of ditches in late September 2013, ac- cording to DOE. As rain began to fall, the farm tried to plow a ditch to stop the runoff, but the effort was too late to prevent polluted water from flowing into the creek, according to DOE. In that case, Sarbanand Farms was fined $4,000. WAFLA warns of potential minimum wage hike By DAN WHEAT Capital Press OLYMPIA — Two ini- tiatives that would increase Washington’s minimum wage could be on the Nov. 8 general election ballot, the farm labor organization WAFLA is warn- ing its members. The state’s minimum wage is $9.47 per hour, but under Initiative 1433 it would in- crease to $11 per hour Jan. 1 and add 50 cents per year to hit $13.50 on Jan. 1, 2020. Af- ter that it would increase each year based on the consumer price index. The measure was intro- duced Jan. 22 by the Wash- ington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO and the Service Em- ployees International Union. Those groups are working to get the signatures of 246,372 registered voters by July 8 to get it on the ballot. Rick Anderson, CFO of WAFLA, indicated he has little doubt they will make it. They have the money and organization and have been working hard since the end of January gathering signatures, he said. As a less onerous alterna- tive for employers, the Wash- ington Restaurant Association put forth I-1518 on March 28 that starts at $10.50 per hour Jan. 1 and increases 50 cents each Jan. 1 to reach $12 on Jan. 1, 2020. Then it would revert to annual CPI hikes. I-1518 also allows a train- ing wage of $9.50 per hour, or 80 percent of the minimum wage, whichever is higher, for up to the first 180 days of em- ployment. Only one employee at a time can earn that training wage for employers with fewer than 10 employees. The limit is 10 percent of the workforce for larger employ- ers. Both initiatives accrue one hour of paid sick leave for ev- ery 40 hours of work. I-1433 does not cap sick leave accru- al, but I-1515 does. WAFLA CEO Dan Fazio said his organization opposes government-mandated wages. In general, some workers get more money and others lose their jobs when minimum wages go up because their production isn’t commensu- rate with the wage, he said. Employers are pressured, turn to more automation and research shows it does not lift people out of poverty even though it is politically popu- lar, Fazio said. Minimum wages make it harder for employers to hire workers without skills, he said, adding that entry-level jobs were not meant to be ca- reer destinations. Tim Kovis, Washington State Tree Fruit Association spokesman in Yakima, said the association has not taken a position on the initiatives but generally opposes mini- mum wage hikes because they make the labor-intensive tree fruit industry less competi- tive. Growers not using the H-2A visa foreign guestwork- er program may have great- er exposure, he said. H-2A workers are assured a mini- mum of $12.69 per hour but usually H-2A and all other tree fruit pickers make more money on piece rate. 17-4/#18 17-7/#4N