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4 CapitalPress.com August 19, 2016 Senators optimistic about wildire funding bill By JOHN O’CONNELL Capital Press BOISE — Sponsors of a bill irst introduced three years ago to fund suppression of cat- astrophic wildires the same as other natural disasters, thereby freeing resources for wildire prevention, believe the timing is now ideal to pass the legis- lation. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, both R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., say federal land managers must often di- vert funding from wildire pre- vention and other programs to ight big wildires. Their Wildire Disaster Funding Act, S. 235, would authorize Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funding for ires costing more than 70 percent of the 10-year average, leaving the U.S. For- est Service and Bureau of Land Management to continue fund- ing responses to more typical ires. “These are the catastrophic ires,” Crapo said. “They are disasters just as much as a hur- ricane, a lood or a tidal wave, and we should deal with them with the funding Congress has already allocated for dealing with natural disasters.” The senators said during an Aug. 15 press conference the bill should impose no new inancial burden on taxpayers, as adequate investment in pre- vention should reduce the prev- alence of the largest wildires. “When prevention gets short shrift, and that is today’s reality, you’re always going to play catch-up ball in the rural West,” Wyden said. The bill passed the Senate and failed in the House, but a joint conference committee, which includes both Wyden and Risch was formed anyway, with plans of attaching the lan- guage to an energy and natural resources authorization bill or some other appropriations bill. Action on the bill is likely in November, according to Cra- po’s ofice. Wyden said more than 250 organizations and several key lawmakers now support the concept, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who has grown increasingly concerned about wildire impacts on his state’s baseball bat industry. “I think after years of bitter debate on this issue we may just Courtesy of inciweb.nwcg.gov A smoke column rises Aug. 12 from the Pioneer Fire in the Boise National Forest. may have found a sweet spot to inally get this resolved — to ix this broken, dysfunctional mess of a budget system and do it in a bipartisan way,” Wyden said. According to the senators, the Forest Service spent $1.7 billion ighting ires in 2015, and the top 1 percent of ires represented 30 percent of the total cost. Risch believes the Pioneer Fire, currently burning about 77,000 acres north of Idaho City in the Boise National For- est, demonstrates the impor- tance of active forest manage- Irrigation water should low in SW Idaho until October By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press CALDWELL, Idaho — Water is expected to contin- ue to low in most irrigation ditches in southwestern Idaho until the irst part of October. That’s about normal for most water delivery entities in this part of the state, where farmers are heavily dependent on water stored in reservoirs. “We’re going to sail right through and go the whole sea- son; there’s no doubt in my mind,” said Alan Newbill, a farmer and member of the Pio- neer Irrigation District’s board of directors. Newbill said the district will likely shut the system down during the irst or second week of October and would also like to end the season with some carryover water for the 2017 water season. “If it’s really dry and peo- ple need some water, we could run a little bit longer but if they don’t need it, there’s no sense in wasting it,” he said. The amount of storage wa- ter Pioneer still has available in Boise River reservoirs is about two weeks better than last year, said manager Mark Zirschky. Pioneer’s 5,800 patrons can expect their irrigation water to low until the irst or second week of October in an aver- Sean Ellis/Capital Press A peppermint ield is irrigated Aug. 16 near Nampa, Idaho. Water is ex- pected to low in irrigation ditches in southwestern Idaho until the irst part of October, the normal water delivery shutoff date for this region. age year. Zirschky agreed with Newbill that the system should meet that goal this year. “We should certainly make a full season,” he said. “We should have some carryover wa- ter but we’re not sure how much yet. It just depends on what the weather does.” The Boise Project Board of Control, which provides water to 167,000 acres and ive irri- gation districts in southwestern Idaho, is also looking at operat- ing for a full season, said man- ager Tim Page. “The decision hasn’t been made yet, but I suspect we’ll go into October before we shut irrigation off,” he said. “We’re in pretty good shape and we’re going to have a fairly good sea- son.” Page said water use this year hasn’t been as high as in some past years, which he assumes is due to different cropping rota- tions and irrigation practices in the valley, including many farm- ers’ switch to drip irrigation. Farmers who get irrigation water from the Weiser River system are having a much better water year than they did in 2015, when the system was shut down in mid-August, two months ahead of normal. The system is getting low, but farmers who depend on it are also down to the last few weeks of their main irrigation needs. Demand should fall off signiicantly in September, said Weiser River watermaster Bran- di Horton. “It’s crunch time but we’re still looking pretty good,” she said. “Last year was rough. This year has been pretty good to us.” ment. The timber industry had planned to harvest 15 million board-feet of timber from the ire area, which burned before the harvest could take place. Risch believes the Pioneer Fire, which was half contained as of Aug. 16, wouldn’t have grown so big had thinning been con- ducted more expeditiously. In Eastern Idaho, the Power Line Fire, which burned 3,106 acres of range land on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, was controlled on Aug. 15. The ire was ignited Aug. 10 by light- ning, said BLM spokesman Lynn Ballard. Courtesy of Mike McMillan Black Mountain Hotshot Skyler Penna works a burn operation on the Pioneer Fire in the Boise National Forest. Strong Snake Plain water outlook deteriorates By JOHN O’CONNELL Capital Press IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — A once comfortable wa- ter outlook has deteriorated on the Eastern Snake Plain, where water users now face re- cord-low stream lows in some reaches, tightening supplies and the likelihood of ending the irrigation season with little storage carryover. “Some of the junior priori- ty water rights have been shut off, and some of the canals have run out of water,” said Lyle Swank, watermaster for the water district encompass- ing the Eastern Snake Plain. “There are some that are still trying to ind if there’s any possibility to get water to their areas.” Swank said stream lows in the plain are approaching historically low levels. For ex- ample, the Snake River reach past Jackson Reservoir, at Flag Ranch in Wyoming, was low- ing at a record-low 195 cubic feet per second on Aug. 10, about half of the median level for the date. With natural lows prema- turely diminished, Swank said, water users have been rapidly drafting storage, which has accounted for 70 percent of his water district’s recent use. Reservoirs were 44 percent full as of Aug. 10, with Ameri- can Falls Reservoir just a quar- ter full. Snake Plain water manag- ers were planning for a strong water year in March, but peak lows arrived early, limiting storage accumulation, and the summer has brought little precipitation and a prolonged stretch of high temperatures. Twin Falls Canal Co. gen- eral manager Brian Olmstead said he’ll make it through this John O’Connell/Capital Press Eastern Snake Plain storage and river low levels have dropped far below normal. American Falls Reservoir in southeast Idaho has just a quarter of its capacity, leaving boat docks at Seagull Bay Marina exposed. water year without cutting de- liveries only because of rough- ly 40,000 acre-feet of water he’s received from junior groundwater irrigators under terms of a Surface Water Co- alition water call settlement. Olmstead said users began tap- ping storage much earlier than normal. “I used considerably more storage in June than during the last several years,” Olmstead said. Steve Howser, gener- al manager of the Aber- deen-Springield Canal Co., said he received about 15 per- cent less storage accrual this season than he anticipated, de- mand is about 25 percent high- er than normal for this time of year and evaporative losses have been up during a summer in which temperatures have topped 90 degrees for 25 days. “I’ll have no carry-over,” Howser predicted. “With no carry-over, I’ll need a bet- ter-than-average winter.” Complicating matters for many water managers, Swank said 141,340 acre-feet of sur- face water was leased this sea- LEGAL LEGAL OREGON TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING (OTAC) WHAT: OTAC Meeting WHEN: September 15, 2016 @12:30pm-4:00pm WHERE: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife 4034 Fairview Industrial Drive, SE Salem, OR 97302 The Classroom (Conference Room) – 1st Floor For more information, or to arrange special accommoda- tions for meeting attendees, please contact Tracy Robillard, Oregon NRCS State Office, 503-414-3206. CHERRY AVENUE STORAGE 2680 Cherry Ave. NE Salem, OR 97301 (503) 399-7454 Sat., Sept. 3rd• 10 A.M. • Unit 4 Bryan VanDyke • Unit 22 Larry Berry • Unit 138/185 Rachel Choudry/John CanaVan • Unit 179 John Codner • Unit 128 Phyllis Perez Cherry Avenue Storage reserves the right to refuse any and all bids son — mostly to groundwater districts seeking to inject it into the aquifer to stabilize ground- water levels, and help meet terms of their water call set- tlement. In addition to forfeit- ing their water for this season, entities that leased water will be the last to have their rights illed next season. Surface Water Coalition attorney John Simpson sees no net gain to conducting re- charge when it cuts into stor- age carryover. “One of the guiding princi- ples the surface water people looked at when negotiating with the groundwater folks was a continued reliance on the storage system to solve this problem was not addressing the issue, and the issue was de- clining spring lows and reach gains,” Simpson said. Howser said Aber- deen-Springield leased 20,000 acre-feet to groundwater users for recharge when the water outlook appeared strong. He recently sought to rent water to help inish this season but dis- covered “an awful lot of com- panies rented for recharge in one way or another” but now believe they have no water to spare. LEGAL PURSUANT TO ORS CHAPTER 87 Notice is hereby given that the following vehicle will be sold, for cash to the highest bidder, on 8/29/2016. 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