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14 CapitalPress.com October 14, 2016 LESA CONTINUED from Page 1 “Our farm is required to reduce by 7 percent, and we feel like we can easily save 25 percent,” Shively said. “We are not worried about mak- ing our water savings on this settlement, while at the same time, we’re seeing as good or better yields than we were previously.” How it works The heart of the system are low-pressure nozzles that dan- gle from long hoses attached to the pivot. The hoses are 54 inches apart instead of the stan- dard 108 inches. Spraying just 12 to 18 inch- es from the ground provides ample water coverage while reducing drift and evaporation, especially once the crop cano- py grows enough to contain the spray. Shively irst tested LESA on a single pivot span over al- falfa last season. During Shively’s trial year, second-cutting alfalfa under the LESA span yielded three-quar- ters of a ton per acre more than the conventional pivot setup. Furthermore, soil remained moist more than 5 feet deep un- der the LESA span, compared with just 18 inches for the con- ventional irrigation setup. Shively also believes LESA, which doesn’t moisten the crowns of grain, has kept stripe rust in check and pre- vented water weight from tip- ping stalks. LESA spreads This season, Shively con- verted four full pivots to LESA. The results have far exceeded his expectations. He planted two pivots — one conventional and one us- ing LESA — a day apart and EPA CONTINUED from Page 1 The director of Save Fam- ily Farming, Gerald Baron, said that his group was not aware of the letter when it under identical conditions, using the soft white spring wheat variety WB 6430. The LESA pivot used about 4 inches less water but yielded about 115 bushels per acre, compared with 75 bush- els per acre under the conven- tional pivot. “The pivot without LESA, we struggled to keep it wet,” Shively said. “We couldn’t turn the pivot off.” In another ield, Shively planted hard red winter wheat and used a LESA setup. It yielded 125 bushels per acre and used 10.5 inches of water. In 2014 using a conven- tional pivot, the same ield yielded 10 fewer bushels per acre but needed 8 more inches of water per acre. Growers throughout the region are starting to follow Shively’s lead. The Idaho Falls ofice of the USDA Natural Resources Con- servation Service has awarded $300,000 through its Envi- ronmental Quality Incentives Program to help area growers install 32 new LESA systems for use next season, many near Mud Lake. NRCS District Conser- vationist Josh Miller said the agency received applications to convert 60 pivots and hopes to obtain funding for an addition- al sign-up in November. Miller said the grant, con- ducted in partnership with Rocky Mountain Power, pays up to $7,000 to convert a single pivot and is capped at $12,000 per applicant. The sales staff at Golden West Irrigation in Rexburg, which has seen strong LESA sales this fall, estimates the cost of outitting a pivot with LESA at $10,000 counting labor. However, most growers, including Shively, opt to install LESA when their conventional pivot nozzles and ittings are worn, and updating a pivot with conventional equipment still costs up to $3,500, count- ing labor. Grant recipients are re- quired to use soil-moisture sen- sors in conjunction with LESA to avoid over-watering crops. “With the groundwater is- sue, I think there are a lot of people interested in using these systems to meet those cut- backs,” Miller said. To meet his reduction, one of the grant recipients, Lane Hutchings of Monteview, Ida- ho, has already dried 50 acres he’d been irrigating with la- bor-intensive handlines and a portable mainline. While meeting with an ir- rigation equipment salesman about purchasing his irst LESA package, the malt bar- ley and alfalfa grower said he’s optimistic LESA will provide a painless way for him to fur- ther reduce his well water con- sumption. “I think (LESA) will be on everybody’s pivots here before long,” Hutchings said. Bonneville Power Admin- istration also offers a grant to help growers convert to LESA, based on the potential power savings. UI Extension irrigation spe- cialist Howard Neibling and Troy Peters, his WSU counter- part, tested the irst LESA pivot spans in Wells, Nev., in 2013, with funding from the BPA. They sought to tweak a common Texas irrigation meth- od for more arid conditions. Texas-style low elevation pre- cision application uses long hoses to position low-emitting drip nozzles beneath crop cano- pies. Neibling and Peters chose adjustable nozzles, as they planned to use a spray setting to get crops germinated, before switching to a drip setting. However, they forgot to tell the grower to adjust the noz- zles. Serendipitously, the spray setting provided ideal coverage and moisture penetration, while reducing water use by 15 per- cent, and modern LESA was born. The following year, they ex- panded the LESA trials to a few sites in Idaho and Washington. “We got a good data set in Arco, Idaho, showing over 20 percent water savings,” Neib- ling said. “We were saving a remarkable amount of water on hot, windy days — like close to half.” Anheuser-Busch funded LESA trials on three pivots in Idaho this season to test the technology on malting barley. Growers reported barley plants were less prone to tipping, but the thick barley stands blocked spray. The problem was reme- died by reducing the distance between the pivot drops. Neibling said some potato growers worried LESA nozzles could damage vines or spread diseases, but Arco seed potato farmer Mike Telford reported no problems with LESA. Joe Jepsen, a Rexburg, Ida- ho, potato farmer, also expe- rienced no problems in spuds with a LESA trial this season. While some spud growers with lighter soils have complained LESA washes away dirt and exposes tubers to light, Jepsen said his soil was heavy enough to avoid trouble. “We had a lot of wind this year, and we could deinitely see the evaporation loss, and with the LESA system there was not that loss,” Jepsen said, adding that he’ll study LESA for three years before expand- ing its use on his farm. “I think we can make our (settlement) cutbacks with LESA and still grow a good crop.” He’s still compiling data on LESA use in spuds and wheat, but he said there was a water savings and spud quality was much improved under LESA. Neibling believes LESA still needs more testing on hilly terrain and clay soils, and he acknowledges it may be a poor it for ields that have runoff is- sues, but he estimates it could be effectively used on about half of Idaho ields. complained last month to the Public Disclosure Commis- sion that What’s Upstream should have registered as a grass-roots lobbying organi- zation. “This basically conirms the intent of the campaign wasn’t public outreach, but was related to lobbying legis- lators,” he said. The Public Disclosure Commission has agreed to investigate and has asked the Swinomish tribe’s environ- mental policy director Lar- ry Wasserman to respond. Efforts to reach Wasserman were unsuccessful. In an email Oct. 3, an EPA spokesman restated the agen- cy’s position that it was con- cerned about the What’s Up- stream campaign — “within the limits of our legal author- ities as we understood them.” The EPA’s inspector gen- eral is auditing how the ish- eries commission and tribe spent federal funds. Some federal lawmakers have charged the EPA with allow- ing an illegally funded lobby- ing campaign and are asking EPA Administrator Gina Mc- Carthy for an explanation. The EPA posted the newly available records online after releasing them to the Capital Press, Baron said his group will broaden its complaint to the PDC, alleging that What’s Upstream also should have registered as a political-ac- tion committee as early as 2013. Late that year, Wasserman proposed using EPA funds to promote a ballot initiative, noting that the EPA already had funded polling by Seattle lobbying irm Strategies 360 that tested which arguments might sway voters to approve mandatory buffers. “We had believed a citi- zens initiative was the intent, but the documents we had be- fore this release wasn’t clear enough to make that com- plaint,” Baron said. Wasserman’s proposal ap- parently focused more EPA attention on the emerging What’s Upstream campaign. “We need to huddle inter- nally if at all possible to dis- cuss Swinomish’s proposal to use EPA funds to pursue a 2014 ballot initiative,” Puget Sound intergovernmental co- ordinator Lisa Chang wrote in a Dec. 19, 2013, email to colleagues. She also point- ed them to the campaign’s current website. “I was not aware of (the) potentially inlammatory nature of their objectives under this sub- award,” she wrote. Wasserman also proposed an advertising budget of $100,000 for 2014. “A mix of public radio sponsorships and commercial radio adver- tising will run for 12 weeks coinciding with the 2014 leg- islative session,” Wasserman proposed in a workplan he presented to the EPA. Two months later, and the day after meeting with con- cerned EPA staff members, Wasserman called Chang and withdrew the proposal to run a ballot initiative, according to a Jan. 15 email from Chang to several EPA oficials. Wasserman submitted a revised workplan, which de- leted references to an initia- tive and the 2014 Legislature. Nevertheless, the workplan Getting help John O’Connell/Capital Press Steve Shively, a Mud Lake, Idaho, farmer, replaces a clamp on a nozzle on the low elevation sprinkler application system on his pivot. Shively said LESA has enabled him to more than meet the requirements for groundwater users to reduce water consumption under the terms of a water call settlement. 3 rd rd Annual Paint the Paper LESA’s evolution LESA in California Last season, University of California crop advisor Steve Orloff tested LESA on spans of three pivots irrigating alfalfa in Northern California’s Siskiyou County. In parts of the region, including the Scott Valley, agri- cultural water use is under scru- tiny due to mounting interest in the interconnection between groundwater and surface water. Based on the results of his 2015 trials, Orloff said eight commercial alfalfa growers in the region had full pivots of LESA to start this season. He suspects more pivots were con- verted during the season, and he envisions more LESA systems will be installed as growers re- place worn pivot equipment. He estimates LESA reduced water waste by 15 percent in the California trials, even work- ing well on a sloping ield with heavy soil. “I don’t know of anyone who has been dissatisied with it,” Orloff said. Peters, the WSU irrigation researcher, believes LESA has been quickest to catch on in Eastern Idaho due to the set- tlement, but he said several growers in Eastern Washington and Oregon have experimented with a single span on their piv- ots. He said growers have had luck with LESA in mint, corn, potatoes, wheat, barley and al- falfa. Peters explained LESA yield boosts should be expected only in crops that were water stressed under conventional pivots, but he noted the ap- proach can always help grow- ers save on input costs. “I think it’s a winner tech- nology,” Peters said. “It saves water, it saves energy, it makes it so the grower can be more proitable, and it’s good for the environment. “I hope more people will take a serious look at it.” retained the $100,000 for ad- vertising, including 12 weeks of radio ads, mostly on Seat- tle stations that could reach Olympia and Bellingham. The revised website, launched in December 2015, prominently featured video clips that inexplicably linked a farmer spraying pesticides with water turning brown and then salmon dying after spawning. EPA staff members began hearing complaints about the website, including from Skagit County Public Works Directer Dan Berentson, who has been involved in an on- going effort to identify and reduce sources of water pol- lution in north Puget Sound. Other tribes, farm groups and government agencies are partners in the effort. “I was concerned about the tenor of the website, ac- tually encouraging people to write their elected oficials to put in additional regulations and implying that voluntary efforts were ineffective,” Berentson said in an inter- view Oct. 4 with the Capital Press. Berentson said EPA ofi- cials listened to his concerns, but he said he didn’t recall any particular reaction. The EPA eventually dis- tanced itself from What’s Upstream when federal law- makers learned in late March about the campaign. 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