December 9, 2016
CapitalPress.com
9
Washington
Battle lines are drawn in
Washington over new wells
Environmentalists
defend ruling
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Courtesy of Phillip Gross/Warden Hutterian Brethren Farms
Members of the Warden Hutterian Brethren harvest their wheat in July near Warden, Wash. Farmer
Phillip Gross won the National Association of Wheat Growers’ yield contest with a yield of 192.85
bushels per acre.
Washington farmer wins
national wheat yield contest
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Phillip Gross knew he had
a pretty good yield this year.
But he wasn’t expecting to
win the National Association
of Wheat Growers yield con-
test.
“I definitely thought there
would be some other growers
knocking on the door of 200
bushels,” Gross said.
Gross topped the award
with 192.85 bushels per acre
for irrigated wheat, 216 per-
cent above the county aver-
age, according to NAWG.
Gross planted WestBred
Keldin, a hard red winter
wheat variety he’s raised
for several years. Gross said
that’s an unusual yield. He
credited a significant boost
provided by cooler flowering
weather than normal.
“This is the biggest yield
we’ve had on record,” he said.
One entire field averaged
192 bushels. Gross suspects
some parts of that field had
even higher yields, but didn’t
have it staked out or tested for
yields.
Gross farms with the War-
den Hutterian Brethren Farms
near Warden, Wash. The com-
munity raises about 9,000
acres of irrigated wheat and
2,000 acres of dryland wheat.
“A lot of our yields are de-
pendent upon water availabil-
ity,” he said.
When the weather is
warm, wheat takes a backseat
to such crops as potatoes, peas
or corn, Gross said.
“Wheat is a lot more flex-
ible in that way— it allows
you to use water elsewhere,
and when you have some
available later on, move it
back again,” he said.
The majority of the farm’s
acres are irrigated by the
Odessa Subarea aquifer,
which is declining. The farm
is planning to install a pump-
ing station south of its home
base to replace aquifer water
with water from the Columbia
River.
“It definitely needs to hap-
pen,” Gross said. “It’s unsus-
tainable, pulling the amount
of water from the aquifer and
expecting it to be there year
after year.”
With river water, Gross ex-
pects to be able to draw bigger
yields with better water that’s
not so high in sodium,
Falling number tests af-
fected some of the soft white
wheat varieties the communi-
ty grew, with results dropping
to roughly 230.
Farmers are docked at el-
evators for wheat below 300.
Some hard red winter wheat
escaped unscathed, he said.
Stripe rust also affected
some “gold standard” variet-
ies that never had the problem
before, Gross said.
“So the rust strains are mu-
tating,” he said.
The price received varied
throughout the farm, Gross
said.
OLYMPIA — The Wash-
ington Supreme Court’s rul-
ing in Whatcom County vs.
Hirst could shut down rural
homebuilding statewide, a
lobbyist for farm groups and
other water users said Thurs-
day at a House hearing.
“The more I listen to
people discuss the Hirst
case, the more convinced
I am that there will be no
growth in the rural area un-
less we solve the problem,”
said Kathleen Collins of the
Washington Water Policy
Alliance, whose members
include irrigators, business-
es and cities.
The House Agriculture
and Local Government com-
mittees held a joint hearing
to learn more about the Oc-
tober decision, in which the
court ruled that new domes-
tic wells can’t impair existing
water rights, including river
flows.
Previously, domestic wells,
which account for 1 percent of
water use, were exempt from
such review.
Many bills related to the
ruling are likely to be intro-
duced during the 2017 session.
Some groups, including
the Washington Farm Bureau,
hope lawmakers will blunt the
decision. Although the ruling
does not threaten to curtail
irrigation water rights, the
Farm Bureau condemned the
decision for effectively pro-
Courtesy of TVW
Washington Water Policy Alliance lobbyist Kathleen Collins testifies
Dec. 1 at a joint hearing of the House Agriculture and Local Gov-
ernment committees in Olympia. She warned that a recent state
Supreme Court decision threatens to shut down homebuilding in
rural areas. The Washington Farm Bureau condemns the ruling for
barring farm families from drilling new domestic wells.
hibiting new homes for farm
families.
Environmental groups sig-
naled Wednesday they will
defend the thrust of the ruling.
The groups are influential in
the House, where Democrats
hold a majority of seats.
“Obviously, we have to
get agreement with the envi-
ronmental side. I hope that’s
possible,” Collins said after
the hearing.
In the Hirst case, the envi-
ronmental group Futurewise
and others challenged What-
com County and the state
Department of Ecology. Both
agencies said new wells in the
county would not harm water
resources.
The court, however, ruled
that small withdrawals of
groundwater add up and de-
prive rivers of water for fish,
wildlife and scenery.
The ruling means prospec-
tive homeowners may have to
finance expensive studies to
prove their wells won’t harm
existing water rights. In some
watersheds, water rights in-
clude minimum river flows
set in previous decades by
Ecology. Critics say the flow
standards are too high and
create an artificial scarcity of
water.
Proving a new well won’t
intercept or draw water from a
river may range from hard to
impossible. Hydrologists say
that groundwater and surface
waters are connected.
“Water withdrawn from
groundwater does impact sur-
face water and therefore se-
nior water rights,” U.S. Geo-
logical Service hydrologist
Matt Bachmann told House
members.
“That impact is common-
ly too small to measure for a
small domestic well, but it is
not too small to measure cu-
mulatively if you look at all
domestic wells in a basin,” he
said.
SugarBee apples head to stores
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
CHELAN, Wash. — Sugar-
Bee, a new apple variety said
to be sweeter than Honeycrisp,
will be sold commercially for
the first time this month.
Chelan Fresh Marketing
is providing test marketing of
first-year production to sever-
al Wal-Mart stores across the
nation, Safeway in Northern
California, Kroger and Whole
Foods, said Mac Riggan, vice
president of marketing at Chel-
an Fresh.
About 8,000, 40-pound
boxes of SugarBee is being
sold in holiday packaging,
and the goal is to eventually
sell whatever the market bears
at a good profit, Riggan said.
“We’ve had head-to-head
taste tests with Honeycrisp
Courtesy of Chelan Fresh Marketing
The new apple, SugarBee,
is hitting selected markets in
limited supply for the first time
this month in holiday packag-
ing. Chelan growers see it as a
future money maker.
and it’s beaten it hands down.
Honeycrisp has a tendency
to go flat, lose its flavor in
storage. SugarBee doesn’t
do that,” said Harold Schell,
director of field services of
Chelan Fruit Cooperative.
The co-op and Gebbers
Farms, of Brewster, acquired
the exclusive rights to grow
and sell the new apple from
Regal Fruit International, a
variety management affiliate
of Willow Drive Nursery in
Ephrata.
Regal obtained propa-
gation rights from the pat-
ent-holder, apple breeder
Chuck Nystrom, of Worthing-
ton, Minn., who discovered
the variety in the early 1990s
from his experimental seed
plantings.
The mother seed is Honey-
crisp and the father is an un-
known pollinator likely carried
by a honeybee, Schell said.
The resulting apple is
mostly red but also yel-
low-skinned and is high in
sugar content — hence the
name SugarBee chosen by an
advertising agency for Chel-
an Fresh.
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