4
CapitalPress.com
April 14, 2017
WSDA reports increase in cropland acreage Judge: No permit required
about 7 million, a 2.5 percent
increase.
Sandison singled out
about 4,000 acres of cropland
added in the Red Mountain
area in Benton County, in-
cluding 1,600 acres in wine-
grapes.
In Western Washington,
cropland grew by 81,894
acres to about 290,000 acres,
or by 39 percent.
Statewide, the increase
Idaho to exceed 250,000 acre-feet in recharge
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
MENAN,
Idaho
—
Though the region’s irrigation
season hasn’t started, heavy
fl ows have been diverted
from the Snake River into the
Great Feeder Canal since early
March.
In the Upper Snake Riv-
er Plain, the Feeder, Fre-
mont-Madison
Irrigation
District, Enterprise Irrigation
District, Farmers Friend Irri-
gation District and the City of
Blackfoot have opened their
systems to help the state in-
tentionally inject natural fl ows
into the groundwater to re-
plenish the declining aquifer,
through a process known as
managed recharge.
The state’s upper valley
recharge water right is only in
priority during especially wet
springs. In the lower valley,
the state holds a recharge right
that’s active for at least 150
days, including all of winter.
The Idaho Department
of Water Resources has re-
charged 220,000 acre-feet of
water combined in the up-
per and lower Snake valleys
since last October, breaking
the previous recharge record
of 160,000 acre-feet set in
2012. IDWR recharge coordi-
nator Wes Hipke said the state
is on pace to exceed a goal it
set in 2015 to average at least
250,000 acre-feet of recharge
per year, with the upper valley
poised to contribute just shy of
half of the volume.
“It’s going to be a really
good recharge year all the way
around,” Hipke said, “There is
going to be a lot of natural re-
charge that goes on, which is
John O’Connell/Capital Press
Wes Hipke, recharge coordinator with the Idaho Department of Water Resources, stands by the di-
version into the Great Feeder Canal system near Menan, Idaho, which is taking in water for managed
aquifer recharge. Hipke led an April 10 tour of recharge sites in the Upper Snake River Plain.
going to benefi t the aquifer,
and then you add on top of
that the stuff we’re doing, and
there’s going to be even more
benefi t.”
Hipke said the department
will also likely exceed the $1.5
million it budgeted for this
season to pay canal companies
fees for facilitating recharge.
Four of the 21 canals that
divert from the Feeder also
have their headgates open to
conduct recharge.
Luke Hicks represents the
Feeder system on the Com-
mittee of Nine, which pro-
vides guidance on behalf of
the major federal irrigation
projects in the Upper Snake.
Hicks said the Feeder system
has recharged 34,000 acre-
feet already this season. He
explained his canal deferred
some of its maintenance until
next year to allow recharge.
“We see water availability
as the importance of this sea-
son,” said Hicks, who chairs
the Committee of Nine’s re-
charge committee.
Hicks said his company has
begun studying four potential
sites for conducting off-canal
recharge — ranging from 10
to 50 cubic feet per second —
thereby allowing recharge to
continue even after irrigation
starts.
Hipke said the irrigation
season is expected to start on
about April 20, but he antici-
pates strong natural fl ows will
support recharging in the upper
valley’s off-canal sites through
June.
Jeff Raybould, an Idaho
Water Resource Board member
from St. Anthony, explained the
Bureau of Land Management is
conducting an environmental
review to expand a critical Up-
per Valley off-canal recharge
site on the Egin Bench, ac-
cessed by the Fremont-Madi-
son system. Raybould said the
project, once approved, will ex-
pand an existing recharge pond
into surrounding BLM land,
helping to increase recharge
capacity on the bench from 800
acre-feet per day to 1,000 acre-
feet per day.
Hipke said the Egin project
is among fi ve infrastructure
upgrades the state hopes to
implement this fall through-
out the Snake to expand re-
charge capacity.
Mon
t.
on R
lm
r
Sa
Salmon
A predator hunting “der-
by” in Idaho didn’t require
a permit from federal offi-
cials despite the use of a na-
tional forest, according to a
federal judge.
Chief U.S. Magistrate
Judge Ronald Bush has
ruled that federal environ-
mental law doesn’t com-
pel the U.S. Forest Service
to issue a permit or study
the impacts of the derby,
in which hunters competed
to kill wolves, coyotes and
other predators.
“The derby did involve
hunting, and possibly hunt-
ing on the forest, but that
hunting was a legal activ-
ity each of the participants
could pursue on forest land
if they chose to do so, inde-
pendent of and unrelated to
the derby,” he said.
Eight
environmental
groups filed a complaint ac-
cusing the federal agency of
violating the National En-
vironmental Policy Act by
allowing Idaho for Wildlife,
a hunting group, to organize
derbies in 2013 and 2015
without a special use permit
for the Salmon-Challis Na-
tional Forest.
The Forest Service’s de-
cision was “arbitrary and
capricious” because such
permits are required for
similar events such as fish-
ing contests and vehicle
races, according to plain-
tiffs Wildearth Guardians,
Cascadia Wildlands, Boul-
der-White Clouds Council,
Kootenai
Environmental
Alliance, Predator Defense,
Center for Biological Di-
versity, Western Watersheds
Project and Project Coyote.
The agency gave “blan-
ket permission” for the
events without any analy-
sis or public comment even
though the U.S. Bureau
of Land Management de-
termined permits were re-
quired and then didn’t allow
the competition on its prop-
erty, the plaintiffs said.
“The killing contest is an
organized event involving
time limits, cash prizes and
hundreds of participants,
and has a greater impact on
forest resources than recre-
ational hunting,” according
to plaintiffs.
The Forest Service ar-
gued that derbies don’t need
special use permits because
the hunters aren’t congre-
gating in one location, but
the agency previously de-
cided that the distance be-
tween participants of other
events was irrelevant, the
Fk.
28
Challis
ho
noted in Sandison’s report,
winegrapes stood out. Acres
of vineyards increased by 58
percent between 2008 and
2016 to 56,883 acres from
35,951 acres.
Acres of Washington’s
No. 1 crop, apples, declined
slightly to 180,787 acres
from 184,094 acres.
In the past eight years,
cropland in Eastern Washing-
ton grew by 175,881 acres to
Salmon-
Challis
National
Forest
Id a
Washington Agriculture Director Derek Sandison gives a presenta-
tion March 29 at a Results Washington meeting in Olympia on the
growth of cropland. The state has added more than 257,000 acres
of cropland in the past eight years, according to WSDA.
Capital Press
93
IDAHO
90
n t.
Courtesy of Results Washington
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Missoula
Area in
detail
Mo
OLYMPIA — Farm-
ers have added more than
257,000 acres of cropland
in Washington in the past
eight years, according to the
Department of Agriculture,
keeping the state on pace to
have 7.35 million acres in
plant production by the end
of 2020.
Cropland acres grew on
both sides of the Cascades,
through the percentage in-
crease was much higher in
Western Washington, ac-
cording to a presentation
by WSDA Director Derek
Sandison at a recent meeting
of Results Washington.
A group that includes
Gov. Jay Inslee and several
agency directors meet peri-
odically to review progress in
meeting state objectives. The
goals include maintaining the
state’s farmlands in the face
of population growth.
Among individual crops
Environmentalists
claimed U.S. Forest
Service violated
federal law
l m on R
.
Capital Press
for predator hunting derby
Sa
By DON JENKINS
was from 7 million acres to
7.32 million acres, or 3.6 per-
cent.
Some 96 percent of the
state’s cropland is east of the
Cascades. Cropland does not
include pastures or shellfi sh
beds.
Sandison also highlighted
the loss of cropland in places,
such as near Lake Chelan in
Central Washington.
“The statewide numbers
mask what’s happening in spe-
cifi c areas, like this,” he said.
“When we evaluate the viabil-
ity of cropland through a state-
wide lens, we get a far differ-
ent picture than if we evaluate
it through a local lens.
“We do continue to be con-
cerned about conversion of
cropland to urban, suburban
and large-lot rural develop-
ment,” he said. “Once these
conversions are made, it’s
highly unlikely those lands
ever return to agriculture.”
While the state has set a
goal to maintain farmland,
it’s also pursued a policy of
buying open space, including
grazing lands and farmland,
for wildlife habitat and recre-
ation.
Md
.
Winegrape
acreage up
21
N
75
93
Ketchum
20 miles
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
environmental groups said.
Also, the hunting der-
bies effectively congregated
people because registration
and ceremonies were held
in Salmon, Idaho, and hunt-
ers weren’t likely to venture
far during a relatively short
time frame, plaintiffs said.
“In contrast to an ordinary
hunting season, the contest
causes an intense burst of
killing over a weekend,” the
plaintiffs said.
Before the Forest Service
could issue a permit, offi-
cials should also have stud-
ied the environmental ef-
fects of the hunting contest
as a “major federal action,”
the environmentalists said.
“The contest increases
the risk of wolf- and coy-
ote-killing not just during
the three- or four-day event
but throughout the year by
fostering intolerance to
wolves and carnivores gen-
erally,” according to plain-
tiffs.
The judge rejected the
arguments, finding that the
derby didn’t charge a fee or
limit hunting to the national
forest’s borders, as partici-
pants could shoot predators
on private lands as well.
The awarding of prizes
and other events occurred
outside the national forest,
and it’s likely that more
hunters entered the forest
during peak hunting periods
than during the derby, Bush
said.
For similar reasons, the
Forest Service didn’t have
to analyze the derby under
NEPA, since hunting is al-
lowed within the national
forest regardless of the con-
test, he said.
Bush said he didn’t doubt
the environmental groups
felt their enjoyment of the
national forest was dimin-
ished by the hunting derby.
“But such use is permit-
ted under the Idaho’s regu-
lation of hunting, including
for predators, and is a use
that has existed on the forest
since the days that Theodore
Roosevelt first set aside the
forest reserve in 1906 that
later became the (national)
forest,” he said.
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