May 12, 2017
CapitalPress.com
7
Idaho
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Record year for state’s aquifer recharge
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
JEROME, Idaho — A
bountiful water year boosted
efforts by the Idaho Water
Resource Board and local
partners to return water to the
Eastern Snake River Plain
Aquifer, far exceeding the
goal of recharging 250,000
acre-feet a year.
From late October until the
end of April, nearly 300,000
acre-feet of water was re-
turned to the aquifer through
five projects in eastern Idaho
and five projects in south-cen-
tral Idaho.
An acre-foot equals about
326,000 gallons, or the
amount of water that would
cover a football field one foot
deep.
“It’s been a very good
year,” Wesley Hipke, IWRB
recharge program manager,
said during the IWRB joint
committee meeting on May 2.
Total recharge through
IWRB-managed projects this
year is expected to end up at
John O’Connell/Capital Press File
Wes Hipke, recharge coordinator for the Idaho Water Resource
Board. Aquifer recharge in the state will set a record this year,
topping 340,000 acre-feet.
more than 340,000 acre-feet
for a potential conveyance
cost of $2.7 million. The pre-
vious recharge record was
166,000 acre-feet in 2011-
2012.
Abundant water extend-
ed the normal recharge peri-
od from 30 to 61 days in the
upper valley and from 150
to 172 days in lower valley
through April, and it’s still
running, Hipke said.
“It’s not uncommon to
have excess water in the riv-
er until the middle of June. It
depends on how quick it goes
out of the mountains,” he said.
The year started with 500
to 600 cubic feet per sec-
ond of water available for
recharge going past Milner
dam, he said.
“After
mid-February,
things really started changing.
Snowpack got really heavy,
and the Bureau of Reclama-
tion started releasing water,”
he said.
Maximum flows past Mil-
ner hit 21,300 cfs in mid-
April, he said.
“It’s been huge,” he said.
It’s also been a great teach-
ing year for issues that can
arise during an abnormally
high water year, he said.
Two of those involved
when to turn on the IWRB’s
recharge water right above
Minidoka Dam and when to
turn off managed recharge in
canals.
Flows at Minidoka have
to be 2,700 cfs for IWRB’s
right to turn on, which wasn’t
a problem with all the flood-
ing this year. But that right
is junior to storage rights at
American Falls Reservoir.
Water was released from the
reservoir at the end of Feb-
ruary. But, technically, the
American Falls storage right
hadn’t filled and IWRB’s right
wasn’t turned on to utilize the
water spilling past American
Falls.
“It is going to be helpful to
document the process to turn
on that recharge right in cir-
cumstances such as this year,”
Hipke said.
There’s also a need to set
procedure for turning off
managed recharge in canals.
In a normal year, most irri-
gation districts turn water
into canals by April 20 and
IWRB stops its recharge ef-
forts in canals. But this year
was cold and wet and no one
was calling for irrigation
water that early, so the line
was blurred whether IWRB
could extend its use of ca-
nals for recharge.
“It’s important to define
when things come off and go
on so everyone knows what to
expect,” he said.
Another issue this year
was the Bureau of Reclama-
tion’s winter savings agree-
ments that went into effect
with the building of Palisades
Reservoir. Irrigators agreed to
divert no water for 150 days
over the winter to build stor-
age in the reservoir.
The bureau suspended that
agreement this year, and irri-
gation districts were able to
divert water for recharge. But
the bureau needs to put a per-
manent procedure in place to
address similar situations, he
said.
Distribution of available
IWRB recharge water to re-
charge partners wasn’t an
issue this year. However, as
IWRB develops recharge ca-
pacity, with partners investing
in those projects and getting
paid to convey IWBR water, it
could be an issue in a limited
water year, he said.
Competition for recharge
water and recharge sites,
particularly from groundwa-
ter users seeking to mitigate
agreed-upon reductions in
groundwater use through re-
charge, is also becoming an
issue, he said.
“As water becomes more
important and every acre-
foot of recharge counts, it’s
important to set procedures
in place to deal with these is-
sues,” he said.
McCain’s $200M expansion to boost demand for potatoes
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
Courtesy of Erik Wenninger
A sticky trap captures insects as part of Idaho’s potato psyllid mon-
itoring program. Psyllids in Texas with resistance to neonicotinoid
insecticides have some Northwest entomologists concerned.
Researchers concerned about
resistant Texas psyllids
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
Entomologists say North-
west spud growers should be
mindful of recent research
showing potato psyllids in
Texas have developed resis-
tance to neonicotinoid insec-
ticides.
“It’s an extremely import-
ant finding,” said Oregon State
University Extension entomol-
ogy specialist Silvia Rondon.
“This should be a wakeup call
for growers in the PNW re-
garding the potential for psyl-
lids here to develop resistance
to pesticides.”
Potato psyllids can harbor
the Liberibacter bacterium,
which causes a crop disease
called zebra chip that results in
tuber-flesh patterns that darken
when fried. The disease first
surfaced in the Northwest in
2011.
The recent study, by Texas
A&M AgriLife Research en-
tomologist Ada Szczepaniec,
still awaits publication. Szcze-
paniec collected hundreds of
pysllids, starting in 2015, from
large potato fields in the Rio
Grande Valley, Weslaco and
near San Antonio. She bred the
psyllids and tested progeny for
heritable resistance.
Szczepaniec found be-
tween 60 and 95 percent of the
tiny, winged insects she bred
survived treatments with four
different doses of imidacloprid
and thiamethoxam.
Neonicotinoid use in Texas
and Mexico has been on the
rise since psyllids were identi-
fied as vectors of zebra chip in
2005. Szczpaniec said grow-
ers still have other effective
chemistries to control psyllids.
Northwest growers face con-
siderably less psyllid pres-
sure than Texas growers, she
said.
Szczepaniec wasn’t sur-
prised by her findings. John
Trumble, an entomology pro-
fessor at the University of Cal-
ifornia-Riverside, confirmed
psyllids with resistance to
imidacloprids from Weslaco
in a 2013 paper. But Szcze-
paniec’s new research shows
thiamethoxam resistance has
also developed, and resistance
is statewide.
Trumble has encouraged
California growers to apply
neonicotinoids to potatoes
only through a drip line to im-
prove efficacy and prolong the
onset of resistance.
“I would be extremely cau-
tious about any foliar applica-
tions,” Trumble said.
19-1/#8
BURLEY, Idaho — Pota-
to farmers say the expansion
of the local McCain Foods
USA processing plant should
significantly increase demand
for their crop and boost the ar-
ea’s economy.
McCain officials announced
the $200 million investment last
week. The expansion should be
operational by the late summer
of 2018 and will employ 180
new workers.
“From my standpoint, that’s
as big of a thing as we could
have had announced in this
area,” said Mark Darrington,
a McCain grower from Declo.
“For this to come right into the
heart of our production area, this
is a huge win for agriculture and
a huge win for the community.”
McCain officials said in a
press release the expansion is in
Southern Idaho Economic Development Organization
Canada-based McCain Foods has announced a $200 million
expansion of its state-of-the-art, high capacity production facility
in Burley, Idaho. The expansion will create 180 jobs and increase
demand for Idaho potatoes.
response to increasing demand
for their frozen potato products
such as french fries in North
America and the world. The an-
nouncement also comes amid a
season in which a large crop has
driven fresh spud prices well
below Idaho growers’ produc-
tion costs, leading the state’s
shippers to drop their prices to
increase their market share.
“In 2016, we reviewed all of
our North American sites and
narrowed the potential for ex-
pansion to a handful that could
best help us meet the growing
demand for McCain products,”
Jeff DeLapp, McCain’s Region-
al President for North America,
said in a press release. “In the
end, we chose Burley due to its
proximity to quality potatoes,
availability of skilled workforce
and strong community and state
level support.”
The Canadian-based com-
pany is the world’s largest
manufacturer of frozen fries
and has done business in Bur-
ley for two decades.
Officials at the Idaho Depart-
ment of Commerce have heard
rough estimates that the ex-
pansion, at full capacity, will
require production from an
additional 15,000 acres of po-
tatoes. Idaho farmers planted
325,000 potato acres in 2016,
according to USDA.
ROP-19-2-4/#6