Friday, January 14, 2022
CapitalPress.com 7
Winter storms bring much-needed snow to Oregon
South-central Region
Kyle Gorman manages
the agency’s South-cen-
tral Region, which includes
the Upper Deschutes and
Crooked river basins down
into Klamath and Lake coun-
ties. His region has experi-
enced some of the most crit-
ical drought conditions,
leading to water shortages in
2021.
Wickiup Reservoir, with
200,000 acre-feet of storage
capacity, ran out of water in
mid-August, the earliest that’s
happened since it was built
in 1947. The reservoir pro-
vides all water supplies for the
North Unit Irrigation District,
serving 59,000 acres of farm-
land in Jeff erson County.
“That was the third of the
last four years where Wick-
iup Reservoir and North Unit
Irrigation District ran out of
water,” Gorman said. “That
fact tells the story of how
low the discharge from the
Deschutes River is, and the
system itself in the overall
production of water.”
Gorman does not predict
Wickiup Reservoir will fi ll
this year, regardless of how
much snow falls this winter.
Ten years of below-av-
Oregon DEQ fi nes Port of Morrow
$1.3 million over nitrate violations
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
BOARDMAN, Ore. — Oregon envi-
ronmental regulators have fi ned the Port
of Morrow $1.3 million for repeatedly
over-applying agricultural wastewater
on nearby farms in an area that already
has elevated levels of groundwater
nitrates.
The state Department of Environmen-
tal Quality announced the fi ne on Jan. 11.
Under a DEQ water quality permit,
the port collects nitrogen-rich wastewa-
ter from food processors, storage facili-
ties and data centers at its industrial parks
near Boardman, which it then reuses to
irrigate neighboring farm fi elds grow-
ing potatoes, onions and other high-value
crops.
But according to the agency, the port
violated its permit more than 1,000 times
from 2018 to 2021, exceeding the limit
on how much nitrogen can be safely
applied to farmland and resulting in 165
tons of excess nitrogen in the fi elds.
Leah Feldon, DEQ deputy director,
said these are “serious violations of water
quality regulations that are in place to pro-
Willamette Basin
It is a diff erent story across
the state in the Willamette
Basin, where most of Ore-
gon’s high-value crops are
grown. Unlike other regions,
the system is more rain-
driven, and less reliant in
mountain snowpack.
Thirteen reservoirs oper-
ated by the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers stretching from
Portland to south of Eugene
will not begin storing water
for the summer until February,
said Mike McCord, OWRD
Northwest Region manager.
Last year, water rights
were regulated in some
areas, including the Molalla
River, due to low stream-
fl ows, McCord said, aff ect-
ing irrigators and municipal-
ities. A lack of spring rain set
the system back, and it was
never able to recover.
Wet weather in recent
weeks
is
encouraging,
McCord said, but he cannot
predict what will happen in
the next 3 to 4 months.
“We’re still certainly con-
cerned about drought,” he
said. “This burst of weather
that we’ve got right now
doesn’t make it go away.”
The National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Adminis-
tration’s Climate Prediction
Center calls for an elevated
chance of above-average tem-
peratures across Oregon over
the next three months and a
slightly elevated chance for
above-average precipitation.
Oviatt, with the NRCS,
said the state must see contin-
ued snow accumulation in the
mountains and a cooler spring
to keep that snow from melting
too quickly to avoid another
diffi cult irrigation season.
“It’s a tough situation to try
to pin down, and it’s becom-
ing more diffi cult with more
extreme and widely variable
conditions,” he said.
Livestock disaster assistance deadlines near
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
USDA’s
Farm
Ser-
vice Agency is urging live-
stock producers who faced
drought-related feed issues in
2021 to fi le applications for
disaster assistance.
The deadline for both the
Emergency Assistance for
Livestock, Honeybees and
Farm-raised Fish Program
(ELAP) and the Livestock
Forage Disaster Program is
Jan. 30.
“The drought that is so
pervasive in the West is
where a lot of our disaster
assistance is going to be,”
said Zach Ducheneaux, FSA
administrator.
“Nearly everything West
of the Mississippi has experi-
enced some drought,” he said.
Early on in the drought,
the USDA secretary chal-
lenged FSA to fi nd some
fl exibility in disaster assis-
George Plaven/Capital Press File
A portion of the 60-mile Lost River, which feeds Tule
Lake, is dry because of drought in the Klamath Basin.
The application deadline is approaching for federal
help to ranchers who have experienced drought losses.
tance to help producers, he
said.
FSA updated ELAP to
cover feed transportation
costs where grazing and hay
resources have been depleted.
It also lowered its drought-in-
tensity threshold for assis-
tance in the cost of hauling
water to livestock.
Under ELAP, USDA will
reimburse eligible ranch-
ers 60% of feed transporta-
tion costs above what would
have been incurred in a nor-
mal year. Producers qualify-
ing as underserved will be
reimbursed 90%.
USDA uses a national cal-
culation of $6.60 per mile
before the 60% is applied to
determine
reimbursement
costs. The calculation does
not include the fi rst 25 miles
and distances exceeding
1,000 miles. It also excludes
the normal costs to transport
hay or feed if the producer
normally purchases some
feed.
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O
WALLOWA, Ore. —
Oregon State Police are
seeking information about
a dead wolf that was found
in Wallowa County after
apparently being shot.
A citizen reported the
wolf carcass to OSP about
10:36 a.m. on Jan. 8. The
wolf was along Parsnip
Creek Road about 6 miles
southeast of Wallowa.
The wolf, which was fi t-
ted with a tracking collar, is
a 2-year-old female that had
dispersed from the Chesnim-
nus Pack, according to a
press release from OSP.
The initial investigation
found the wolf had been
shot.
East Region
Jason Spriet, OWRD East
Region manager, said they too
have a lot of catching up to do.
Phillips Reservoir, near Baker
City, was emptied a year ago
and is just 1% refi lled. It is fed
by the Powder River, and pro-
vides water storage for 30,000
acres in the Baker Valley Irri-
gation District.
“I hate to be terribly pessi-
mistic, but I wouldn’t expect
to fi ll it this year unless we get
a lot of snow,” Spriet said.
Farther southeast, Owyhee
Reservoir in Malheur County
is 17% fi lled. It must reach at
least 50% for the Owyhee Irri-
gation District to allocate full
water supplies for the season.
“They have a ways to
go,” Spriet said. “It’s a giant
reservoir.”
S
Dead wolf
found in
E. Oregon
likely shot
tect public health and the environment.”
The Port of Morrow is Oregon’s sec-
ond-largest port, behind only the Port
of Portland. It is in the Umatilla Basin
of northeast Oregon, where in 1990 the
state declared a Groundwater Manage-
ment Area due to high levels of ground-
water nitrates exceeding 7 milligrams
per liter.
In a statement, Ryan Neal, the port’s
general manager, said it takes the vio-
lations seriously and will work in col-
laboration with DEQ toward fi nding a
long-term solution that benefi ts local
farmers, port industries and the region as a
whole.
“The Port of Morrow has been working
collaboratively with DEQ on the content
of this action,” Neal said. “We look for-
ward to jointly developing a resolution.”
High levels of nitrates in drinking
water are linked with serious health con-
cerns, particularly for babies and preg-
nant women. Groundwater is used as a
primary source of drinking water across
the basin, which spans northern Umatilla
and Morrow counties — including the
cities of Hermiston, Boardman, Irrigon,
Stanfi eld and Echo.
erage precipitation in the
Deschutes Basin is also tak-
ing its toll on groundwa-
ter-fed springs and streams.
For example, Fall River, a
tributary of the Deschutes
River, has a 30% reduction in
discharge.
“You can’t just point your
fi nger at one thing,” Gorman
said. “There are a lot of fac-
tors and time involved in car-
ryover of water.”
O
PORTLAND — Despite
ample snowpack following a
series of heavy winter storms,
Oregon water managers say it
is still too early to draw any
conclusions about what the
summer irrigation season will
bring.
As of Jan. 10, snow-wa-
ter equivalent — that’s the
amount of water contained
in snow — was 138% of the
30-year median from 1991 to
2020. Every basin is measur-
ing above average, ranging
from 113% in the Malheur
Basin to 195% in the Hood,
Sandy and Lower Deschutes
basins.
Yet according to the U.S.
Drought Monitor, nearly 96%
of Oregon remains in some
stage of drought, includ-
ing 50% in “extreme” and
“exceptional” drought, the
two highest categories.
Scott Oviatt, snow sur-
vey supervisor for the USDA
Natural Resources Conserva-
tion Service in Portland, said
the apparent discrepancy is
the result of two consecutive
dry water years dating back to
Oct. 1, 2019.
In short, a few weeks of
intense rain and snow is not
enough to make up defi cits
in Oregon’s most drought-
stricken areas.
“It’s going to take signif-
icant precipitation to let the
groundwater, let alone surface
water, recover long-term,”
Oviatt said.
While snow piling up in
the mountains is a positive
sign, region managers for
the Oregon Water Resources
Department are caution-
ing irrigators to plan ahead
as they claw their way back
from record low stream fl ows
and reservoir storage, par-
ticularly east of the Cascade
Range.
S
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
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