Friday, April 15, 2022
CapitalPress.com 5
Water
Idaho water offi cials forecast
tight irrigation supplies
By BRAD CARLSON
Capital Press
NOAA
Oregon Drought Monitor
Snowpack, precipitation
decline across Oregon
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PORTLAND — March
is historically when moun-
tain snowpacks reach their
apex across Oregon, but not
this year.
Persistent dry weather
and above-normal tem-
peratures have led to more
snowmelt and less precip-
itation during the month,
according to the USDA
Natural Resources Con-
servation Service, signifi -
cantly hampering the state’s
drought recovery.
Every river basin is mea-
suring below-average for
precipitation compared to
the 30-year median from
1991 to 2020. All but one
basin is also below-aver-
age for snow-water equiva-
lent, with the Hood, Sandy
and Lower Deschutes
watershed being the lone
exception.
In its monthly Ore-
gon Basin Outlook Report,
the NRCS predicted that,
due to multi-year impacts,
extensive drought will per-
sist through early summer.
“With the historic peak
for snowpack in Oregon
passed and no meaning-
ful drought reduction from
the start of the water year,
water users and manag-
ers in many regions should
prepare for signifi cantly
reduced water supplies
during the summer,” the
report states.
The worst conditions are
in central and southern Ore-
gon, where irrigators are
receiving just a fraction of
their usual water supplies.
The Klamath, Lake
County, Harney, Owyhee,
Malheur and John Day
basins each have less than
50% of median snow-water
equivalent — the amount
of water contained in snow.
Conditions are slightly bet-
ter farther north, though
still largely below average.
Snowpack
peaked
for most basins in cen-
tral and southern Oregon
in early January following
a series of winter storms
that dumped several feet of
snow in the Cascade Range.
However, rapid snow-
melt began around mid-
March and several snow-
pack telemetry sites east of
the Cascades have recorded
either their lowest or sec-
ond-lowest
cumulative
precipitation over the last
83 days, according to the
NRCS.
Overall precipitation for
JEWETT
the water year dating back
to Oct. 1 ranges from 69%
in the Malheur Basin in
southeast Oregon to 98% in
the Hood, Sandy and Lower
Deschutes basins.
The Willamette Basin,
which accounts for 40%
of Oregon’s $5.7 billion
in agricultural products,
is faring comparatively
well with 91% of median
precipitation and 78%
snowpack.
Northeast Oregon is a
mixed bag, with the Uma-
tilla, Walla Walla and
Willow basins at 90% of
median precipitation and
72% snowpack. Farther
east, the Grande Ronde,
Burnt, Powder and Imnaha
basins are at 81% precipi-
tation and 65% snowpack.
The U.S. Drought Mon-
itor shows nearly 93% of
Oregon is in some stage
of drought, including 15%
in “exceptional” drought,
the highest category. Gov.
Kate Brown has declared a
drought emergency in four
counties, including Crook,
Jeff erson, Klamath and
Morrow counties, giving
state agencies additional
fl exibility managing water
rights.
Counties under a gov-
ernor-declared
drought
emergency can also apply
for state and federal disas-
ter relief funding. Another
three counties, includ-
ing Gilliam, Harney and
Jackson counties, have
requested an emergency
declaration.
Drought aff ects both res-
ervoir storage and stream-
fl ows that farms, fi sh and
wildlife depend on during
the irrigation season. Multi-
ple years of drought means
there is little reservoir car-
ryover from one year to the
next, resulting in critically
low levels.
The NRCS reports the
lowest reservoir volumes
are in Southern Oregon, in
some cases storing less than
25% of capacity.
As of April 1, sum-
mer streamfl ow forecasts
are also “generally below
median for much of the
state, with few exceptions
in the Mt. Hood area.”
“With the end of the
snow accumulation season
approaching and the his-
toric month for peak snow-
pack over, the timing and
rate of melting and runoff
will be the dominant fac-
tors in further shaping the
outlook for summer stream-
fl ow,” the agency states.
The snowpack is two-
thirds to three-quarters of
normal across much of
southern Idaho after a dry
start to spring.
Soils that drank in heavy
fall precipitation have since
dried, making it likely some
snowmelt will be absorbed
into the ground instead of
running off into streams and
rivers.
Shawn Nield, state soil
scientist with the USDA
Natural Resources Conser-
vation Service in Idaho, said
the soil-moisture profi le “has
not been satisfi ed with the
dry spring.
“The lack of precipita-
tion this spring across the
state is giving us conditions
much drier than normal, and
that’s going to be a little bit
of a concern as we get started
with irrigation,” he said.
Snow accumulation after
Jan. 8 fl atlined across many
basins south of the Clearwa-
ter until widespread storms
arrived in early March,
NRCS said in its April 1
Idaho Water Supply Outlook
Report. But the snowy win-
ter needed to make up for
Mindi Rambo/NRCS Idaho
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Snow Sur-
vey hydrologist Mark Robertson and hydrologist and wa-
ter-supply specialist Erin Whorton at Mores Creek Sum-
mit snow course northeast of Boise March 31.
low carryover in reservoirs
did not materialize.
“Early April storms may
lead to a second peak in
snowpack this month,” Erin
Whorton, NRCS Snow Sur-
vey hydrologist and water
supply specialist said in a
release. Snowpack will have
peaked earlier than normal if
little precipitation falls.
The NRCS report said
that depending on upcom-
ing weather, much of Idaho
“is poised to enter another
summer with below normal
streamfl ow and concerns
about adequate irrigation
supply.”
Water users should prepare
for a short irrigation season
and curtailments, NRCS said.
Shortages can be expected in
the Boise, Owyhee, Wood,
Lost, Salmon Falls and Oak-
ley basins, and in the upper
Snake basin above Heise.
State Department of Water
Resources hydrologist David
Hoekema said in an April 5
release that half the state is in
severe drought, “and that per-
centage will increase in com-
ing months. We are predicting
water shortages in every basin
in southern Idaho, including
the Payette.”
He expects streamfl ow to
be 20-70% of normal in the
Snake, Big Lost, Big Wood,
Little Wood, Salmon Falls,
Payette and Weiser river
basins.
NRCS said water left in
reservoirs after the last irri-
gation season is below nor-
mal in many locations, so it
is unlikely reservoirs will fi ll
if demand starts early and
exceeds natural fl ow during
runoff season. Expected
reduced runoff refl ects low
soil moisture and depleted
shallow groundwater as well
as potentially above-average
summer temperatures.
Storage in Magic Reser-
voir on the Big Wood River is
43% of normal, and about 45
days of full water delivery is
expected, NRCS said. Boise
reservoir system storage is
86% of normal, and Owyhee
Reservoir storage is 62%.
Sustainability means water certainty,
California dairy group leader says
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
With every geographic region
in California coping with severe or
extreme drought, water is top of mind
for the state’s dairy farmers.
Due to the lack of rain across the
state in the last three years, every sin-
gle dairy farmer is suff ering, said Anja
Raudabaugh, executive director of
Western United Dairies.
Even California’s North Coast,
which has been unscathed in previous
droughts, is aff ected. And farmers there
don’t even have access to groundwa-
ter and won’t have water for their live-
stock starting in May, she said during
the latest “Dairy Download” podcast.
“So this is a severe crisis. It, of
course, has larger ramifi cations on the
feed cost,” she said.
Last year, WUD designated a
new sustainability role beyond envi-
ronmental and regulatory standards
around air quality, water quality and
methane reduction, she said.
It became apparent to WUD “that
we could not have any eff orts in sus-
tainability if we didn’t have water and
access to resources that would get us
either paid for the loss of water or
paid to access more expensive water
transfers,” she said.
WUD decided as
an organization that
sustainability meant
water certainty and
brought in a new
director of sustain-
ability to address the
issues, she said.
Anja
“So essentially the
Raudabaugh
two things that we’re
looking at are how do we fi nd drought
resources for farmers to keep them in
business during this hard time, which
will hopefully off set some of their
higher feed prices. And then the sec-
ond thing we started to see we needed
help with is something called land
fl exation,” she said.
Farmers are being forced to fallow
ground with no payments and no con-
sideration for the bank notes that are
on those properties, she said.
“We set out on a policy side to
make sure that a farmer’s water rights
were attached legally to his land own-
ership and mineral rights,” she said.
WUD was successful at establish-
ing a statewide policy that ground-
water throughout the Central Valley,
which is the majority of the state’s
milkshed, shall go for no less than
$750 an acre-foot, she said.
Under the Sustainable Groundwa-
ter Management Act, the state will
pay farmers in a designated critically
overdraft basin for water saved — not
pumped and kept in the ground for
local communities, she said.
That has been a huge eff ort WUD
has lifted because farmers were being
told to just fallow, and they weren’t
being compensated for it, she said.
The water issue in California is
broader than the drought, she said.
“The regulatory policy, which is to
remove water rights from the system
away from people that have had them
for centuries, is very much in play,’
she said.
But generally, the state’s water
system was built to supply 21 mil-
lion people and there are now 39
million people in the state. And over
the last 20 years, courts have redi-
rected about half of the water sup-
ply toward environmental purposes,
she said.
In addition, irrigable acres have
doubled over the last three decades
due to demand and the state’s strate-
gic position in the Pacifi c Rim. But
that growth has come with no addi-
tional water supply. There hasn’t
been a new reservoir built in the
state since 1969, she said.
“So you add these things together
… we don’t have enough water,
ever,” she said.
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