Oregon Water Online
© Oregon Water CoalitionArchive for February, 2008
HID: 100 years of water delivery
To celebrate the first irrigation water deliveries in the Hermiston area, Hermiston Irrigation District (HID) hosted a free luncheon and historical presentation February 27 at the HID headquarters near downtown Hermiston.
The event was attended by the Bureau of Reclamation, the Hermiston Chamber of Commerce and city of Hermiston officials. Hermiston Mayor Robert Severson proclaimed February 27 as 100 Years of Water Service Day. Historical exhibits, displays and a multi-media presentation highlighted the event.
Over a century ago, the first irrigation water deliveries transformed the arid lands of the east Hermiston area into a vital agricultural economy. Originally private irrigation companies diverted from the Umatilla River. Then in 1903, the U.S Reclamation Service surveyed the Umatilla River and laid plans for Cold Springs Dam. In 1908, the Cold Springs Dam was completed creating the East Division of the Umatilla Project. HID was formed in 1921.
Today, HID serves irrigated water to 1200 water users in the area. The East Division of the Umatilla Project irrigation system serves about 10,000 acres and contains one storage dam, two diversions with dam’s and over 120 miles of canals and pipelines.
Fall chinook return forecasted to double last year’s run
Fisheries experts expect 366,500 adult fall chinook salmon to return to the Columbia River basin this late summer and fall, which would break a three-year trend of declining runs and represent a near doubling of last year’s total.
Annual fall chinook returns increased steadily beginning in 2000, hitting peaks of 893,100 in 2003 and 799,000 in 2004. The run dropped to 561,400 in 2005 and 422,400 in 2006, then last year fell to 211,100, the lowest total dating back to at least 1970.
A Columbia River return of 366,500 fall chinook this year would amount to 74 percent of the recent 10-year average of 494,300 fall chinook salmon to the mouth of the Columbia.
The biggest component of the fall chinook run, the upriver brights, are expected to number 162,500 this year, according to preseason forecasts released Feb. 14 by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. vs. Oregon Technical Advisory Team. That would be 70 percent of the 10-year average. TAC is made up of representatives of federal, state and tribal fish management entities.
Water supply bill passes senate committee with broad support
SB 1069 to provide funds to Umatilla, Morrow counties; grants to Oregon communities
With broad support both inside and outside the Capitol, the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee passed a bill today that will directly confront the water supply crisis in Oregon. In a consensus vote, members of the Committee advanced Senate Bill 1069, also known as ‘ACWA,’ the Agriculture and Community Water Act.
“Providing a proactive solution to depleting water resources in Oregon is vital for Oregon’s economic security,” said Senate Majority Leader Richard Devlin (D-Tualatin). “That’s why Senate Democrats made this issue a top priority for the 2008 February Session, and both Republicans and Democrats came together to craft bipartisan legislation that works for all Oregonians.”
Senate Bill 1069 provides a comprehensive plan for water shortages in Oregon. The first piece establishes a matching grants program for Oregon communities to fund feasibility studies for water conservation, reuse, and storage projects. The second piece of the legislation specifically addresses the decade-long crisis in declining ground water in the Umatilla Basin. Two projects will directly address the long term water needs of the region. Senate Bill 1069 will launch a water mitigation bank as well as fund a feasibility study for the Sand Hollow project. The Sand Hollow project would direct surface water from the Columbia and Umatilla Rivers during winter months into the Umatilla Basin to recharge and inject depleted aquifers.
“Just as water is essential to sustaining animal and plant life, this legislation can play an essential role in sustaining the life and economies of many Oregon communities through the development of methods to utilize water from parts of our state where it’s plentiful, in areas where it is scarce,” said Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem).
ACWA was the successful result of a broad coalition of groups and bipartisan interests, including the Oregon Farm Bureau, the League of Oregon Cities, the Oregon Wheat Growers League, the Oregon Association of Nurseries, the Umatilla Electric Cooperative, the Oregon Water Resources Congress and the Confederate Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, among others.
“ACWA’s success is clearly the result of the cooperative bipartisanship and shared priorities that went into crafting the bill,” said Sen. Brad Avakian (D-NE Washington/SW Multnomah Co.), chair of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee. “Struggling farmers will now have what they need to take care of their families and livelihoods.”
Senate Bill 1069 now moves to the Joint Ways and Means Committee for consideration.
Spokane tribe partners on Lake Roosevelt water delivery
The Spokane Tribe of Indians has joined a partnership that intends to provide new water for irrigators and cities in the Columbia River Basin and support stream flows for endangered fish.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire welcomed the Spokane Tribe to the state’s partnership with The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation after Spokane tribal leaders signed an agreement Monday that will facilitate the delivery of water from Lake Roosevelt to irrigators of 10,000 acres east of Moses Lake. Thse irrigators now rely on the rapidly diminishing Odessa ground water aquifer, which has been dropping an average of 7 feet per year for decades.
“The Spokane Tribe’s signature means we can move ahead with securing a new water supply for the Columbia River Basin, the first step in meeting our legislative mandate to ensure that a thirsty region has water for agriculture and a growing population,” Gregoire said. “Fish and wildlife will also benefit from this partnership with the tribes and federal water managers.”
Cities that have been waiting for years for new water supplies will also gain from the agreement signed by the Spokane Tribe. Colville tribal leaders signed their agreement in December. The Bureau of Reclamation manages Lake Roosevelt and will deliver water to the Odessa area using existing infrastructure.
Stream flows for salmon are expected to be improved under the agreements by the release of additional water during the critical late-summer period on the river. During drought years, additional water will be made available to avoid temporary interruption of irrigation water.
“Grand Coulee Dam and Lake Roosevelt inundate our boundary rivers and other lands within the Spokane Reservation,” Spokane Tribal Chair Richard Sherwood said. “This partnership with the state of Washington recognizes our interests and respects our culture. Until now, we have borne the burden that resulted from the storage and use of the Columbia River on our lands without any recognition of our legitimate stake in this resource.”
The governor said the agreements with the tribes fulfill key goals outlined in historic legislation enacted in 2006 to pursue new water supplies in the Columbia Basin. Loss of irrigation water in the area now served by the dropping Odessa aquifer could cost the agricultural region $600 million a year in revenue and the elimination of 7,500 jobs.
Washington governor appoints new member to council
Gov. Chris Gregoire announced the appointment of Dick Wallace to the Pacific Northwest Power and Conservation Planning Council. The three-year term is effective Feb. 16.
He will replace long-time Council member Larry Cassidy of Vancouver, whose term expires this month. Cassidy was appointed to the Council in 1998 by then-Gov. Gary Locke. While on the Council Cassidy served three terms as chairman, and also had served as chair of the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee.
Council members are appointed by the governors of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana to implement the Pacific Northwest Electric Power and Conservation Act passed by Congress in 1980. The primary function of the Council is to develop a regional power and conservation plan and a fish and wildlife plan. The Council also recommends funding for projects to be implemented by the Bonneville Power Administration.
Wallace, 55, is a regional director with the Washington Department of Ecology and works on policy initiatives such as Puget Sound cleanup, watershed management and salmon recovery.
“Dick has a keen understanding of the balance between the growing energy needs of Northwest businesses and families, and the need to protect our natural resources,” Gregoire said. “He will be an asset in building partnerships between state and local officials and business and interest groups to help work toward balancing our power and natural resource issues.”
Wallace has more than 25 years of experience in natural resource issues, including water and watershed management, agriculture, forestry, stormwater and salmon recovery. He managed two major programs at Ecology, water quality and water resources. Wallace has served on several policy, funding and regulatory boards and commissions, including the Salmon Recovery Funding Board, Governor’s Biodiversity Council and Washington State Conservation Commission.
“I’m pleased the governor has asked me to serve the citizens of the state and region on the Council,” Wallace said. “With climate change, there is a growing link between energy policy and protection of our fish and wildlife resources. This is an incredible opportunity to help shape that future.”
Wallace, a Montana native, graduated from Whitman College with a bachelor of arts degree in biology and environmental studies, and studied executive management at the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.
Wallace, an avid fisherman and hiker, has adult twin daughters and resides in Lacey, WA.
Palensky enshrined in National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame
A man with an unrelenting passion for catching salmon—and for assuring there will always be Columbia Basin salmon to catch—last month joined an elite list including Izaak Walton, Ernest Hemingway, Ted Williams and Ole Evinrude.
Oregon’s John Palensky, who died Aug. 3 after a battle with cancer, was enshrined early this year in the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame. He and two others enshrined in the 2008 class brought to 102 the number of fish and fishing advocates in the hall.
One of the Hayward, WI-based organization’s primary missions is to recognize those men and women who have made significant and lasting contributions to the sport of fresh water fishing.
Palensky, 63, was nominated for enshrinement by one of his college professors. He was chosen for a life’s work aimed at bettering the lot of Columbia basin salmon and steelhead affected by hydro electric and other human development.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in wildlife technology from the University of Montana in 1968 and a master’s degree in fisheries in 1973, Palensky worked for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, reviewing hydro licensing applications for the potential impacts on fish and wildlife. In 1976 he went to the Bonneville Power Administration, working initially as a fisheries biologist and later as environmental coordinator in its power sales division.
The goal at BPA, according to Palensky’s enshrinement biography, was to “minimize power generation impacts to salmon and wildlife. In particular, he strived to improve survival of anadromous fish runs and to promote broader understanding of the highly complex interactions of salmon and hydropower in the Pacific Northwest.”
Following the adoption of 1980’s Northwest Power Act, he was asked to develop a BPA fish and wildlife department to implement the Northwest Power Planning Council’s Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program. The act called for the creation of the Council and charged it with development of a program to protect mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the federal hydro system. It directed BPA to provide funding for the program.
Palensky was BPA Fisheries Program manager from 1981-1986, director of the Division of Fish and Wildlife from 1986-1993 and special assistant to the BPA administrator from 1993-1996.
Palensky retired from BPA in 1996 and opened a consulting business. Under contract to the NOAA Fisheries Service he chaired the Anadromous Fish Committee of the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority, and most recently worked as NOAA’s liaison to various salmon management forums across the Pacific Northwest.
The Fresh Water Hall of Fame and Museum is a public service organization founded in 1960 for the purpose of developing an attraction and a museum to collect, preserve and display the artifacts of the sport of fresh water angling.
Wet storms, cold weather keep building up basin snowpack
The odds for a bountiful Columbia River basin water supply this spring and summer are mounting as wet storms continue to pound the region and build mountain snowpack.
The latest monthly “final” forecast issued Thursday by NOAA’s Northwest River Forecast Center predicts that runoff past the lower Columbia River’s The Dalles Dam from January through July will total 103 million acre feet, which would be 96 percent of the 1971-2000 average. All of the runoff from the mid and upper Columbia and from the Snake River basin flows past The Dalles.
The forecast’s mostly likely scenario is brighter for the April through September period at 97.3 maf past The Dalles, which would be 99 percent of average.
The later period is closer to average because last month was colder than average by from 1 to 6 degrees across the basin. That meant less runoff from snowpacks during January. The cold weather “held all the water up as snow that will come later,” according to the NWRFC’s Rick van der Zweep.
The forecast takes into account precipitation through January and assumes precipitation will be 110 percent of normal through the first half of February in the middle and upper Columbia basins and normal for the balance of the wet season. It assumes normal precipitation for the entire period in the Snake basin.
NOAA’s Climate Impacts Center in its three-month “outlook” issued Jan. 17 says that precipitation probabilities are for a greater than 40 percent chance of above normal precipitation for southeast Washington, northeast Oregon and central Idaho, and a greater than 30 percent chance of above normal precipitation in the rest of the region during February through April.
That prediction is based at least in part on a strong cold event, or La Nina, across the Pacific basin. The colder than normal sea surface temperatures that now exist in the equatorial Pacific have historically increased the odds that the Northwest will have above average precipitation. The NWRFC forecast does not incorporate climate indicators such as La Nina.
Precipitation totals during January helped bring the runoff forecast up from the Jan. 8 final of 95 percent of normal at The Dalles. According to the NWRFC the January precipitation was 106 percent of normal above The Dalles, including 103 percent of normal for areas of the Basin upstream of central Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam and 115 percent of normal in the Snake River basin above Ice Harbor Dam.
The Feb. 7 forecast pegs Columbia River runoff as measured at Grand Coulee would be 61.1 maf or 97 percent of normal for the January-July period, down from the 98 percent forecast in the Jan. 8 final. The new forecast for the April-September period is 98 percent for the April-September period.
“But those regions have started to make up the deficit. The Flathead on Jan. 8 had 84 percent of its normal snowpack, as measured in snow-water equivalents. A month later it had jumped to 99 percent of normal, according to National Resources Conservation Service SNOTEL data. During the period, the lower Clark Fork had jumped from 99 to 114 percent of average.
The largest beneficiaries of La Nina so far are lower Columbia tributaries. The Deschutes/Crooked/John Day river area has 146 percent of its average snowpack; the Willamette had 210 percent. The basin’s snowpack leader is the Lower Columbia, Hood River area at 232 percent of normal. The Willamette and Hood feed into the Columbia River below The Dalles.
As supplies dry up, growers pass on farming and sell water
In a state where water has become an increasingly scarce commodity, a growing number of farmers are betting they can make more money selling their water supplies to thirsty cities and farms to the south than by growing crops.
The shortages this season—among the most intense of the last decade—are already shooting water prices skyward in many areas, and Los Angeles-area cities are begging for water and coaxing farmers to let their fields go to dust.
“It just makes dollars and sense right now,” said Bruce Rolen, a third-generation farmer in Northern California’s lush Sacramento Valley. “There’s more economic advantage to fallowing than raising a crop.”
Instead of sowing seeds in April, Rolen plans to leave his rice stubble for the birds and sell his irrigation water on the open market, where it could bring up to three times the normal price.
“It’s been a good decade since there’s been this much interest in buying and selling water on the open market,” said Jack King, national public affairs manager for the California Farm Bureau Federation. “We’re prepared to see significant fallowing in several key parts of the state.”
Water from Northern California rivers irrigates most of the country’s winter vegetables and keeps faucets flowing in the Los Angeles area. But it must be shipped south through a complex network of pumps, pipes and aqueducts, and that system recently developed a kink when a federal judge ordered new restrictions on pumping to save a threatened fish.
As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California legislators argue about how to solve the state’s water crisis, the bottleneck has sent the demand for water soaring in cities and farming districts far to the south.
Residents of Long Beach can’t run fountains, and it’s now illegal for restaurants to serve customers a glass of water unless they ask for it.
Prices have jumped from the $50 per acre foot typical in wet years to as much as $200 per acre foot said Dean Reynolds, a scientist who oversees water transfers for the Department of Water Resources.
“We’re moderately nervous,” general manager Jeff Kightlinger said. “We haven’t prepared ourselves should we run into really severe droughts, so we’re trying to formulate that now.”
Officials in the Southern California suburb of Maywood are protesting the price hikes, which they say will force them to put off fixing corroded pipes that leach manganese into the water supply. “You go to any water tap in Maywood and you open it up and it looks like iced tea,” Mayor Felipe Aguirre said.
That kind of desperation is pushing up demand for water from farmers further north, especially in the green rice fields north of Sacramento and along the San Joaquin Valley’s western edge. Well-supplied water agencies like Rolen’s Glenn Colusa Irrigation District are looking to sell, trade or exchange their water in time for the spring planting season.
Some environmental groups say that isn’t a viable long-term solution.
The problem should be fixed by retooling a decades-old formula that gives farmers a break on their contracted water, even in times of scarcity, they say.
“Essentially these farmers are getting water for a subsidized price and selling it to taxpayers at an elevated rate,” said Renee Sharp, senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group, an Oakland-based nonprofit that tracks farm subsidies. “On the other hand, the more often water agencies are scrambling to buy water, the more they get interested in some creative solutions, like conservation.”
So far, conservation efforts and a set of storms earlier this month have helped replenish dwindling reservoirs and stave off a need for rationing. But even Rolen, who expects to harvest a bumper crop next year after idling 100 acres of his rice fields, says selling water is only a temporary fix to the problem.
“The state is growing almost exponentially and we have never totally satisfied agricultural water needs in the San Joaquin Valley and the southern part of the state,” he said. “I hate to say it, but the supplies that we have now are just tapped out on a good year.”
Conservationists oppose Las Vegas water plan
Ranchers and conservationists teamed up recently to blast a plan to pump billions of gallons of water to Las Vegas as a “boondoggle” that will dry up a large swath of rural Nevada and over time not give the gambling mecca the water it wants.
The critics were among dozens of people—mostly project opponents—at public comment sessions in Las Vegas, Carson City, Ely and Caliente on the Southern Nevada Water Authority plan to draw more than 11.3 billion gallons of water yearly from Delamar, Dry Lake and Cave valleys.
Several speakers asked why SNWA wasn’t working on more conservation efforts or piping in water from the Pacific Ocean, some 230 miles to the west, to Las Vegas for desalinization rather than what could be diminishing rural Nevada groundwater through a 200-mile-long pipeline. “I’m thinking, when I go to that kitchen sink to get a drink of water and there isn’t any, where do I go?” Arnelda Arnoldus said to applause from others at the Caliente session. “I really have no other place to go.”
“This is going to be the biggest boondoggle this country has ever seen,” said Thomas Sanders, head of a local soil conservation group speaking from Ely. “There’s a whole ocean to the west of here. They can put a pipe in it and pipe it into Las Vegas.”
Rick Spilsbury, also in Ely, urged the state’s water engineer, Tracy Taylor, to “trust your conscience. You know this water grab is wrong.” Taylor will have final say on the plan, a key part of SNWA’s $2 billion-plus water import project. Critics said the cost could hit $3.5 billion.
Spilsbury said water from beneath Western Shoshone tribal land “is being given away like we don’t even exist” despite long-standing federal treaties. He’s produced a video on the project called “The Southern Nevada Water Atrocity.”
Mark Bird, a Las Vegas college professor and author of numerous water-related articles, said SNWA has a “deplorable” conservation record and could find options other than the rural Nevada pipeline. He termed the project “a clear example of serial ineptitude on the part of SNWA.”
From Caliente, longtime Panaca Irrigation Board member James Lee compared the project to a Los Angeles water grab that parched California’s once-fertile Owens Valley. He said SNWA was attempting “one of the biggest frauds that was ever created in the United States.”
Susan Lynn of the Great Basin Water Network urged the state engineer to be cautious in weighing the SNWA request, saying, “We don’t even know how much water is there, and we don’t know what’s sustainable.”
Among the few project supporters who spoke was Andy Fegley of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, who said it’s important for the entire state that the economy of Las Vegas remain strong. He added that adequate water is vital to maintaining that economy.
Danny Thompson, head of the state AFL-CIO, also backed the plan, saying it’s “absolutely in the public interest to ensure that Nevada’s economy is robust and that its workers have jobs.”
“The bottom line is this,” said Thompson. “Nevada’s population is expected to continue to increase. There is unused water in Delamar, Dry Lake and Cave valleys that can and must be used to meet these increased demands.”
The valleys are all in central Lincoln County, which initially opposed the plan but reached an agreement with the water authority that states which groundwater basins can developed. The agreement also allows for use of the pipeline, for a price, by the county.
The agency hopes to begin delivering the rural groundwater to Las Vegas by 2015. Its eventual goal is to tap into enough water in rural Nevada to serve more than 230,000 homes, in addition to about 400,000 households already getting its water.
