SUNNYSIDE, Wash.—With a shrinking water forecast and millions of dollars in crops at stake, one of the largest irrigation districts in Washington’s Yakima Valley will stop water deliveries to farmers for at least two weeks and buy water from a neighboring district that has senior water rights.
The 72,000-acre Roza Irrigation District will stop delivering water to its 1,700 customers for 14 days, and possibly longer, in an effort to save water for later in the growing season.
At the same time, the neighboring Sunnyside Valley Irrigation District has agreed to lease 5,000 acre-feet of water to the Roza district this summer. Sunnyside farmers will receive $500 for every acre they don’t irrigate.
The districts’ boards took the actions May 5, one day after the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reduced its estimate of summer water supply for junior water right holders in the Yakima Basin to 47 percent of normal due to drought.
Most farmers in the Yakima Valley will be impacted by the drought to varying degrees, the district managers said. Loss of production and costs of coping with the drought will be in the “tens of millions of dollars and maybe into the hundreds,” said Scott Revell, manager of the Roza Irrigation District in Sunnyside.
“Low elevation snow in the mountains is gone and the 47 percent scenario is based on 100 percent of average precipitation for the rest of the season,” Revell said.
But precipitation is below average so the water forecast will keep dropping, he said.
“Right now we are using 38 percent of normal as our planning basis,” Revell said.
In the drought of 2005, the USBR Yakima Basin forecast dropped to 34 percent of normal and the district shut down early for 23 days, he said. It had similar shutdowns during droughts in 2001 and 1994.
The Roza, a junior water right district, serves the expanse of farmland from Selah to Benton City. Normally, it’s entitled to 375,000 acre-feet of water and uses about 300,000 in a season. This year, farmers are hoping for half that.
There are about 110 emergency drought wells in the Yakima Basin with 90 percent of them in the Roza, Revell said. The state Department of Ecology is awaiting legislative funding to authorize their use, he said, adding he does not know the total acreage they serve.
The district cut its usage to 25 percent of normal on April 20. It will stop diverting water from Yakima River above Selah at 7 a.m. May 11. It will take about four days for irrigators to use all the water in the district’s 95 miles of main-stem canal and 350 miles of laterals.
To the extent possible, gravity lines and pump tubes from laterals to farms are to remain full to speed restart.
The canals leak too much to hold water during the shutdown so they will be dewatered and river water won’t be diverted again until May 25 or perhaps June 1, Revell said. The board will meet May 22 to determine when the system will be reactivated. It largely depends on how hot the weather gets and if there is rain, he said.
Some cherry growers and blueberry, hay, mint and corn growers want the shutdown minimized while hop, grape, apple and pear growers prefer a longer shutdown to save more water for July through September, Revell said.
“Some of the larger blueberry growers grow other things like hops, grapes and tree fruit. They want water later for those,” he said.
Many apple growers have ponds they can use for a partial irrigation in the middle of the shutdown and “in a perfect world we will get a rain or two. It always seems to rain around cherry harvest,” he said.
Chances of rain are better in May and June than July and August.
“Hay guys are asking for one good cutting. Some of them are selling water to hop and apple growers within the district and will forgo first-cutting,” he said.
The Roza began delivering water to growers in mid-March and reduced allocations from 7.1 gallons per minute to 1.8 on April 20 in hopes of saving water for later.
Every day the system is shut down about 800 acre-feet of water is saved, Revell said. Customers favor the shutdown 2 to 1, he said.
The shutdown also shuts off water to Terrace Heights Irrigation District, which serves about 200 acres east of Yakima.
The goal is to have water available as far into September as possible.
There may be a slight bump of half a gallon per minute or so for about 10 days at the restart, otherwise deliveries will resume at 1.8 gallons per minute, he said.
Jim Trull, manager of Sunnyside Valley Irrigation District, said its customers have until May 18 to sign up to allow their water to be leased to the Roza district for $500 per acre for the season.
Roza is budgeting $1.2 million for 5,000 acre-feet with hopes of having half reimbursed by the state.
“I’m afraid we may not have 5,000 acre-feet because it’s late and the season is early. People have already planted,” Trull said.
Those most likely to lease out their water are those who haven’t yet planted corn or wheat or who can afford not to water pastures, he said.
SVID has senior water rights and 11,000 customers on 94,614 acres from just below Union Gap about 45 miles to just below Prosser. SVID began water deliveries April 1 and has reduced them from 7.5 gallons per minute to 5.7 gpm to save water.
Farther north in the Yakima Basin, the Kittitas Reclamation District, also a junior water right district, started water deliveries April 20 at 1.25 cubic feet per second per acre per 24 hours instead of a normal 2.25 cfs. Timothy growers will get one cutting instead of two. The KRD is the largest irrigation district in the valley, serving 60,000 acres.
Without water runoff from lower elevation snowpack, the irrigation districts are using water from the Yakima Basin’s five mountain reservoirs earlier than normal.
Streamflows now are near what they usually are in June or early July, said Chuck Garner, Yakima Project river operations supervisor for USBR in Yakima.
Source: www.capitalpress.com