ONTARIO, Ore.—Farmers who get their irrigation water from the Owyhee Project in Eastern Oregon are almost out of water, nearly two months earlier than normal.
The Owyhee Reservoir’s gates are completely open and the last of the system’s available storage water is flowing out, said Owyhee Irrigation District Manager Jay Chamberlin.
The project provides water for 1,800 farms and 118,000 acres of irrigated land in Eastern Oregon and part of Southwestern Idaho.
“The system might be able to run about another (10 days),” Chamberlin said. “We’re on the last of our water.”
The system, which has 400 miles of canals and laterals, has about 20,000 acre-feet of usable storage water left.
“That might sound like a lot of water but when you have a system as big and long as ours, that’s a small amount,” Chamberlin said.
Farmers in this region can count on receiving irrigation water from the Owyhee system into October during normal years but the water has run out in August the past two years because of a lingering drought.
OID patrons receive an allotment of 4 acre feet of water during a normal year but the allotment was slashed to 1.6 acre feet this year and 1.7 acre feet last year.
Even though water is still flowing through the system, many farmers have already used up their allotment for this season.
This year’s water supply will last about 10 days longer than it did in 2014, mainly due to timely May rains that reduced demand and improved in-flows into the reservoir slightly, OID officials said.
“It’s a little bit better (this year) mainly because of those timely rains we had earlier this (season),” said OID board member and farmer Bruce Corn.
Nyssa farmer Craig Froerer said the fact that water will flow for almost two weeks longer than it did last year will significantly help the long-term condition of his permanent crops like mint and asparagus.
“That will make a huge difference for me,” he said.
Bill Buhrig, an Oregon State University cropping systems extension agent in Malheur County, said the far reaches of the Owyhee system, where he farms, went dry July 22 last year.
“We still had water in the ditch this morning,” he said Aug. 12. “You’re looking at three weeks longer this year than last year. That’s a long time.”
But the water situation in this area is still difficult and the combination of the reduced allotment and early end to the irrigation season has made things challenging for farmers, Corn said.
Corn, like other farmers in the region, left a lot of ground idle the last two years and planted more crops that require less water but are also less profitable.
“It’s not a good situation but people got by the best they could,” he said. “It looks like the crops that are growing for the most part are going to be able to be finished.”
Source: www.capitalpress.com