Hunker down on short water supplies

Capital Press Editorial

March 25, 2010

It's one thing to say -- in a general way -- that your livelihood depends on a somewhat dependable water supply. It's quite another to come to the first days of spring and realize that this is indeed a drought year across much of the West.

That is reality in this spring of 2010. The season of abundant rain and snowfall is pretty much past. Reservoirs, many drawn down to cover runoff shortages in prior drought years, hold below-average amounts of stored water. Most snowpack above those impoundments has below-average water content.

The one bright spot last week was a federal Central Valley Project adjustment to allocations for California agricultural water contractors in the growing season that's already unfolding. But when the adjusted allocation is from 5 percent of contract amount to 50 percent, as it was north of the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta, or to 25 percent south of the Delta, that's encouraging, but not very.

Many farmers have been there before. In the Klamath Basin shared by Oregon and California, grain and hay farmer Steve Kandra last week declared, "I'm still scared to death."

Kandra was a leader during the much publicized 2001 cutoff of a drought-shortened water supply to 1,100 farmers within the federal Klamath Reclamation Project. He's been part of the coalition that wrote agreements signed this winter that could end squabbling over the basin's erratic water supply.

But deals on paper don't substitute for Mother Nature's fickle distribution of precipitation.

The Obama administration acknowledged that reality March 18, issuing what can best be described as an "adaptive" irrigation schedule for most Klamath Project irrigators, whose water is diverted from Upper Klamath Lake. Instead of sending water down canals April 1, the feds will wait until lake levels rise to elevations needed to protect endangered sucker fish, then release a curtailed allotment for farms.

That means permanent crops such as alfalfa will survive. The hold-back will make planting of onions and potatoes, two of the basin's high value crops, problematic in much of the project area.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski needs credit for issuing a Klamath drought declaration last week and supporting the federal compromise.

Washington state legislators and officials gathered with water experts earlier to prepare. Realities in the Yakima Basin are that anyone with a water right issued after 1905 won't get much, if any, water from the federal Yakima project. The most senior water right holders appear to be the only ones anticipating full contract delivery.

How bad is it this spring for Idaho's Upper Snake River Basin? Try this. They've kept snowpack data for 91 years in Yellowstone National Park. Last week's snow water content was the third-lowest on record. The Snake is a critical water supply for countless irrigation projects. It's a major tributary of the Columbia River, where the upper basin drought index can best be summed up with the words "abnormally dry."

Many Western farms and ranches already battered by recession-related collapses in commodity prices are looking at survival mode for 2010.

The good news is that we've been there before, and have some experience. But you can't help but know, as does the Klamath's Steve Kandra, that a scary time lies ahead.