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Chasing water
Malin farmer had to leave some fields fallow
By TY BEAVER
H&N Staff Reporter
November 7, 2010
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H&N photo by Ty Beaver Rob Unruh sits at a picnic table at his farm northwest of Malin. The farmer was only able to irrigate about half of his 500 acres this irrigation season because of a water shortage in the Klamath Basin.
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“It was either lose her retirement coming off that 120 acres or invest, said Unruh, a fourth-generation Malin farmer.
By Oct. 20, he finished harvesting 250 of his 500 acres of potatoes, wheat and alfalfa he farms with his wife and son.
But the yield and quality was nothing like previous years. He even told a buyer in Fresno, Calif., not to expect the same quality of potato from him this year that he produced in 2009.
“Last year, we got to choose the ground ” Unruh said. “This year we were chasing water.”
It was a rough season, the first since the Malin farmer started growing wheat that he didn’t plant the red winter variety.
The fields in front of his home were fallow the whole season. But he said he and his family who farm with him just wanted to make it through the season to see another.
“I feel real fortunate,” he said.
Unruh said the point that defined the growing season for him was in early June when Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski visited the region to listen to irrigators and offer state help. Unruh was one of several community members who addressed the governor.
“That was huge compared to 2001,”
he said, referring to the year that irrigation
water was completely shut off to the Project.
Side Bars
DONNIE BOYD, owner, Floyd A. Boyd Co., Merrill
‘... I think they wronged us ...’
MERRILL — Donnie Boyd says this irrigation season was defined for him in early July.
That was when officials with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced that another 35,000 acre-feet of water could be released to irrigators on the Klamath Reclamation Project. Until then, irrigators were to receive only about 150,000 acre-feet.
“That’s when I realized that this wasn’t about the lake level,” Boyd said, “this was about the government controlling the Basin.”
Business has remained slow at the Merrill store for the third-generation owner of farm implement dealer Floyd A. Boyd Co. Sale volumes are down compared with past years, and Boyd said he hasn’t hired anyone back after laying them off earlier in the season.
“We’re in the black, but that’s because we’ve cut overhead significantly,” he said.
Boyd said what he took away from the season was that all the issues surrounding water supplies weren’t about what is best for the environment or for fish. Rather, it was about using the fact that the Basin was below average in water early in the season to push a political agenda.
“I think they wronged us,” he said.
MARTIN HICKS, owner, Martin’s Food Center, Merrill
‘We felt it. We felt the pinch’
MERRILL — When drought holds hostage the agricultural economy in the Klamath Basin, Martin Hicks feels the pinch.
Hicks, owner of Martin’s Food Center in Merrill, said business was down about 8 percent this summer and fall as farmers and ranchers cut back to cope with the drought.
“That’s the way my business goes; it just mirrors the farming business,” he said. “We felt it. We felt the pinch.”
What his customers buy, Hicks said, changes when they are faced with a poor growing season.
“If you’ve got a family of four and they’re making $4 per 100-pound bag (of potatoes) they may buy steaks, but when they’re getting $2 per bag, they might buy a 16-pound bag of dried beans to make navy bean soup,” he said.
To compensate for decreased revenue, Hicks limited his full-time employees to 32-hour work weeks during the summer and cut back donations to local organizations.
Business was helped by an influx of area natural gas pipeline workers and from a competing grocer in Malin closing a year earlier.
Hicks said his store could weather another drought, but it wouldn’t be easy.
“If I have to cut the meat and fill the beer shelves and carry the groceries out all at once, then that’s what I’ll have to do,” he said.
MARK STUNTEBECK, manager, Klamath Irrigation District
Growing season ends
better than it starts, irrigation manager says
No one would have envied the job of a Klamath Irrigation District worker this year.
Those workers spent the irrigation season figuring out how to deliver water to 39,000 acres of farmland, with resources available for just 30 to 50 percent of that land.
Seven months ago, that problem seemed destined to cripple the district’s hundreds of farmers and cattle ranchers.
“There was a lot a lot of scrambling and planning going on in our office,” said Mark Stuntebeck, manager of the Klamath Irrigation District.
Stuntebeck was assistant manager for the district at the start of the year. Now running the district’s daily operations, he has a dramatically different outlook at the end of this growing season than his predecessor, Dave Solem, did at the season’s start.
Solem had feared shutting off irrigation water as early as Sept. 15, a full month ahead of schedule.
Compounded with a late start for the flow of KID water, area irrigators were looking at a year with just 30 percent of their normal water supply — an amount considered acceptable for 13,000 acres.
But farmers used every drop of water they could from ground wells and some received government subsidies to leave their land idle.
“Things have improved somewhat for us now,” Stuntebeck said.
Irrigation district water was shut off Oct. 15, the traditional season end date for irrigation water.
Though some district water users went a full month without water at the start of the season, and others went even longer, effective planning and management kept a bad water year from becoming unmanageable, he said.
The district also was bolstered by the Bureau of Reclamation’s decision to deliver an additional 35,000 acre feet of water, allowing Stuntebeck to release water for some lower priority users.
“Because of that, we were able to start servicing some of our B contractors,” Stuntebeck said, throwing a lifeline to water users that had gone all year without a drop.
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