By ELON GLUCKLICH

H&N Staff Reporter

September 5, 2010

DAVE SOLEM, outgoing manager, Klamath Irrigation District

   But few can say they’ve watched the lake level with as much interest — and agony — as Dave Solem.

   The outgoing manager of the Klamath Irrigation District watched in April as the growing season began without a drop of water for irrigators. Days turned to weeks, and a full month passed before he could tell district irrigators the water was coming.

   And while water flow has remained steady for many within his district, Solem’s final year at KID presented challenges he never thought he would have to deal with.

   “We’ve never really gone through a season with half a supply like this. It’s kind of our worst nightmare,” he said.

   Conservative water use by district irrigators has Solem thinking the district might make it to October before shutting supplies off this year. In May, he said he feared having to shut off in mid-September.

   His final days with KID were spent in conference calls with the Bureau of Reclamation, tracking the water level of Upper Klamath Lake, regulating water releases for farmers, listening to grievances, and trying to squeeze the most he could out of a finite resource.

   “We had to manage things much more stringently than we have in the past,” he said

   All and all, he feels he’s done a pretty good job. Crop losses were not as bad as he feared.

   “If you have grain, it’s pretty much done. The potato crop is getting closer and closer to being finished,” he said. “The farmers have done a pretty good job managing what was available.”

   He realizes not everyone feels that way. Farmers in the Langell Valley suffered through a poor season, while some irrigation districts received no water until summer, he said. Acres of farmland sit yellow and idle. Countless growers worked more to earn less this year, the worst water season on record since 2001.

   Solem can only speak from his own perspective. And he said he knows countless irrigators are hurting as the summer winds to a close. But he also knows without the highest level of cooperation between agencies and farmers he’s ever seen, a bad year might have been much worse.

   “In my opinion, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” he said. “I’m appreciative of that.”  

Cooperation key to getting federal aid     

    Without cooperation from water districts, farmers, lawmakers and agencies like the Bureau of Reclamation, a bad water year may have been much worse.

   Few can appreciate that more than Sue Fry.

   The manager of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath Basin Area Office, Fry has spent countless hours in a conference room in the Bureau’s Klamath Falls office, talking with irrigators about keeping close tabs on water use.

   Fry said communication was key to managing resources amid the region’s worst water shortage since 2001.

   “Because of the relationships we’ve built, it made the water year more successful,” Fry said. “Without that, it would have been a much different year.”

   Fry focused heavily on devising resource management strategies in the region. Whether that meant wells to compensate for lake shortages or idling land, Fry said she often had to deal with landowners reluctant to change old habits.

   “I think early on we recognized there was going to be a drought,” she said. “All year there was low inflow to the Upper Klamath Lake, historically low.”

   As early as January, Bureau officials noticed low inflows from the Williamson River, which feeds into the Upper Klamath Lake. That early awareness helped them devise alternatives and maximize the few resources available.

   But, Fry said, a similar shortage in 2011 would be more crippling to farmers.

   “It’s not something we want to go though again next year,” she said.

Stakeholders working together this year     

LARRY DUNSMOOR, senior aquatics biologist, Klamath Tribes

   If the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement was in place this year, the impact of a Basin-wide drought would have been mitigated, said Larry Dunsmoor, senior aquatics biologist for the Klamath Tribes.

   “There would have been different water management strategies employed, and there would have been funding available already to manage a crisis year, like this one,” he said. “There still would have been challenges, but they would not have been as bad.”

   If the KBRA had been implemented prior to this year, Dunsmoor said, more water would have been retained in Upper Klamath Lake leading up to the irrigation season, and programs would be in place to help stakeholders cope with the lack of water.

   A cool spring and short summer lessened the drought’s impact on the Tribes this year, he said. The balmy weather kept local lakes and rivers cooler — a healthier environment for the indigenous fish that are an important part of tribal life.

   Dunsmoor is not a tribal member but has worked for the Klamath Tribes for 22 years.

   “The healthier an aquatic system is, the more resilient it is to things like droughts, and alternatively, the less healthy it is, the less resilient it is,” he said.

   In a drought year like this one, water issues dominate Dunsmoor’s job. Droughts “intensify the normal challenges of water management,” he said. It means more meetings, more tracking of water levels and, most of all, more interaction with other Basin stakeholders.

   Though the KBRA has not been implemented, signers such as the Tribes and Basin irrigation districts are cooperating better, Dunsmoor said.

   “Generally speaking, instead of people picking up the phone to call their attorney, they pick up their phone to call the other group and just try to share information and work things out.”

‘We’re better off than I thought we would be’   

 DONNIE BOYD, owner, Floyd A. Boyd Co., Merrill

   “Surprisingly, we’re better off than I thought we would be,” said Donnie Boyd, sole owner of a three-generation implement dealership.