Farmers fret over icy Oregon lakes

Cold weather - Anglers also face trials from lack of snowmelt in higher elevations  

April 26, 2008

RICHARD COCKLE

The Oregonian

JOSEPH -- Wallowa Lake is still a bank-to-bank sheet of translucent ice. And despite huge snowpacks in the nearby Eagle Cap Wilderness, the gemlike northeastern Oregon lake's water level remains unusually low for late April.

The condition of this glacial lake at a 4,300 feet elevation typifies something that worries farmers, ranchers and county officials across much of eastern Oregon : Snowpacks aren't melting, storage reservoirs aren't refilling, and chilly spring temperatures have delayed the growing season.

The snowpack could also make life difficult for anglers. Many Oregonians will head to higher elevations today for the opening of lake-trout season, and they'll find lakes iced over or surrounded by snow.

Besides Wallowa, that includes popular Diamond Lake in southern Oregon , where dedicated anglers might have to drag out the ice augers. In central Oregon , only a handful of lakes will be open.

The water content of the state's rugged and sparsely settled northeast corner was at 145 percent of average earlier this week, said Jon Lea, a hydrologist with the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service. The water content of all Oregon mountain snowpacks stood at 185 percent of average.

"It has been gaining; it hasn't been melting," he said of the snowpacks, which ordinarily would be sending millions of gallons of spring runoff frothing downstream into storage reservoirs.

Braced for floods

The king-size mountain snowpacks had officials of Malheur County on the Oregon-Idaho border bracing for spring floods, said Dan Joyce, chairman of the county commissioners in Vale. Instead, the high desert reservoirs didn't fill over the winter because of persistent cold temperatures.

"We have some very, very concerned farmers who think they might not have the runoff they need," Joyce said. "They think they will run out in July. That just spells disaster."

Malheur County 's farmers depend on Owyhee , Bully Creek, Beulah and other high desert reservoirs to fill slowly over the winter. That didn't happen, and the wrong sort of late-season warmup could result in too much water evaporating or being absorbed into the desert sand before it reaches the reservoirs, he said.

"I don't know if it's ever gone this late without runoff," said Joyce. "And it's freezing at the same time. There comes a point in time when you go to replant, and it's too late."

Shad Hattan, an Oregon Water Resources Department watermaster for the Grande Ronde basin near La Grande, said Phillips Reservoir near Baker City and Warm Springs Reservoir between Burns and Vale are still at 40 percent of capacity, or less, and not getting much inflow from mountain snowpacks.

The situation is different in western Oregon , where reservoirs with dams were created largely for flood control.

Most reservoirs in eastern Oregon were intended for irrigation, and flood control isn't often a major concern. As a consequence, the stored water situation can differ sharply from reservoir to reservoir and region to region, said George Robison, a dam safety coordinator for the state Water Resources Department in Salem .

Nine reservoirs unfilled

The nine U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs in the Cascades -- among them Detroit Lake near Detroit and Lost Creek Reservoir on the Rogue River -- deliberately have been kept unfilled this spring as a flood control measure, he said.

John Williams, an Oregon State University extension agent in Enterprise , said a couple of hundred farmers and ranchers depend on runoff into Wallowa Lake to irrigate 38,000 acres of wheat, barley, hay and pasture lands downstream.

Wallowa County Commissioner Mike Hayward of Enterprise worries that a sudden bout of warm weather and rain could trigger a disastrous melt-off in the mountains. That happened in January 1997, and residents along the Imnaha River still haven't repaired all the flood damage, he said.

But Rick Lusk, a watermaster in Baker City , is undismayed and says most farmers in his area won't need to do any irrigating until the temperature starts to rise. Still, many of them probably would appreciate warmer weather soon, he said.

Hattan said every irrigation season has a personality of its own.

"It is my ninth year here," he said, "and none seem to be the same."

Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle@oregonwireless.net

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