Tapping wells in Klamath Basin keeps fields planted, but unprecedented use comes at a cost -- plummeting water levels and dry wells

Scott Learn, The Oregonian

August 28, 2010

MERRILL -- During the last big drought crisis in the Klamath Basin, in 2001, Carleton Farms filed for bankruptcy. Nine summers later, amid drought crisis No. 2, heavy pumping of wells that Jim Carleton and his neighbors installed since 2001 is saving his bacon, or, more precisely, his alfalfa, potatoes, wheat, cattle and 12 employees who work his 2,000 acres.

As a Merrill councilman who oversees public works, Carleton also experienced the downside of this year's unprecedented well use. In June, after Merrill's wells ran dry, the town trucked in water for days and spent upward of $25,000 lowering its wellhead.

Since 2001, the government has paid some basin farmers to irrigate with well water when the weather turns dry. Gov. Ted Kulongoski's drought declaration in May allowed 89 one-year emergency wells this summer on top of 177 permanent wells sunk on the Oregon side of the basin during the past nine years.

But this year's pumping, roughly double previous highs, shows the limits of that strategy for resolving Oregon's most politically fraught water war.

The extra draw has lowered well water levels 30 feet in spots. 

The aquifer also isn't close to recharging from greater well use since 2001, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study released in April -- before this summer's heavy pumping began.

Underground supplies aren't tapped out, Carleton notes. After going deeper, Merrill now has plenty of water.

"But people are putting a lot of pumping strain on the aquifer," Carleton says during a slow "farmer speed" drive through his fields. "Will it hold up? Time will tell."
 

The Klamath Basin, running through high desert from southern Oregon into Northern California, is home to mammoth Upper Klamath Lake to the north, gorgeous rolling hills with views of Mount Shasta and more than 1,000 family farms such as Carleton's in Klamath County alone, many more than a century old.

The challenge is to find enough water for farms and fish, including coho salmon in the Klamath River and suckers in the lake and nearby Lost River, all listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Regulators walk an extraordinarily fine line. Water is needed for fish, third-generation farmers, waterfowl refuges and tribal and commercial fishermen.

Tribal fishing suffered from dams and a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project that began in the early 1900s and teed up the land for agriculture. It used Upper Klamath Lake as a reservoir, diverted water to farms through hundreds of miles of canals and drained much of two other lakes to the south.

In the drought year of 2001, fish got water instead of farmers, sparking outrage nationwide. In 2002, with help from Vice President Dick Cheney, farmers got more water, but fish died en masse in the Klamath River.

In nondrought years, farmers on the Klamath Reclamation Project get 400,000 acre-feet of water from the lake -- at 130 billion gallons, that's about six times Portland's annual use.

This year, they'll get about 185,000 acre-feet from the lake. Well water will fill roughly half the shortfall. Idling an estimated 25,000 acres and irrigating less often, which reduces yields, makes up the rest of the deficit.

The reclamation project serves 190,000 acres. An additional 310,000 acres in the basin but outside the project -- typically higher-elevation land that has relied on river water or wells for decades -- generally got enough water for crops this summer.

The net result is a peculiar patchwork of unplanted and productive land.

Bare or weed-choked fields sit next to fields full of potatoes, onions, wheat, mint or deep green alfalfa. The mineral tang of spraying water and the sweet smell of hay hangs in the air.

Well-pumping also helped farm-related businesses, from fertilizer suppliers to hardware stores, limp by. And it helped farmers hang on to long-term contracts for potatoes and other crops that would probably be lost if they didn't deliver.

As head of the new Klamath Water and Power Authority, Hollie Cannon  administers more than $5 million in federal subsidies for pumping and land-idling on reclamation project farms this summer.

He also hears complaints from homeowners who've seen water levels drop below their wellheads, and concerns from farmers on the low end of reclamation's complicated water supply pecking order, which leaves some smaller irrigation districts short in dry years.

Should the weather stay dry in coming years, farmers can't continue to rely on the already-taxed aquifer, Cannon says. That's not an unusual opinion in the basin, where the usual antagonists -- environmentalists, farmers and tribes -- all agree this summer's groundwater pumping can't last.

"If 2011 is a repeat of 2010, we're probably not going to get half as much water out of the ground as we did this year," Cannon says. "It's a depleting resource."
 

Since 2001, the government has done much to encourage well drilling. Now, government officials are starting to have second thoughts.

The Bureau of Reclamation, mandated to reserve more lake water for endangered fish, began paying for electricity for well pumping and a stipend for maintenance to reclamation project farmers.

Oregon regulators allowed fast-paced well drilling beginning in 2001. Huge, subsidized wells have been sunk in California, where well construction and use remain largely unregulated.

But the federal government has scaled back the size of well-pumping subsidies for individual farms, and before Kulongoski's emergency declaration this year Oregon was stingier with well approvals as the aquifer dropped. This summer, Oregon shut off eight emergency wells that saw water levels drop more than 25 feet. Many others, particularly in the southern portion of the basin, are on the brink.

"There's probably a level of pumping out there that can't be sustained," says Doug Woodcock, groundwater manager for the Oregon Department of Water Resources.

California's Tulelake Irrigation District switched off its five large wells just south of the state line when monitors showed they were drawing down wells near Merrill and nearby Malin.

That midseason move is hailed by Oregon officials. But it came only after federal officials agreed to bump up their allocation of lake water provided to the project. Absent that, Tulelake general manager Earl Danosky says, "I think we would have had to run the wells just to keep what land we have in crops."

At this point, the capacity of the Klamath Basin's aquifer is a mystery. It could be largely interconnected. It could be separate pools.

Some areas of the aquifer may recover quickly from this summer's heavy pumping, water managers say. Others may not.

The USGS study released last spring showed little recovery in the water table since 2001, even though wells weren't used much in 2008 and 2009. It also showed connections between heavy well use and reduced stream flow, says Marshall Gannett,  a USGS hydrologist who led the study.

"If you pump groundwater and start to interfere with the streams," he says, "you're just robbing Peter to pay Paul."

What scares farmers most is that this year's drought -- many locals call it a "political drought" -- is hardly the stuff of dust bowls, making a repeat of this summer's water squeeze more likely.

As of March 1, before irrigation began, snowpack and projected inflow to Upper Klamath Lake were low, but higher than five of the past 20 years, according to an analysis by the Yurok Tribe.

Precipitation so far this year has topped 80 percent of normal, yet irrigation water from the lake is down by more than half.

Lake levels were low heading into the water year, partly because of irrigation withdrawals in 2009. Making matters worse: federal requirements to release lake water into the Klamath River last winter for coho.

Young salmon actually need the water more in the spring to help them in their migration to the sea, tribal biologists say. The tribe's analysis concluded the lake could have been 2 feet higher -- perhaps enough to satisfy the needs of both farmers and fish -- if water management were more flexible.

Instead, the tribe said, the winter releases helped bring Upper Klamath Lake to its lowest March 1 level since 1949.

The agreement needs $500 million from Congress over 10 years, no sure thing. The deal also relies on studies, including groundwater studies, that are works in process. And it has fierce, often litigious critics, in part because it's coupled with removal of Klamath River dams to benefit fish, unpopular with many in this area.

Tom Mallams  heads a group of farmers in the northern basin -- not part of the Klamath Reclamation Project -- who oppose the agreement as favoring on-project lands. He's also one of the chief petitioners behind an initiative to put dam removal on the Klamath County ballot.

Only project farmers get paid to pump well water, Mallams notes. And Oregon regulators limited new wells in the relatively wet off-project areas for fear of depleting rivers that feed into Upper Klamath Lake, while permitting wells on the relatively dry project lands.

"It's just backwards," he says.

On the opposite side of the political spectrum, Oregon Wild,, a conservation group, also opposes the restoration agreement, saying it gives farmers priority over fish and wildlife. The real solution is buying out some farmers' water rights, spokesman Sean Stevens  says.

"You can talk about leaving more water in the lake or in rivers," he says, "but the basin only has so much water, whether it's above ground or below ground."

That taps into the larger concern across the basin: Are its farms viable in the long run given the continued uncertainty around water?

Gary Derry, 50, has 500 acres sprinkled throughout the Klamath Basin, some on wells, some on surface water, some idle this year. Payments for idling land amount to about a quarter of the profits he'd make from crops, he says. Long-term, a shaky water supply can sink land values.

His family has farmed for three generations. But in 2001, Derry told his son to forget about farming. His daughter just turned 18, he says, and "there's no way in hell" he wants her to depend on the land.

"That's a horrible thing when you run your kids off," Derry says. "I know my family will not be farming here 20 years from now."