How woody debris becomes orca food

Southern Resident killer whales feed on Chinook salmon that rely

on degrading logs for spawning in the Yakima Basin floodplains

 

Last month, I was lucky enough to tag along with a large group of Yakima River Basin stakeholders to witness firsthand a massive floodplain restoration project in the Teanaway Community Forest that will benefit Southern Resident orcas.

As we arrived at the first staging area, the sounds of a tandem rotor helicopter could be heard long before we could see it. Looking in the direction of the sound, I saw a bundle of large tree trunks lifted into the sky, on their way to their new home in the Teanaway River.

“Why on earth are we dumping logs into a waterway? " you may ask. "And what does this have to do with our Southern Resident Killer Whales?”

Well, let's look at the Southern Resident killer whales and their diet.
   

Orcas feed at Columbia River mouth

Our resident orcas hunt near the mouth of the Columbia River from January to April, which just happens to be the same time spring Chinook are schooling for their upstream migration to their spawning grounds high in the Cascades.

The Chinook’s large size and high fat content provide orcas with the high calories vital to maintaining their health and replenish fat reserves that will get them through leaner times.

Spring Chinook and other salmon species begin their life in streams and rivers that provide clean and cool water spawning grounds. This important habitat is found throughout the Columbia River Basin, including the Teanaway River and its tributaries in the Yakima River Basin.

However, Chinook numbers are in peril. Along with  the overall declining numbers of salmon species, the orcas' food source is becoming scarcer and scarcer. The survival and recovery of our resident orca population hinges on an adequate source of food available year round.

Orca feeds on Chinook salmon (Photo by John Durban (NOAA Fisheries/Southwest Fisheries Science Center)

The Yakima Basin Integrated Plan and the Teanaway Community Forest

For over a century, loggers and settlers in the Teanaway altered the landscape to meet their needs. This included the removal of woody debris from these waterways to allow for the easy transportation of timber downstream. Their actions degraded floodplains, reduced channel diversity, increased stream incisement, and devastated vital spawning and rearing habitat for both anadromous and resident fish.

In 2013, the legislature appropriated funds for the state to purchase the 50,000-plus acres in the Teanaway from a private landowner. That same year, the Teanaway was designated as the first community forest in the state. Community forests are managed not only for habitat restoration, conservation, and preservation, but also as a sustainable working forest.

As a sustainable working forest, grazing, logging, and recreational opportunities are overseen in a way to avoid critical habitats and restoration areas, while maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Restoration of both upland and aquatic habitat, as outlined in the Teanaway Community Forest Management Plan, is key to restoring the Teanaway’s overall health. This includes floodplains.

By restoring the floodplain, we are also restoring both aquatic and surrounding upland habitats. Flood events are when the magic happens.

During flood events, the logs and root wads placed in strategic locations slow streamflows by forcing the water to move over the wide and flat adjacent floodplain. As the water spreads across the floodplain, it puts its habitat enhancing powers to work.

Floodplains not only help control streamflows during flood events, they also:

• Act as a sponge to refresh the groundwater table
• Provide resting pools for fish
• Increase stream channel diversity
• Reduce flood damage risks downstream
• Create and maintain vital spawning and rearing habitat for spring Chinook and other anadromous and resident fish

The Tour

Inspecting Jungle Creek we got a close up look at what appeared to be a healthy stream, with its crystal clear water and a streambed lined with large beautifully rounded rocks. However, its appearance was deceptive of its true health, according to our tour guide, Scott Nicolai with the Yakama Nation. He explained how despite the looks of the stream, it is actually degraded to the point that fish can no longer be supported.

“It’s important to recognize that we are only giving the stream what it needs to recover from decades of degradation, the stream does the rest of the restoration itself (during high flows),” Nicolai said.

Large wood, placed in Jack Creek in 2012.

Our next stop was at nearby Jack Creek where large logs have already been placed in the stream. This gave us an idea of what Jungle Creek and other creeks will look like once they've been restored with logs and woody debris. The first thing I noticed was how the logs looked like they were always a part of the landscape, blending in easily with the surrounding habitat.

We are eager to see the results of the Jack Creek floodplain restoration once a large flood event occurs.

Project Sites

In 2018, the Teanaway Floodplain Restoration project restored approximately 150 acres of floodplains by placing more than 5,500 logs in 8 miles of Teanaway tributaries including:

• Jungle Creek
• Rye Creek
• Lick Creek
• Indian Creek
• Middle Creek
• Dickey Creek
• First Creek
• Carlson Creek

This year, logs and root wads were placed in approximately three miles on the North Fork Teanaway. We anticipate additional large wood floodplain restoration work to continue in 2020. Additional Floodplain Restoration project sites outside of the Teanaway Community Forest will place over 5,400 logs in 24 miles of creeks and rivers including:

• Swauk Creek
• Umtanum Creek
• North Fork Manastash Creek
• Little Naches River
• Little Rattlesnake Creek
• Satus Creek

In addition to the Teanaway Floodplain Restoration project, the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan supports a wide variety of projects benefiting the farms, families and fish of the Yakima River Basin including our fish passage project at Cle Elum Dam and the Kachess Drought Relief Pumping Plant water supply project. For additional information regarding the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan, please visit our Department of Ecology website.

For more information regarding the Yakama Nation Fisheries Floodplain Restoration project, please visit their website, or contact Scott Nicolai, project manager, at nics@yakamafish-nsn.gov.

Some factoids

• More than 80 percent of the Southern Resident orcas' diet consists of Chinook salmon
• The average orca must consume 18-25 adult salmon daily just to meet its energy requirements
• The Southern Resident population must catch a minimum of 1,400 salmon daily to sustain their calorie needs, which adds up to at least half a million salmon a year
• For the population to grow to 140 whales, an allowance of one million salmon a year is required
• Female salmon lay 2,000 to 10,000 eggs; less than one percent survive and return to their spawning grounds to produce the next generation.

By Jennifer Stephens, Environmental Specialist, Office of Columbia River

Water Watch: Drought well program launched in Yakima Basin

Irrigators can learn about emergency drought permits at July 11 workshop

Naches River is running low as it flows to its confluence with the Yakima River (Photo by Eiko Urmos-Beery 2019)

In light of current water conditions in the Yakima River Basin, Ecology is launching a drought well relief program to assist  junior irrigators in the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Yakima Project who are receiving less than 70 percent of their normal water supply.

A workshop is set for 2-5 p.m. on July 11, 2019, at our Central Regional Office, 1250 W. Alder St., Union Gap, for irrigators who have or are considering applying for emergency drought permits this irrigation season.

Irrigators will learn under what conditions emergency groundwater permits may be authorized, and about this drought year’s cost-sharing program. Impacts of groundwater pumping to the aquifer must be offset through the purchase of mitigation water, to protect senior water users.

Under the state's drought relief program, the groundwater applicant and the state share in the cost to obtain mitigation water. Applicants will be required to pay $500 per acre feet of water authorized.

“We will also have time for questions, and will provide information on well construction, water measuring and reporting requirements, as well as other options that might be available to those needing emergency water,” explained Trevor Hutton, Ecology’s water resources manager in Union Gap.

Program designed for irrigators whose water is rationed

Now that the Bureau of Reclamation forecasts that pro-ratable water users will receive only 67 percent of their normal water supply, we can begin considering emergency drought groundwater applications.

In the Yakima River Basin, project irrigators with junior water rights, including the Kittitas and Roza districts, have agreed to live with 70 percent of their normal water supply without tapping into drought wells under goals of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan. This is to protect groundwater and senior water rights, including rights held by the Yakama Nation.

Drought was declared in the Upper Yakima Basin on April 4, 2019, and drought was declared for the rest of the three-county watershed on May 20, 2019. State drought declarations may be made when the projected water supply dips to 75 percent of normal and watersheds are deemed to be at risk of suffering hardships.

Water users may also apply for expedited water-right transfers negotiated between willing private parties the drought declaration, and other non-project emergency well permits must bring proposed mitigation for consideration in the Yakima River Basin. 

Other Central Washington drought tidbits

• Oroville-Tonasket Irrigation District is fallowing 1,800 acres of land this irrigation season and making water available to other farmers who may be facing a shortfall or are shutoff this summer. The district has 5,600 acre-feet of water that is available to lease. About 100 water users on the Okanogan and Similkameen rivers in Okanogan County have been shut off due to low streamflows and the lack of snowmelt runoff from Canada. Learn more at the OTID water bank website. 
• Kittitas County will be holding a public auction to lease county water rights to eligible bidders at 10 a.m. on July 9 in the Board of County Commissioner’s auditorium at 205 W 5th Avenue in Ellensburg. Staff will auction 25 (twenty five) acre-foot blocks of water at a minimum bid price of $240 per acre-foot. Irrigators interested in bidding must complete an eligibility review as described in the public notice. 
• People who have questions about drought response in Chelan, Kittitas, Okanogan, Yakima and Benton counties may contact our customer service line at 509-575-2490.

More drought information is found online.

By Joye Redfield-Wilder, Central Region communications

Innovative Water Solutions

Irrigators coming together to pay for Yakima watershed projects

Ron Van Gundy 

It’s a journey that old-timer Ron Van Gundy says started in the late 1970s and early 80s when irrigators were faced with new Clean Water regulations. Too much sediment was being carried to the Yakima River, causing it to turn milk chocolate brown at irrigation outfalls such as Sulphur Creek near Sunnyside.
Their response: switch from flooding fields with water to installing sprinkler and drip irrigation to prevent sediment runoff and pesticide pollution to the Yakima River. The benefits of their actions were twofold – an 85 percent improvement in water quality and conservation of tens of thousands of acre-feet of water precious to the agricultural economy in the face of drought and climate change.

Cooperation, not fighting
Today, those same irrigators with their once adversaries are helping to implement one of the nation’s largest water and environmental enhancement projects under the Yakima Basin Integrated Water Resources Management Plan.

The goal: to meet water needs for families, farms, forests and fish without fighting. The efforts begun decades ago helped irrigators get through the drought of 2015 and set the stage for success through the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan.

Where factions have traditionally lawyered up and met only in the courtroom, these same parties, known collectively as the Yakima River Basin Water Enhancement Project Workgroup, log many miles together pitching their approach to state legislators at home and Congressmen on the Hill in Washington, D.C. They’ve gained recognition in the halls of the U.S. Department of Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture, where WaterSMART watershed management approaches are touted.

Plan gaining national attention
A cover article and spread in the Oct. 17, 2016, Christian Science Monitor Weekly is a testament the plan has gained national attention:

In an innovative agreement, farmers have joined with environmental groups, the Yakama Nation, state and federal officials to both increase water availability and restore the natural landscape,” writes Zack Colman in the CSM article.

Drip irrigation conserves water, improves water quality

Although the plan focuses on just one section of the state, it is an agriculturally significant one – the Yakima Basin. And it’s comprehensive: The plan includes voluntary conservation programs, building new water-storage reservoirs, and adding structures to dams that would help fish seek cooler waters as they migrate upstream.

... Many water experts say the fledgling accord could be a model largely because farmers themselves have agreed to pay for investments that promise to enable their water needs to be met alongside those of city dwellers and endangered salmon.

Interest from D.C.

Sockeye salmon

In mid-October, leaders from the other Washington (D.C.), representing a dozen federal agencies, toured integrated plan projects in the Yakima Basin. Along the tour they met with workgroup members and viewed sockeye salmon spawning in tributaries above Cle Elum Reservoir. The Yakama Nation’s fisheries program is restoring one of only four remaining sockeye populations in the Columbia River Basin. Fish passage at Cle Elum is part of the plan’s first decade of work. In addition, irrigators are pursuing financial partnerships to fund the Kachess Drought Relief Pumping Plant project, another early action project. They are proposing to access water now stored in Kachess Lake with a floating pump during drought years. This, and other surface water storage projects advocated by the integrated plan, would be funded by irrigators.

A creative financial approach
Taking advantage of a new program offered by the U.S. Department of Interior, the Roza Irrigation and Kittitas Reclamation districts have agreed to explore ways to secure non-federal public and private financing for the Kachess project. The Natural Resource Investment Center was created to help connect investors to natural resource projects that have traditionally been publicly funded.

Roza Irrigation District manager Scott Revell explained in the Yakima Herald-Republic: 

“There are a surprisingly large number of private (investors) who want to make investment in infrastructure projects that have ecosystem benefits.”

Working with the investment center would help the local irrigation districts connect with those investors, who would loan money to the pumping plant project for both a return on investment and the opportunity to demonstrate their support for water-smart projects, Revell said.

State and Federal investments

Our Office of Columbia River helped spearhead development of the plan with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, beginning in 2009 by bringing once-adversarial water users together. So far, the state has invested as much as $140 million for integrated plan projects.

Reclamation has contributed approximately $78 million, and other federal agencies participating have contributed approximately $167 million to projects consistent with Integrated Plan in the Yakima Basin.

“Success of the program will hinge on these public and private partnerships, with state, local and federal dollars all playing a part,” said Office of Columbia River director Tom Tebb. “We know we need to be creative as well as smart in how we prioritize and fund these water projects.”

In the U.S. Senate and House, Washington legislators are promoting a compromise bill that would jumpstart funding of the 30-year watershed plan at the federal level by as much as $92 million.

For Ron VanGundy, it may have taken 30 years to get here. But he has always been forward thinking. “The people we were working with back then were working for something they would never see. They knew it was important then. And it’s just as important now.”

By: Joye Redfield-Wilder, Central Region communications manager

More on the plan and partners:
This River Runs Forever

Yakima River Canyon