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

Drought impacts

Yakima Valley farmers struggle now, wonder about next year

By Joye Redfield-Wilder, communications manager, Central Region

The Drought of 2015 hasn’t run out of steam yet, and the final tally of its costs remain. Still, the impacts can be seen and felt across Washington.

At a recent meeting of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan workgroup,* farmers shared how this year’s drought has affected them personally.

In Kittitas County, cattle herds are being reduced in size with calves being shipped off and sold early because pasturelands are dry and no second cutting of hay will be made.

Cattle graze on dry Timothy hay field because no second cutting this year
Photo by Melissa Hansen

Fields that should be green are now brown and the Timothy grass hay has been forced into premature dormancy.  This will lead to damage to the plants and will also result in invasive grasses taking over in the fields, which will significantly disrupt the farmer’s crop rotation schedules.  The drought creates conditions in the fields that are tough to respond to once the weeds take hold as a result of the lack of water. It will take at least three years for the fields to recover from the 2015 drought and that is only if there is a good water supply next season.

“The green fields along I-90 are deceptive,” said Badger Pocket farmer Mark Hansen. The majority of the fields that are bordering the I-90 freeway along the Kittitas Valley floor are irrigated with senior rights and are receiving a full supply of water this year. His land, irrigated by the Kittitas Reclamation District (KRD), is above the valley floor. KRD had to turn off the supply more than two months early because of the drought.

Even with investments in sprinkler pivots and drip irrigation, there’s just not enough water to spread around. So KRD decided to run its water early to get at least one cutting of hay out of deliveries. This resulted in the early shut off because of the short supply. The Kittitas Valley Timothy hay is prized around the world.

Crops of apples and grapes are languishing, producing reduce-sized apples and berries in the 90-mile stretch of the Roza Irrigation District in the Lower Yakima Valley. There, water managers withheld deliveries in May to stretch supplies later in the fall when perennial crops – wine and juice grapes, apples and pears – need it most.

To some degree it paid off.  Shortly after the Roza canals were drained and a statewide drought was officially declared in May, Mother Nature delivered some rain to the Lower Valley. The storm, however, didn’t provide any relief to Kittitas Reclamation District lands in the upper Basin.

Apple trees dry and brittle for lack of water on Roza land near Prosser
Photo courtesy of Roza Irrigation District

Many irrigators depend on the runoff known as return flows to water crops and even residential lawns. That’s water that returns to the system after being delivered to other farms located higher up in the Yakima Basin.

Implementation of water efficiencies coupled with less water in the first place results in far less water trickling down to Kennewick Irrigation District, at the lower end of the Yakima River irrigation delivery system operated by the US Bureau of Reclamation.

Ditch riders are making sure people get their fair share and that others aren’t taking more than their share. Water schedules have been advertised via news and social media outlets in Kennewick and code enforcers cited residential customers not adhering to watering limitations – some 500 citations or warnings issued this year.

Tight running operations required advance planning by irrigation districts and farmers alike.

Prosser farmer Jim Willard might be a typical example of the need to be nimble. He fallowed 18 percent of his farm this year – meaning no water went to a crop on that much land. He had 10 percent of his crops planted in new juice grapes and apples. The baby grapes got by with about six inches of water total.

For the young plantings of apples he dug up a new watering system and added drip irrigation to make the water go farther – all at his own expense. Larger trees struggled with less water because their broader root base is accustomed to overhead sprinklers.

Willard has a deep well and supplemental water rights he can tap into during drought. It’s been 10 years since he’s used the well and he found the water table had dropped. Many of his neighbors faced obstacles when turning on their drought wells for the first time in a decade  -- pumps needed new motors and gear boxes needed replacing – all taking a big hit on budgets. It cost one of his neighbors $1,300 a day to run the diesel generator to pump the water from his well. On top of that, farmers were required to pay a drought water use mitigation fee for the first time in order to use the water. The fee paid half the cost to lease water to offset impacts to the aquifer and the river. Fifty-percent of the program funded by the state.

Water markets were tight this year, making it difficult and costly to "buy" water from others who would forgo growing a crop.  

Going forward, bankers are examining farmers’ water rights, what the predicted water supply might be and making or not making loans based on those risks. “What we need is a supplemental system and snowfall,” Willard said. “I’m concerned about the quality and quantity of crops – we won’t know until we start adding things up in November’’ if this is a profitable year or not.

More on Washington's drought at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/drought/index.html

*In response to drought and climate change, the Yakima River Basin Water Enhancement Project (YRBWEP) Working Group is seeking long-term water solutions through storage and environmental enhancement projects spelled out in the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan. The Washington Legislature approved  legislation to jump-start the plan  in 2013. In July of this year, Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell proposed Congressional legislation to support plan projects.