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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"><STRONG>Basin turns nervous eye to snowpack</STRONG>
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<P>Klamath Falls Herald and News (Oregon) ? 3/14/05
<P>By Dylan Darling, staff writer
<P>As the sun keeps eating away at the mountain snowpack, Klamath Basin farmers
and ranchers are trying to digest a <BR>drought plan implemented Wednesday by
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
<P>Bureau officials dusted off the plan, crafted in 1991, because of continual
dry conditions and dropping streamflow <BR>forecasts for the irrigation season,
which runs from April to mid-October.
<P>In the drought plan, most parks, cemeteries and athletic fields will go dry,
and smaller water user districts will have <BR>to figure ways to get by with
less as water keeps flowing to the Klamath Irrigation District and Tulelake
Irrigation <BR>District. Those two districts have the highest priority for water
under the drought plan.
<P>Christine Karas, deputy manager of the Klamath Reclamation Project, said a
dramatic change in weather could still <BR>make the plan unnecessary.
<P>"But we want to get out in front of it and not wait," Karas said.
<P>A dramatic change in weather doesn't seem to be coming any time soon.
<P>Unseasonably warm temperatures baked the Basin for the past week, shriveling
the snowpack in the mountains. Jon <BR>Lea, a hydrologist with the Natural
Resources Conservation Service, said March is usually a month when the
<BR>snowpack is still building.
<P>Instead, it's shrinking - daily. As a result, the NRCS figures are going down
fast.
<P>The Klamath Basin snowpack on Wednesday was measured at 38 percent of
average. By Friday it was down to 34 <BR>percent. Saturday it was 32 percent.
<P>"I guess it is just getting worse as far as percentages are concerned," he
said. "Here we are sitting in June-like <BR>weather in March."
<P>Already bad at the beginning of the month, the snowpack is now in worse shape
than it was in 2001, Lea said. In <BR>2001, Bureau officials didn't put water
through the Project's canals because of a water shortage and endangered
<BR>species regulations.
<P>Officials have said changes in management plans should make water deliveries
in the project possible if the water <BR>situation is similar to 2001. But, with
the every shrinking snowpack, there could be less water to go around this
<BR>year.
<P>On March 13, 2001, the snowpack was at 53 percent of average for the date.
<P>To figure how divvy up water under the drought plan, Bureau officials plan to
meet with representatives from the <BR>Project's irrigation districts in early
April.
<P>The drought plan has been put into effect twice before - in 1992 and 1994.
Response to the plan is those years was <BR>mixed.
<P>In spring 1992, the Bureau invited farmers and ranchers to ask questions
about the plan in a meeting at the Midland <BR>Grange. The meeting was an
"awakening," said Jim Bryant, retired chief of the project's water and land
operations. <BR>Bryant was one of the Bureau officials who crafted the drought
plan.
<P>Many farmers and ranchers didn't like the priority system because it pitted
them against each other, he said, but the <BR>prioritization of Project water
users was written into the more than 200 contracts irrigators signed with the
<BR>government. Some didn't know they had a contract for water, Bryant said.
<P>He said there were difficulties in getting the plan to work on the ground.
For example, some water normally would <BR>pass through a second-priority
irrigation district on its way to a first-priority district. Some of those
problems and <BR>questions linger today and could come up again with the
implementation of the plan.
<P>The Project ended up getting through both 1992 and 1994 with relatively full
water deliveries. Since then <BR>Endangered Species Act requirements have
tightened, and the Bureau doesn't have the flexibility it did in those
<BR>years.
<P>"It will take a lot of cooperation and work to get through this year if the
weather does not change dramatically in <BR>the next moth or so," Bryant said in
an e-mail. "The drought plan will provide the framework only, with the details
<BR>to be worked out by the Basin community. I am sure that their will be many
inequities in the distribution of the <BR>water if the dire forecasts are
realized."
<P>Many in the agricultural community still don't like the plan, said Dave
Solem, manager of the Klamath Irrigation <BR>District.
<P>"From a farmer's standpoint it doesn't make any sense," he said. "It doesn't
have anything to do with the <BR>productivity of land. It just is based on the
kind of contract."
<P>As a result, Solem said, a parcel of highly productive land planted with a
crop that uses little water could go dry, <BR>while a less-productive parcel
planted with a thirsty crop could get water because of the contract the land
owner <BR>holds.
<P>Complicating matters this year is the wait for word on which landowners will
be included in the Bureau's water <BR>bank, a program designed to boost flows
down the Klamath River for threatened coho salmon, Solem said. The <BR>bank, in
its third year, is made up largely of water gained from letting fields lie
fallow, and from irrigators <BR>switching to well water.
<P>"We don't know how many acres will be idled in our district," Solem said.
<P>Although the Klamath Irrigation District is one of the groups getting top
priority for Project water, Solem said its <BR>officials will need to be part of
the planning process because it supplies many of the smaller districts in the
Project.
<P>"The bottom line is we have to devise a system to get as many acres their
water to the end (of irrigation season) - <BR>that's the goal," Solem said.
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