Mitchell Brown, a relief ditch-rider with Klamath
Irrigation District, navigates the canal banks with his
pickup Friday morning, parking the vehicle before
turning on irrigation water for a customer who had
ordered water.
Water orders have been trickling in to the district
since irrigation water delivery officially began Friday,
and calls are anticipated to ramp up as the water does,
with ditch-riders like Brown there to deliver the water.
With some back and forth at the district, including an
announcement earlier in the month that water would be
turned on and then the inability to do so, Brown said
there had been multiple customers who had phoned in
their water orders that couldn’t be fulfilled.
“We’ve had water for the last month, just not very
much,” Brown said.
June 1 deliveries underway
Water delivery has been underway since May, though a
full allocation had not been official until June 1.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath Basin Area Office
said that there is roughly 55,000 to 56,000 acre feet
available to the Klamath Project during June, with a
total of about 195,000 to 200,000 acre feet anticipated
for the summer irrigation season.
That amount, projected from the National Resources
Conservation Service’ May forecast, could change
slightly due to forecasts set to be released this week,
along with an operations and drought plans, Reclamation
officials said.
“Usually at the beginning of the official water season
allocation, we have an operations plan,” said Laura
Williams, BOR public affairs officer.
“We are going to wait until we have NRCS’ June 1
forecast, before we make up and distribute the official
water operations so that won’t be till later (this)
week,” Williams added.
Meanwhile, Tyler Martin, watermaster for KID, expressed
his excitement for the start of water delivery.
“May was a rough month with limited deliveries and we’re
just excited to be able to align supply with demand,”
Martin said. “We’re diverting a little bit more than we
were Thursday by about 25 cubic feet per second.
Scott White, executive director of the Klamath Water
Users Association, believes demand for irrigation water
will largely be met for June.
“I
guess we can thank God today … water is now flowing,”
White said. “We don’t know what the remainder of the
growing season is going to hold,” he added.
A
drought and operations plan are in progress and are set
to be released by the Bureau of Reclamation as early as
Tuesday, which will provide a more exact water
allocation amounts for the Klamath Project.
“We’ll trying to work with them to make sure those
numbers are right, and consistent with the biological
opinion,” White said. (The biological opinion guides the
amount of water needed downstream to protect endangered
fish vs. water allocated to the irrigators).
“We’ll see what comes out in this operations plan,” he
added. “That should answer some questions. It also may
present some questions, too.”
Emergency funds available
White anticipates rolling out information as early as
Tuesday about how to apply for a portion of $10.3
million in federal aid being made available for
irrigators affected by drought.
“We have a program, we’re ready to get rolling on that
program,” White said. “We just need confirmation that
the money’s going to flow once we get that.”
White said irrigators should “stay tuned” for more
information about how to apply for federal aid related
to the drought.
“Very soon we’re going to have a phone number for people
to call and start getting people signed up,” White said.
