Water Update Part 2

Water Update Part 2

Water Update Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

This last year’s Wanapum Dam issue caused a lot of issues for irrigators in Eastern Washington. Tracy Yount, Director of External Affairs with the Chelan Country PUD says there are about a hundred irrigation withdrawal points in Chelan, Douglas and Grant Counties with most on the Rock Island reservoir.

YOUNT: It really left a lot of the irrigation systems in different states, the straws were in the water at different levels and we thought well if they if they can reach this level and pull out the water that’s what the irrigators are going to need.

Yount says what they didn’t realize were some of the details.

YOUNT: We didn’t realize some of the seasonal, weekly and daily timing needs for irrigation and how they don’t necessarily match the power generation needs. We will adjust output of our hydros and there’ll be a corresponding pool elevation raise, well when there’s plenty of water in the system those fluctuations that happen on a regular basis don’t really matter..

He says this one event really emphasized the complexity of the river system.

YOUNT: We never saw parts of our facility that were de-watered. We never saw the river elevations like they were so it became regular for things to be operating as we expected. But once we adjusted any of those components, we adjusted to river operations, we started to learn more and more or relearn how interconnected and inter-dependent this system is. We also learned that it required a lot of stakeholder involvement.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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