Water Issues

The northwest was fortunate to have received a bit of moisture over the weekend as a result of that massive "Pineapple Express" system that hit Northern California really hard. But still water is a concern here for growers and while irrigation is plentiful there are always issues like this last years crack in the Wanapum Dam. Tracy Yount, Director of External Affairs with the Chelan County PUD recently talked about the impact of the dam's crack.

YOUNT: When I think of the Columbia River I think of a system not just a river system but I think of a lot of industry that relies on the Columbia River. When we deal with relicensing or we work on people's interests we have to think about a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Not only do we have the power generation at Rock Island that we ended up having to curtail but then we actually had to stop production which was the first time that Rock Island had been shut down since we built the power houses.

One major discovery was of cultural resource sites were uncovered during the drawdown.

YOUNT: Then we also had fish, the juvenile migrants that are heading downstream to the ocean and the adults that are heading up. We have all of our fish programs and infrastructure essentially set up for normal river operations and when you're outside of those river operations and those elevations, the infrastructure we put into place, the ladders and the fish bypass - they weren't working. The fish couldn't get to them.

More on this tomorrow.

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