Early Melt for NW & New Water

Early Melt for NW & New Water

Early Melt for NW & New Water. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

This has been a bad year for snowpack all around. There has been very little in the first place and now that is melting earlier than usual according to data from the NRCS. Across the west the peak snowpack time came earlier than the usual April 1st date. Early melting will have consequences later in the season with reduced stream flows for late spring and summer. Snowpack accounts for the majority of the wests seasonal water supply and that's why California issued their cutback as well as Oregon and Washington declaring drought conditions in a number of counties.

The first new water supplies since 2005 in the Columbia Basin Project for groundwater replacement have been made available through action taken by the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District Board of Directors. League Executive Director, Vicky Scharlau explains.

SCHARLAU: These first water service contracts is part of the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program and it was designed to address the depletion of the Odessa Aquifer to permit enough replacement water to serve over 87,000 acres of land in the end. This is just the beginning with 18,000 acres of land and up to this point, landowners had access only to groundwater because full development of the Columbia Basin Project had not yet reached them and in the interim years, the Department of Ecology allowed landowners to dig wells. Unfortunately this particular aquifer that the wells went into is a non-recharge aquifer.

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

Previous ReportFood Safety & Predicting the Fire Season
Next ReportQuestioning Numbers & Pedal to the Metal