Talking Water
Talking Water. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.
During this years opening day of the Washington State Tree Fruit Associations annual meeting and trade show Maia Bellon, State Director of Ecology took some time to talk with attendees about water issues.
BELLON: We know the saying "a canary in the coal mine" for trying to understand what it's like being down in the depths of a mine, well, to me our orchards and the fruit they bear is a canary in a coal mine when it comes to dealing with the impacts you just heard about earlier today in terms of our extreme weather events when we have a lack of water, when we have the warmest months in years on record that reflects directly in the work that you do everyday.
Bellon said that she and her staff tried to help find relief for some drought stricken producers.
BELLON: We called the first level of drought in the state in 2015 in March but my inclination was that we were going to have a problem sooner than even our March forecast and I drew up a request for budget funds from the legislature to provide emergency drought relief and made that request to the Office of Financial Management in February.
She says that as this next season gets underway they are already making contingency plans.
BELLON: The good news is in looking forward to potential drought for 2016 is we asked for $16-million dollars. We've spent a little less than half of that and we have that money waiting in an account for being able to do drought response for this next year.
That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.
