YAKIMA — The reality of this year’s drought is unavoidable for farmers and orchardists in Central Washington.
Jim Willard, who grows grapes at Willard Farm near Prosser, had to make tough decisions at the start of the year, including which parts of the orchard not to water.
Willard’s orchard is within the Roza Irrigation District, and he is a member of the board. The Roza district shut down water deliveries for a rainy week in May to extend the season, and is anticipating it will shut down for the season on Oct. 14.
The Roza and Kittitas irrigation districts have junior water rights, which see water cutbacks when supplies are short. As of September, junior water rights holders are getting a 52% allotment in the Yakima basin.
The Kittitas Reclamation District turned off its water on Sept. 13, with no water available for further September and October deliveries. Urban Eberhart, Kittitas Reclamation District director, said the decisions hay farmers made to fallow fields in the Ellensburg area are noticeable.
“You can drive down the road and see” the fields left fallow because of the drought, he said.
Yakima Valley residents who experienced a summer of scorching temperatures and little precipitation likely will not be surprised by the statistics:
- July was the second warmest on record in Washington, with most of the state seeing precipitation that was less than 30% of normal that month. It was 4.1 degrees hotter than normal on average across the state in July, said Karin Bumbaco, deputy state climatologist.
- In the Yakima Basin, reservoir storage is the fifth lowest it’s been since 1971, according to the state Department of Ecology. The Keechelus reservoir, which looks like a pond from Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass right now, was 7% full as of Wednesday.
A drought declaration on April 16 covered the entire state except for the Seattle, Everett and Tacoma metro areas. It remains in effect, and is in the second year for much of the Yakima River basin. The drought order allows the state Department of Ecology to make loans or grants from emergency water supply funds.
Willard, who first moved to his farm with his parents in the 1950s, said two drought years back to back puts extra strain on growers.
“Dealing with both of them, it’s been a real challenge,” he said.
Willard has made many adaptations over the years to deal with fluctuating water supplies. In the 1990s, low water supplies prompted Willard Farms to focus on grapes, which require less water than apples.
In 2020, he cleared way to build a retention pond on his property, which helps provide consistent water deliveries. Piped canals, drip irrigation and micro sprinklers are also in his toolkit.
He is hopeful that the water situation will improve, but acknowledges it’s also in his nature to remain positive.
“In this business, you have to be optimistic or you’re not going to be in it long,” he said.
Water allotments
Yakima County’s apples, pears, cherries, hops and other crops depend on irrigation water from five reservoirs managed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — Kachess, Keechelus, Cle Elum, Bumping and Rimrock. Those reservoirs are fed by snowpack from the Cascade Mountains. Though the snowpack made some gains in the late winter and early spring, it was not enough to make up for a dry winter.
The Yakima basin has senior and junior water rights holders. Water shortages are shared equally by those with junior water rights.
This year’s allotment for junior rights holders has hovered around 50% for much of growing season: 47% in June down from 64% in April. It’s currently 52%. Junior water rights holders make up 58% of the total agricultural value of the Yakima Basin, which in 2022 was $3.65 billion.
Determining the impact
Hard data about farmland that was fallowed because of drought this year in Central Washington isn’t readily available.
The Washington State Department of Agriculture maps crop field data every three years, and the Roza and Kittitas irrigation districts are currently being mapped. However, a farmer might fallow a field for reasons unrelated to drought, such as regular crop rotation, Jaclyn Hancock, water resources scientist for the state Department of Agriculture said in an email.
The department estimates that when the water allotment is reduced by half in the Yakima Basin, there can be revenue losses between 18.1% and 30.4% and a loss of over 7,000 jobs. Specific data about agricultural employment in Yakima County this summer and fall won’t be released for several more months.
The 2015 drought caused an estimated total economic impact between $700 million to $1.2 billion across the state, according to the department.
State response
Emergency drought wells are one option for extra water.
Kelsey Collins, central region water trust coordinator for the state Department of Ecology, said the agency does not have an accurate number of the wells being used, as growers don’t need to reapply each drought year to use an older well. If a user doesn’t have an existing water right on the backup well, then a one-year use permit is needed and the water use needs to be mitigated.
The agency has seen a decline in the number of one-year use applications, she said.
“We were surprised how few requests we had to use those drought wells, because we know there are an awful lot of those drought wells,” Collins said.
There could be a few reasons for the reduction in applications, she said. Ecology officials have voiced concerns about certain declining aquifers, like the Wanapum and Upper Saddle Mountain in Central Washington. Year-over-year declines give Ecology pause to allow more wells.
“The recovery of the aquifer is of major concern to us,” Collins said. It’s a major reason why these permits are denied. Last year, five out of 12 applications were approved, down from 44 approved applications during the 2015 drought, she said.
One reason for the decline in applications could be that growers are aware of the status of their aquifers, Collins said. Or it could be related to work on the Yakima Basin integrated plan by a regional group that includes tribal governments, irrigators, cities and conservationists. They’ve been working to improve water supplies, emphasize conservation and protect habitat and fish.
With funding help, the irrigation districts have invested in projects to promote water conservation.
“It could be a factor that folks are getting more efficient and making business decisions such that they don’t have to have 100% of their water supply,” Collins said.
Emergency drought wells are not a long term solution, she said.
“The end goal is to no longer need to pump those wells,” Collins said.
Snowpack and funding
The state of the drought was discussed at a Joint Legislative Committee on Water Supply meeting on Tuesday.
The drought declaration is in place until April 2025, or until there are measurable signs that it has abated, so that drought relief grants and resources will still be available, said Caroline Mellor, Ecology’s statewide drought lead.
“If there is not that recovery, particularly in places like Yakima, in terms of the snowpack, then we would of course look at expanding that further,” Mellor said.
Mellor said that climate models predict that by 2050, snowpack drought will occur in Washington 40% of the time.
“We’re already seeing that frequency coming true,” Mellor said. There have been six drought declarations or extensions in Washington in the last 10 years.
Mellor said that HB 1138 in 2023 supported Ecology’s ability to respond to impacts by providing stable funding. The law provided that grants for drought-related projects no longer needed to be completed while a drought emergency was in effect and created an emergency drought response account in the state treasury.
It also expanded the circumstances in which the committee can meet.
Mellor said that the Roza Irrigation District may receive $1 million for water leases and efficiency projects, though the exact number is still being scoped out.
Sage Park, policy director for the district, said Roza has leased over 12,000 acre-feet of water this year. That’s over 3.9 million gallons.
Roza also received a one-time grant of $3.4 million from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for water leases.
“It helped us pay for the majority of that water,” Park said.
Park said the $3 million the Legislature sets aside annually for emergency drought funding is not enough.
“This year alone Roza has spent over $4 million,” Park said.
In 2015, there was $18 million in the Legislature in the biennium budget for drought, and over $5 million went to the Yakima Basin, she said.
Park also said that emergency drought response funding should be available before March, as leases with the senior rights Selah-Moxee District are contracted in April.
Next year’s forecast
Bumbaco, the state’s deputy climatologist, also gave an update to the committee.
The forecast for next year’s snowpack could be promising, in a large part to the likelihood of a La Niña climate pattern developing in the fall. La Niña occurs when strong trade winds push warm Pacific waters west toward Asia, causing an upwelling of cooler water along the North American coast. It brings cooler and wetter falls and winters to the Pacific Northwest, according to NOAA.
That could mean more snowpack in 2025, but it’s too early to say for sure.
“There is no reason to believe we will have very low snow,” Bumbaco said.
