WaterWired

The Pacific Northwest as a Water Farm: Gordon Grant Responds

My colleague Gordon Grant has requested space to respond to my earlier posts in which I cited his work on water development from the Cascades volcanics. His post will make more sense if you first read this previous post.

Feel free to leave a comment.

Note: if you click on Gordon's name above, you will be escorted to his group's (Watershed Processes Group) homepage, where you can download a couple of papers describing relevant WPG work: 1) the "Running Dry..." paper; and 2) the "Deep groundwater..." paper by Tague et al. 

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Mike:
I'm writing to you directly rather than posting to your blog because I wanted to respond off-record to your comments. But in the interests of broadening the discussion, as indicated below, I would appreciate it if you would condsider posting this as a reply rather than a comment, so that it is seen by others who read WaterWired.

First, thanks for bringing the issue that appeared in your blog forward...it's one that, in my view, deserves discussion on a much broader front. But I have to confess that I really don't understand your point. My vision for the future is not about pipes, although given the way California is plumbed and the long legs of the fantasy of diverting the Columbia, that's not outside the realm of possibility either. Although I think the reporter gave some ideas a little more body English than I would have, starting with the title of the piece, I basically stand by the story.  

From your comments I get the sense that you interpreted this story as some sort of advocacy on my part for how California could solve its water problems by taking the Pacific Northwest's water. That is not at all my intent. By way of context, both this and the prior story that appeared in the Bend Bulletin came about because I was contacted by reporters after they heard or read of our work - I'm not out selling this to the newspapers. Instead, my comments were intended to focus attention on where water comes from now, and how those places are likely to become increasingly important in a climate-warmed and water-challenged future. The importance of the youngest parts of the Cascade volcanic arc as sources of deep groundwater and persistent summer streamflows, whether in N. CA (Pitt, Hat, and Fall Ck), So. OR (Klamath, Rogue) or the central Cascades (McKenzie, Willamette, Deschutes) seems clear to me and I disagree that it is premature to say this - the technical papers describing this (and not just our group's) are already in the refereed literature. The implications of this geography of water for long-term supply and demand are less clear, but I also maintain that now is the time to begin the discussion of what this geography of water means for the region - and it is IS a regional and not just a state issue. 

I am not suggesting that we give or sell water to California - for one thing there is currently no infrastructure that would allow this to happen, and the legal and water rights issues are huge. Moreover, I'm certainly not trying to be an alarmist ("the Californians are coming for our water!"). But as recent events both in the Southeast and Southwest US, southern Spain (see this week's NY Times) and many other places suggest, demand for water under conditions of scarcity is a serious social, political, and economic problem that is likely to only get worse in the future. I do believe that in a water-challenged world, water will come to people or people will come to water. I don't pretend to know which way things will go, but I do know if the climate changes, that question will need to be answered. That's not an advocacy position for mining the volcanic aquifer (as your previous post seemed to imply I was suggesting) or anything else - the implications for people, institutions, aquifers, and ecosystems are very complex and no one has sorted them out. The answer will be driven by economics, politics, and geography (not necessarily in that order) and constrained by laws, which are themselves changeable. The laws governing water rights and inter-state transfers are formidable, but not immutable - just imagine where the political center of gravity would be after 5+ years of serious drought in the Southwest. 

My point here is not to scare people with bogeymen, but to help people understand and appreciate the enormous value of water, particularly that coming from the wilderness areas and National Forest lands along the Cascade crest. We've been invoking that value for years, but it's mostly been promulgated as nice environmental rhetoric. I happen to think it's more than rhetoric, and possibly the best example we have of "ecosystem services". Helping people understand the value of high quality water resources that have largely been viewed as free for the taking is not going to be easy but I think you and I agree that it's an important goal.

I'm eager to continue this discussion, and open to the suggestion that this may come across as more alarmist that I intend - but I basically think the story is valid. And I think than an excellent role for IWW would be to help sponsor a colloquium where these ideas can be developed and exchanged. We've talked about this in the past, but perhaps with growing public interest and attention to these issues (i.e., Schwarzenegger just declared drought in California), we should move this forward.

Gordon

Will the Pacific Northwest Become a Water Farm?

Last week I received a call from one of our legislative liaisons who told me he would forward me an email inquiring about selling Oregon water in the international market. "Uh-huh," I thought. I received the email, in which the author, a prominent Oregonian, speculated that if Oregon could annually sell 1 MAF of its water, presumably taken from the mighty Columbia River, for the paltry sum of 1 cent per gallon, that would generate about $3.26B annually for Oregon's coffers.

For a state with limited financial resources, that's quite a sum.  Our legislative person asked if he could supply my name and email to the individual, and I said "Sure". Haven't heard anything yet.

I said to no one in particular, "Why sell our water on the international market? Just sell it to Las Vegas." But I also thought, "Oh boy, it's happening. It's coming back - the Pacific Northwest as 'water farm.' " As Yogi Berra reputedly said, "It's like deja-vu all over again."

Then yesterday, colleague Lisa Gaines sent me this article by Alex Breitler that appeared in the 1 June 2008 Stockton Record. The title was provocative: Northwest may hold secret to water woes. It detailed a California talk given by one of my colleagues, hydrologist Gordon Grant, about whom I posted last fall. It's his pitch that the ground water of the Pacific Northwest may supply the parched Californians and other Westerners as temperatures rise.

In the article below, the material in italics is from the article; the non-italicized material is mine. 

In a few days, most rivers and streams draining from the Sierra Nevada will have peaked for the season, channeling snowmelt from the granite-specked highlands to reservoirs, the ocean, your kitchen tap.

The melt came early this year. Just like last year.

Climate change threatens California's longtime reliance on the spiny Sierra for most of its water, experts agree.

And that, one scientist says, is likely to increase interest in a more reliable source: the porous lava flows of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington, which hide away enough water to cover California in a pool 3 inches deep.

So? Lake Tahoe holds enough water to cover California to a depth of 14 inches. Should we drain the lake?

As water supplies tighten in coming decades, the Northwest's groundwater surplus is likely to garner new attention from around the western United States, said Gordon Grant, a hydrologist for the U.S. Forest Service in Corvallis, Ore. Grant presented his research earlier this spring to fisheries experts gathered for a conference in Lodi.

"It is almost inevitable that the areas that store large quantities of groundwater will become increasingly looked at to provide water," Grant said.

As early as the mid-1960s there was talk in California of tapping the Pacific Northwest by diverting the Columbia River and pumping flows south through a massive system of canals, tunneling through mountain ranges on the way to Los Angeles..

The original proposal died in 1968, was resurrected in the early 1990s but ultimately was not politically viable. Even if it had been, officials at the time said, conserving water and allowing farmland to lie fallow would be far cheaper than building an extensive network of canals.

Yeah, I remember hearing my professors at the University of Arizona talk about this in the early 1970s. I also remember the NAWAPA project. More recently, I heard about the NARA project (see this post, too)

Today, California is occupied with figuring out how to convey water within its own boundaries, including whether to build a canal around the Delta to feed freshwater to other regions.

But climate change is looming.

The Cascades hold up to seven times more water underground than the range stores in its snowpack each year, Grant said. That's enough groundwater to fill Utah's Great Salt Lake.

Again - so?

Snowflakes melt and trickle into the ground, emerging perhaps several decades later in lush forested springs. For this reason, waterways there flow steadily even late into the summer.

On the other hand, snow drains off the rocky Sierra Nevada like water off a grocery store parking lot. Frank Gehrke, who coordinates measurements of California's snowpack each winter for the state Department of Water Resources, said there is some groundwater storage in parts of the range, but not nearly enough to cancel out the loss of snowpack as temperatures warm.

The Sierra are granitic, whereas the Cascades are volcanic (mostly basalt). In general, basalts possess far more permeability and storage than granitic rocks.

As a result, rivers and streams begin to dry up earlier in the summer.

California does benefit from groundwater toward the southern end of the Cascades, including spring-fed rivers that drain into the Sacramento River.

"At a minimum, the value of those rivers will only increase," Grant said.

Water may eventually become the most valuable product harvested from national forest lands, he said. This could mean changes in demographics - where people live and work.

"If you project forward into a climate-warm world, the places where water is available, particularly in the late summer, those places are going to be disproportionately attractive to human beings," Grant said.

Exactly how that's going to play out, he said, he doesn't know.

In the post last October, I gave my opinion of Dr. Grant's premise. It's premature to make such statements, given our lack of knowledge of the volcanic ground water systems in the Cascades. For one thing, it's more than just a matter of permeability and porosity. We need to know the large-scale storage properties, the recoverability of the ground water, and the effects of withdrawals on hydrologic systems and ecosystems.

It's tempting to say that there is a lot of available ground water beneath the Cascades, but we just don't know at this point.

“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.” – Mark Twain 

Snake-Columbia Basin Energy & Water Summit: Final Report

Last June  a number of organizations - Columbia Basin Trust, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Water Resources Research Institute (IWRRI), Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES), Institute for Water and Watersheds (IWW) - convened the Snake-Columbia Basin Energy and Water Summit in Boise, ID.

The Snake-Columbia basin encompasses two countries. It produces prodigious amounts of water; the basin area is about the same as the Colorado River basin's, yet the average annual flow, measured at the mouth of the Columbia, is almost 14 times greater.

The Summit was attended by about 90 people from both sides of the border, although most were from the USA. The format consisted of expert presentations to set the stage, then focus groups breakout sessions.

It's been a while in coming, but the Summit's report has finally hit the streets. You can download it at the bottom of this post.

The focus group reports form the core of the report and are designed to assist researchers, managers, planners, policy-makers, and other stakeholders address the water and energy challenges facing the basin.

Five focus groups, covering the following areas,  were constituted:

• Energy use and generation
• Water allocation & use
• Energy and water storage
• Environmental considerations
• Social, economic, political, and regulatory considerations

Download Snake-Columbia-Basin-report_final.pdf

[Disclosure notice: I was one of the organizers and financial supporters of the Summit.]

"A mistake not corrected is another mistake." -- Confucius

West Coast Chinook Salmon Season Curtailed

Well, the salmon fishing industry's worst nightmare was realized last Thursday, as the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) severely restricted commerical Pacific Coast chinook (king) salmon fishing. The council will allow fishing for 9,000 hatchery coho salmon off the central Oregon coast.

South of Cape Falcon in Oregon (just north of Manzanita on the accompanying map), there will be no chinook fishing. North of the cape and into Washington, chinook fishing will be restricted but not eliminated.

Read Eric Bailey's story in the 11 April 2008 Los Angeles Times.

Recently, the California and Oregon coastal fshery has yielded about 800,000 adult chinook salmon. In California, the commerical chinook salmon fishery is worth about $150M annually; in Oregon, about $40M.

The Sacramento River has been the major component in salmon production, but not this year. Reasons for decreased production range from increased diversion from the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system to changes in the upwelling patterns offshore.

Whatever the reasons, Bailey reports that the fishermen are resigned to the loss of income this season, but hope that the 2008 curtailment will "repair" the system and mean better years ahead.

You can download the PFMC press release below:

Download PFMC_FINAL_PressRel.pdf

Here is the New York Times story by Felicity Barringer.

Although the price of chinook salmon will rise, the slack will probably be taken up by Alaska king salmon, which is unaffected by the woes farther south.

"Repairing" the system will not be easy; it may not be possible, depending upon what one means by "repair". We certainly cannot "restore" the fishery; we've made too much of a mess of the natural system. I'm not real optimistic, but I'm not a fisheries biologist.

I have heard that the mighty Columbia River basin fishery produced about 20,000,000 adult salmon each year prior to the arrival of the European "invasive species" and the damming of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. This number is a crude estimate, since folks were not counting salmon in those days. But today's numbers are much lower, around 1,000,000 annually. Most of those fish are caught off the coast of Washington and Canada.   

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." -- John Muir

Irrigation Districts Going Underground

No, we're not talking about the "underground economy" or something similar, but  really going underground, all in the name of saving water, and perhaps, bringing back the salmon.

Kate Ramsayer wrote in the 25 March 2008  edition of the Bend Bulletin that irrigation districts in Central Oregon are replacing their open canals with pipe to save water.

Ramsayer describes the project currently underway in the Swalley Irrigation District (SID), which is costing $11 million, funded by private and public groups and the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB).

She writes:

The district decided to pipe the five miles through Bend because a consultant identified that as the area where most of the water was seeping out.

“That was where the worst water losses were,” said Jan Lee, the district’s general manager. “When subdivisions were built, they do blasting, and the basalt geology gets fractured even more.”

Piping those miles will save the district about a quarter of the water it diverts from the Deschutes, meaning better water quality and habitat for fish, Lee said.

Swalley would like to pipe most of its network of canals. But, according to Tod Heisler, executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy (DRC), only about 20 percent of the region’s canal system would have to be piped to provide the water savings that biologists say is needed to create a healthy environment for fish and other aquatic wildlife.

What Lee says about the geology is true. The relatively young basalts on the eastern side of the Cascades Range are generally quite permeable, so unlined canals leak like sieves. I've heard some claim a canal can lose as much as 50% of its flow to leakage.

But that leakage likely becomes ground water recharge and can support a riparian ecotone along the canal that also serves as wildlife habitat. And people also like to see flowing surface water. The aforementioned are some of the reasons people don't want to pipe the water.

I remember speaking with one irrigation district manager in the Bend area a few years ago. He had just convinced his disctrict's board and its patrons to undertake costly piping that would ultimately pipe all the canal flow. Some of the old-timers fought him - they simply wanted to see the water flowing in the ditches and weren't concerned with restoring the aquatic ecosystem and bringing the salmon back to the headwaters streams from which their water came.

In fact, the manager told me an interesting story. When he first took the job in the late 1980s, one of the senior irrigators took him around to show him the ditch system. When they got to the stream that supplied the irrigation water, the old guy pointed at the stream and sternly warned, "If that stream still has water in it come August, then you ain't done your job." Almost 20 years later, we stood on the banks of that same stream in August, and there were a few cfs (cubic feet per second) in the channel. The manager told me that they expected to see salmon here in a few years. 

I asked him how he convinced the district's board and patrons to spend the money to pipe the water. He said, "I told them we could fight this [the environmental flow requirements for the salmon] in court, which might take a few million dollars and years of litigation, after which we'd almost certainly lose. Or, we can go ahead now and do the right thing. So it's your call." They decided, some of them grudgingly, to forego the legal fight and just do it. He then told me of his oldest patron, a 78-year-old rancher, who gets out there and moves pipe and welds it and puts the younger guys to shame.

"I'd rather be upstream with a shovel and a ditch than downstream with a decree." -- Western USA water saying

Mt. Hood Glaciers and Summer Streamflow: Going, Going....Gone?

Seems like I post a lot about places other than my own Pacific Northwest. Not today.

Let's talk about Mt. Hood and its glaciers. Mt. Hood is to Portland what Mt. Rainier is to Seattle (although Mt. Hood is not as impressive). 

My OSU colleague Dr. Anne Nolin has been studying Mt. Hood's glaciers and their contributions to streamflow. Yesterday her work and that of her graduate student Jeff Phillippe were featured on the front page of The Oregonian. Michael Milstein's article reported on an-SRO presentation she made to the Hood River Watershed Group (HRWG) last month. The Hood River area, just about an hour's drive east of Portland on I-84, on is a renowned fruit-producing region. They depend upon the flows derived from Mt. hood.

Let me show you why Anne is studying the glaciers and why some people are concerned; the subsequent pictures will illustrate the reasons for concern.

Below is a diagram of what things looked like in 1989. Then you'll see photos of how things have changed over time.

Let's now look at one glacier - Coe Glacier. The meltwater derived from the headwaters drainage supplies about 90% of the August streamflow in Coe Creek.

Here's Ladd Glacier.

Finally, here is White River Glacier - on Mt. Hood's southern flank.

Not very pretty sights, and even less so if you depend upon meltwater to get you through the summer growing season.

Anne's and Jeff's  research shows that in late summer, almost 75% of the flow in the Upper Middle Fork of the Hood River is derived from glaciers and permanent snow and ice fields.

From the story:

They are the first to measure how much of the mountain's runoff comes from glaciers that are melting at an accelerating pace. They looked specifically at the late summer months, when other water sources such as seasonal snowmelt dry up or grow scarce.

The results hint at how heavily communities, farms and economies around Mount Hood depend on snow and ice for their water. That carries extra significance because the glaciers are shrinking, and snowfall is changing to rain as the climate warms, studies have found.

Although rapid melting of the glaciers could release extra water in the near term, the glaciers eventually may retreat to higher, cooler and, in the case of north-facing Eliot Glacier, shadier reaches of the mountain, where their melting would slow, Nolin said.

That could leave even less water in the creeks below during the driest time of the year -- when growers of the valley's fruit crops need water the most.

Eliot Glacier -- the mountain's largest -- supplies more than 85 percent of the August water in Eliot Creek, which flows from the glacier and provides an important water source for a local irrigation district.

So things don't look good. Not only are the glaciers shrinking, but they are melting earlier, which will ultimately wreak havoc with ecosystems, water supply and storage (more summer storage might be needed), and water quality (flow to dilute our waste). Why are our glaciers more susceptible to global warming? The story explains why:

Northwest glaciers sit at lower elevations and in a milder climate than many others, and they depend on heavy snows to sustain them. But more of that snow is falling as rain instead, and small changes in temperature can speed melting.

What can we expect? I broached it on 4 January 2008.

Oh yeah - as if we haven't received enough bad news, the melting glaciers may lead to larger mud and debris flows. Anne and her team are studying that possibility as well.

"The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will escape." -- Unknown

Klamath Basin: Serenity Now, or Later?

A group of Klamath Basin stakeholders - government agencies, irrigators, Indian tribes, fishermen, and environmental groups - announced on 15 January 2008 an historic accord that they hope will restore the Klamath fishery while providing enough water to farmers. One of the key components of the agreement is the removal of four PacifiCorp dams on the lower Klamath River.

Here are links to stories from the Los Angeles Times (the accompanying map is from the story) and the Oregonian.

I also recently posted items about the Klamath situation: the NRC Committee report and related news stories. [Disclosure notice: I am a member of the NRC committee.]

Here you can download the agreement's press release and summary.

Download pr_proposed_klamath_basin_restoration_agreement_011508.pdf

Download summary_klamath_restoration_agreement_11508.pdf 

The entire agreement can be downloaded here.

There are several items worth noting about the agreement:

• it will cost about $1B over 10 years, presumably from Oregon, California, and the Federal government (Congress), none of whom has committed funds;
• it hinges upon the removal of PacifiCorp's four dams, yet the company was excluded from the negotiations and has not signed on; and
• it excludes the Trinity River watershed above its confluence with the Klamath River.

Some of the $1B will be used to create a water bank and to retire water rights, which can then be dedicated to environmental flows.

The parties to the agreement feel that PacifiCorp will sign on, since the relicensing of its four dams will likely require the installation of fish ladders at a cost of $300M or so, an amount that would probably exceed the cost of the dams' removal.

So what's important about this agreement? The fact that a diverse group of stakeholders agreed on a plan of action. The groups who did not acquiesce were the Hoopa Valley Tribe, Oregon Wild, and WaterWatch. 

Even if PacifiCorp agrees to take down the dams, will the implementation of the agreement produce restoration? I don't know; I have not read the entire 256-page agreement. But in the few documents I read, I did not see the essential elements I view as critical (these are from the NRC report, of which I was a co-author):

• a formal science plan for the Klamath Basin that defines research activities, their interconnections, and how they relate to management and policy;
• an independent science review and management mechanism;
• a whole-basin perspective - something that has not been done in all the years of study and tens of millions of dollars spent;
• a transparent data and analysis process; and
• an adaptive management approach.

The proposed Klamath Basin Coordinating Council (KBCC), the Techncal Advisory Team (TAT) and the Upper Basin Team (UBT) may fulfill the roles described in the second bullet. But unless the bulleted items are implemented, I fear the Klamath River Basin is doomed to the status quo.

"Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." -- Bob Seger, 'Against the Wind'

Klamath Fish Need More Water: News Articles

The first story is from the Associated Press and appeared in the Portland Oregonian on 28 November 2007. After that, there is a Sacramento Bee story from 29 November 2007. [Disclosure notice: I am one of the co-authors of the report.]
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Report: Klamath fish need more water
By William McCall

The Associated Press                  
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Conservation groups seeking removal of four aging Klamath River dams near the California border welcomed a report Wednesday by the National Research Council confirming studies indicating that salmon and other fish need more water.

"This report is a major victory for salmon, commercial fishermen, Native Americans, and everyone else who cares about the health of the Klamath River," said Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild, based in Portland.

The report comes as federal agencies prepare a new evaluation of salmon and endangered stocks of the Klamath fish known as suckers, as interest groups try to negotiate a settlement of water issues, and as federal regulators decide the fate of the four dams on the river, which runs through Southern Oregon and Northern California.

The battle over water management in the high desert basin has pitted farmers and irrigators against Indian tribes, fishermen and environmental groups.

A leader of the National Research Council study said it agreed with recommendations from Utah State University researchers led by Thomas Hardy that more water would help increase salmon runs.

"That conclusion is based partly on — frankly — scientific judgment," said William Graf, a University of South Carolina geography professor and chairman of the committee of scientists who wrote the report released Wednesday. "But it's also based on more data that's become available in the last, say, two to four years."

The council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, reviewed two separate water studies on the Klamath River Basin.

One study was the Utah State study, on the lower part of the river. The other was by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, on the upper reach.

The council praised both studies but found flaws. It criticized the Bureau of Reclamation study for basing its water flow models of the upper Klamath on monthly averages instead of daily flows, and elimination of Klamath tributaries from the modeling.

The council praised the Utah study for its detailed measurements of stream beds and fish habitat simulation but found it suffered from the same flaws as the government study because it also lacked daily flow and tributary analysis.

Greg Addington of the Klamath Water Users Association, which represents farmers who irrigate in the basin, had jury duty Wednesday and did not get a chance to thoroughly examine the report. Addington, however, said he agrees with the council that the tributaries need to be part of the analysis. He said the report appears to emphasize the need for a watershed-wide approach to fish issues, and farmers agree with that.

"We know we're part of the system, but it's a big system," he said.

Cecil Lesley, chief of the water and lands division for the Bureau of Reclamation in Klamath Falls, said both studies will be considered by federal fish agencies in their evaluation of salmon and endangered Klamath sucker stocks, called a biological opinion, expected to be released next spring.

Pedery, however, and Glen Spain, Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, said the Bush administration tried to delay the Hardy report because it could represent the "best available science" requirement for completing the biological opinion.

"The science speaks for itself and confirms what we've all known — and that is fish need more water than they've gotten historically," Spain said.

The report was released while talks continue over whether to remove four dams from the lower Klamath owned by PacifiCorp, a Portland utility owned by a company that is controlled by billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has suggested the dams could remain in place if fish are transported around them, while other federal agencies have recommended construction of costly fish ladders.

Low water flows on the Klamath were partly blamed for dramatic cutbacks last year in commercial ocean salmon fishing.

Craig Tucker, spokesman for the Karuk Tribe of California, said Wednesday the talks on the fate of the dams may lead to a decision before the end of the year on what could become one of the largest dam removal projects in U.S. history.
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Courtesy Duckboy.

Report backs more water for Klamath
By David Whitney, the Sacramento Bee, 29 November 2007

WASHINGTON – A National Research Council report Wednesday supported more water being released down the Klamath River to protect salmon runs, siding with authors of a 2006 study that critics said the Bush administration tried to suppress.

Environmentalists hailed the report as "a major victory."

"The science that fish need water is becoming clearer than some people believe," said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

But the research council report also found fault with two recent Klamath River scientific studies, including the one from 2006, saying they examine in detail portions of the complex river system but miss the complete picture of why it's in such crisis.

"Science is being done in bits and pieces," said University of South Carolina geography professor William L. Graf, chairman of the 13-member review committee.

The Klamath, once the third most productive salmon river on the West Coast, in recent dry years has been a battleground over water and the Endangered Species Act, pitting farmers relying on irrigation in the upper basin in Southern Oregon against salmon fishermen enduring economic hardship because of disastrous runs.

In 2001, water to irrigators was cut to provide more for fish. The next year, with irrigation supplies restored, more than 30,000 adult salmon died after being infected by pathogens thriving in the warm, shallow lower river.

Since those divisive days, the two competing reports have been released – one by the federal Bureau of Reclamation in 2005 projecting what river flows might look like if upper basin irrigation wasn't a factor, and another in 2006 sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs looking at how much water should flow down the river to keep fish healthy.

The council report found fault with both studies but felt that the conclusions of the Indian Affairs-funded study conducted by Thomas Hardy of Utah State University should be adopted anyway.

"The recommended flow regimes offer improvements over existing monthly flows," the report said.

The flows proposed by Hardy, depending on precipitation levels and time of year, could amount to as much as twice the volume of water now being released from Iron Gate Dam, the lowest of the Klamath dams.

The new report by the research council, an arm of the National Academies of Science, is not likely to result in any immediate changes by the Bureau of Reclamation, which tried to downplay its significance. "There's nothing in here that provides compelling reasons to change our operations," said bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken in Sacramento.

The report's release comes as negotiations between fishermen, irrigators, environmentalists, Indian tribes and others to strike a deal on competing Klamath water demands are in their final stages. Separate talks also are occurring with Portland-based PacifCorp, owner of the hydroelectric dams, on knocking them down and reconnecting the river.

Spain said the research council's findings were certain to be factors in the ongoing negotiations and could influence biologists' findings this spring as the 2008 irrigation season opens.

The 172-page report raises some of the same concerns of critics of the settlement talks – that important tributaries of the Klamath, particularly the Scott and Shasta rivers in Northern California where irrigation withdrawals are heavy, are being ignored.

Graf said his research team was told that the tributaries were left out of government studies for "political reasons," adding, "It was not a decision a researcher interested in science would make."

But with three branches of the Interior Department handling competing interests on the Klamath – irrigation by Reclamation, Indian fishing by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and endangered species by the Fish and Wildlife Service – Graf said his team believes that what is needed is independent and comprehensive research free from politics.

According to Spain and others, the Hardy study itself nearly fell victim to politics and Reclamation's efforts to "kill it." Hardy didn't go that far but described a convoluted process that resulted in several years of delay.

Begun in 1998, Hardy released a draft in 2002 but was not permitted to finish it. He said in a telephone interview that he was told by Reclamation that it had provided data to him that it did not have permission to use. The agency then held up giving him the money to develop replacement data.

A dozen California House members sent a letter to Gale Norton, then the Interior secretary, in 2003 demanding the release of the money and completion of the report to avoid another "catastrophic fish kill."

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who led the effort to complete the Hardy report, cheered the NRC's support of it Wednesday. "This report is further confirmation that increased water flows are a crucial element to the restoration of threatened salmon," Thompson said in a statement.
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I thought for today's quote I'd use the following from the local Klamath Falls paper.

"Whether the measure used is the size of the salmon runs, the state of the Basin's water quality or the amount of water flowing in Klamath River Basin streams and rivers, the 20-year effort to restore the Klamath River and its fisheries has failed. Salmon runs now are at greater risk of extinction, fishing is more restricted and water quality is more degraded than when 'restoration' began in earnest 20 years ago..." -- Klamath Falls Herald and News, 9 November 2006.

Klamath River Basin Report Released 28 November 2007

The long-awaited National Research Council Committee's report Hydrology, Ecology, and Fishes of the Klamath River Basin was officially released today. You can order a pre-publication (uncorrected) copy, pre-order the final copy, or read it online for free by clicking here. [Disclosure notice: I am a member of the committee.]

In a nutshell, we said that science is being done in a fragmented fashion with no clear conceptual model. The tributaries must be considered (not done on the Instream Flow Study model). 

The news release and an Executive Summary can be downloaded below.

Download klamath_basin_report_news_release.htm

Download klamath_basin_exec_summary_28_nov2007.pdf

Enjoy!

"All models are wrong but some are useful." -- G.E.P. Box

Global Warming and Ground Water-Fed Streams of the High Cascades: Supplying Water for the West?

Colleague Patrick Griffiths, Water Resources Coordinator for the City of Bend (OR) sent me this article writen by Kate Ramsayer of the Bend Bulletin.

Her piece describes the work of Dr. Gordon Grant, a colleague who works for the U.S. Forest Service and is a courtesy professor at Oregon State University. Grant has long been intrigued with the "peculiar river", the Deschutes River of central Oregon, which rises in the High Casacades and flows north to the Columbia Rver.

The basin map is courtesy of the Deschutes River Conservancy (DRC).

Unlike the rivers flowing west off the Cascades, the Deschutes and some others flowing east off the Cascades are fed predominantly by ground water, not surface runoff.

Because of that, due primarily to the high permeability of the relatively young volcanic rocks comprising the High Cascades, the Deschutes is generally less prone to the vagaries of drought and climate change than its surface water-fed counterparts. Grant feels that fact may mean that the Deschutes' flow will better weather warmer climate.

He does have a valid point, but one thing that is important is the amount of storage in the aquifer feeding the Deschutes - the permeability is not the only important consideration. Also, the effects of a warmer climate will eventually affect the Deschutes - it just may take time, depending upon the ground water transit times in the aquifer, which are a function of the permeability and the active storage volume.

Grant makes a few provocative quotes. Consider this one:

“The Northwest and those parts of the volcanic arc that have these groundwater systems will be seen as having resources, and there will be water available even when other systems are dry. And the value of that is going to be almost incalculable.”

Even more so is this quote:

“Here we will have water, and the reality, I believe, is that in the future, the Northwest will be seen as a primary source of water for the entire West. Either water will come to people, or people will come to water, and that has huge implications for planning and management and anticipating growth.”

Interesting, but controversial, as the Deschutes is fully appropriated (see the article). Also, as a geochemist friend warned me, trying to extract more water from a basalt aquifer would likely lead to the precipitation of zeolite minerals in the open spaces, which would reduce the permeability.

Looks like the Law of Unintended Consequences is at work again.

Read the entire article here:

Download river_for_warmer_times_bulletinclimatechange2007.pdf 

Here is a longer, more technical article about Grant's work from the USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW):

Download scifi97.pdf

"Remember - life is just an eddy in the Second Law of Thermodynamics." -- Anonymous

Oregon DEQ's Dirty Little Secrets

The following is Oregonian columnist Steve Duin's continuation of the article about DEQ hydrogeologist Marcy Kirk's attempts to do her job in the face opposition from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality; click here to read my first post and Duin's 4 October 2007 column.

This column was published on 7 October 2007. The link is here; I have pasted the column below since the link will expire. [Disclosure notice: Marcy and her husband Steve Kirk are friends whom I have known for almost 25 years. Steve was my Master's student at the University of Nevada-Reno].

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The Dirty Little Secrets at Oregon DEQ

by Steve Duin, Oregonian, 7 October 2007

W hat I've learned -- and shared -- in the past six weeks is that the Department of Environmental Quality is one of the dirty little secrets of Oregon politics, a particularly brutal irony given the state's unreasonable pride in its environmental credentials.

Almost two-thirds of DEQ's funding comes from the industries it regulates, almost guaranteeing the agency's meek compliance when political -- or pollution -- conflicts arise. That timidity is just dandy with the Legislature, Republicans and Democrats alike, who willfully underfund the agency so that it is often powerless to enforce the law.

The governor, as usual, is no help.

If the calls I've received in recent weeks are any indication, most DEQ employees are incensed by the agency's impotence. "Almost everyone," hydrogeologist Marcy Kirk said, "is afraid to speak up."

Kirk, fortunately, is not.

As I reported Thursday, Kirk was twice removed from the DEQ team monitoring the hazardous waste landfills at Arlington, a site managed by Chemical Waste Management. While lobbying DEQ Director Stephanie Hallock to remove Kirk for a second time, Chem Waste said it had "communication" and "trust" issues with the whistle-blower.

Kirk understands why: "I enforced the regulations, most of which were federal. My decisions were too stringent. It would have cost them (Chem Waste) a lot of money."

Through an agency spokeswoman, Hallock refused further comment on DEQ's handling of a case. That's probably a wise move, given her testimony in the unfair labor practices' complaint that Kirk and her union filed against the agency.

Furious that there'd been a "meltdown" between her staff and a company that pumps almost $2 million annually into the DEQ budget, Hallock ordered her deputies to fix the problem. She never spoke to Kirk for her side of the story. Pressed nine months later by union lawyers, she could not name a single issue in the dispute between her field workers and Chem Waste's consultants.

Asked if the crucial work of monitoring the hazardous waste dump continued after Kirk and her team were removed, Hallock said, "As far as I know. I don't know. I mean, I really wasn't involved."

Ignorance is bliss. Once Chem Waste was mollified, apparently, the issue ceased to matter to the director of DEQ.

Kirk wasn't quite so fortunate. Oregon's Environmental Quality Commission, remember, had approved a new permit for the site when Chem Waste officials lobbied Hallock to end Kirk and her team's interference in their operation.

"DEQ plays to special interests, and Chem Waste is a special interest," Kirk said. "She (Hallock) doesn't have much respect for staff. Sacrificing a few staff is no big deal to her. They sacrificed not only staff members but the science that went into the decision."

In 232 pages of depositions over DEQ's dealings with Kirk, the precious science of environmental quality -- the groundwater readings, the leaks in the landfill liners, the safety of the Columbia aquifers -- barely rates a mention.

Is it any wonder, then, that 125 DEQ technicians have signed a union petition that argues "when Management actions suggest that the Agency values the good will of a regulated corporation more than the professional fulfillment of its employees or environmental protection, we are all harmed."

Oregon's Employment Relations Board, by the way, found in Kirk's favor last month, arguing the agency did not follow its guidelines in removing Kirk at Chem West's behest.

Oregon's Department of Justice is appealing that decision.

Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com http://blog.oregonlive.com/steveduin

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Note added on 17 October 2007: Stephanie Hallock, DEQ Director, announced yesterday that she will be retiring on 1 January 2008 instead of 1 May 2008. I guess she "wants to spend more time with her family" - actually, her husband and her dog.

"The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it." -- Laurence J. Peter

Wasting a True Believer at Oregon DEQ

[Disclosure notice: Marcy Kirk and her husband Steve (who also works for DEQ) are friends; I have known both for about 25 years, beginning with their student days at the University of Nevada-Reno. Steve was my Master's student.]

Steve Duin's column appeared in the 4 October 2007 issue of the Portland Oregonian. I have pasted it below in case the link expires.

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Wasting a True Believer at DEQ

Steve Duin, Oregonian, Thursday, October 04, 2007

Marcy Kirk has a passion for the land and the groundwaters that curl through its veins. I need to make that clear at the start because by the end of this tale, you might wonder if anyone else places much value on that, including Kirk's employers at Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality.

Kirk was in college when Love Canal was in the news, and it sparked her interest in how contaminants move through the ground beneath our feet. She had a master's degree in hydrogeology and 12 years' experience in the field when the DEQ hired her in 1999 to monitor the hazardous waste landfill at Arlington.

When Kirk arrived on site, she quickly realized the science of groundwater samples had changed dramatically since the last permit process and Chemical Waste Management was way behind the curve.

There were, Kirk said, 65 wells -- each 200-250 feet deep -- around the toxic landfills, which allowed Chem Waste to monitor if toxins were leaking into the underground aquifers. Kirk was soon questioning Chem Waste's sampling methods.

"They were purging the wells dry, which makes these volatile chemicals, the contaminants of concern, basically disappear," Kirk said. "When they would collect the samples, the results were lower."

What's more, Kirk added, at least 20 of the wells were defective and Chem Waste showed little interest in spending the huge sums necessary to repair or remove them.

Chem Waste, Kirk and other agency employees say, argued that Arlington was too remote to worry about any of this and that little if any toxins were leaking into the great Columbia Basalt aquifer. I'm forced to paraphrase that argument because no one representing Chem Waste would comment or return my calls.

While the company isn't talking to me, it was complaining to Kirk's bosses at the DEQ. Since 2000, Waste Management, Chem Waste's parent, has paid the DEQ just under $15 million in fees to operate the hazardous waste facility.

Those fees are vital to the DEQ's budget. They also give Chem Waste reason to believe they always have the ear of agency director Stephanie Hallock and DEQ management.

As early as 2002, according to the state's Employment Relations Board, Chem Waste managers were complaining about "communication" issues with Kirk and her "hidden agenda."

That was enough, apparently, for the agency to boot Kirk off the hydrogeology team in June 2003. Her union, AFSCME Local 3336, filed a grievance and, after 19 months of negotiations, DEQ management agreed Kirk could return to the new team charged with expediting the renewal of Chem Waste's hazardous waste permit.

Everyone agrees that process was contentious. Chem Waste grew increasingly frustrated with the demands made by the hydro team and the Environmental Protection Agency. After enlisting the DEQ's help in convincing the EPA to table its objections -- and after its permit was renewed -- Chem Waste attorney Don Haagensen met with Hallock in August 2006 to complain about "trust" issues with agency staff.

Haagensen "used to play on the DEQ basketball team," Hallock later testified, "and . . . we've always had a good working relationship."

Just how good? Without talking to her staff on that toxic ground in Arlington -- why "trust" input from them when she had Chem Waste's counsel? -- Hallock ordered her deputy to solve the problem.

Three weeks later, Kirk and the entire team were removed from the Chem Waste project. I'll return Sunday to explain just how much that decision reveals about the DEQ's priorities and its morale problems.

Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com       http://blog.oregonlive.com/steveduin

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Duin will continue this sorry saga on 7 October 2007. I'll post that one as well.

I used to think Oregon was progressive in managing and protecting its resources.  I'm not so sure any longer.

Note added on 17 October 2007: Stephanie Hallock, DEQ Director, announced yesterday that she will be retiring on 1 January 2008 instead of 1 May 2008. I guess she "wants to spend more time with her family" - actually, her husband and her dog.

"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

Conference: Washington-British Columbia Transboundary Water Issues

The Washington Section  of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) and the British Columbia section of the Canadian Water Resources Association (CWRA) are sponsoring a conference on Washington State and British Columbia: Transboundary Water Resource Issues, Seattle, WA, 4-5 October, 2007.

The Program is downloadable below:

Download wabc_2007_transboundary_program.pdf

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water." -- W.H. Auden

C-H-E! N-E-Y! Dick Cheney, The Science Guy!

Normally I post items about Dick Cheney on my personal blog. This time it's different, as the post relates to water.

The Vice President is now "dabbling" in science, specifically in the Klamath Basin of California-Oregon, the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, and air quality, to name a few.

The Washington Post has been running articles on the VP, who is unquestionably the most powerful VP we have ever had.

In spring 2001, Cheney called Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the 19th-ranking Department of the Interior official. He was int