Monday, June 25, 2001

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPOKANE -- It's been a cold, wet spring.

Boat launches are open all over Eastern Washington; there are no restrictions against watering lawns or washing cars.

So is there really a drought?

Yes, experts say, but the effects won't kick in until temperatures kick upward.

"We feel less impacted by the drought than we anticipated," acknowledged Mary Getchell of the state Department of Ecology.

"But we are just entering our hottest and driest months."

The fact that city residents haven't faced any water restrictions is frustrating to Rick Derrey, who grows cherries, apples and pears near Zillah in the Yakima Valley.

He's going to get only 30 percent of his normal water supply from the hard-hit Roza Irrigation District this year.

"Water is our livelihood, yet we are the ones that get water taken away," Derrey said. "I would love to see everyone get just 30 percent of their water, just to see what that really is."

Gov. Gary Locke declared a drought emergency on March 14, and the water situation has not substantially changed. The Columbia River is flowing at only about 53 percent of normal.

"That's the second lowest-level ever recorded at the Columbia," Getchell said, passed only by the 51 percent of normal in the drought of 1977, the worst on record.

But thanks to the early melting of the mountain snowpack, and the cool spring, there is enough water in the Columbia now to allow most irrigators to continue taking water from the river for the next few weeks, while leaving enough for fish survival, said Doug McChesney, drought coordinator for the agency.

The biggest losers in the drought are expected to be farmers who operate irrigated orchards in Central Washington's fruit bowl. If their trees die from lack of water, it will be years before replacement trees start bearing fruit.

Derrey is letting some of his land go fallow this summer so he can put more water on fruit trees he plans to harvest.

He has also bought some extra water from neighbors, and is pooling water with another neighbor so at least they have enough irrigation water to operate the pumps.

"It's been cool," Derrey said. "Now we're in the beginning of the hot weather."

The wet spring brought no real drought relief.

The little mountain snowpack produced this winter nearly all melted off about a month earlier than normal, Getchell said.

That means water levels have already likely peaked and will be dropping off the rest of the year.

In the past, the snowpack was a sort of water savings account, gradually melting off to keep river levels high for a longer period of time.

"That's our money in the bank when we get into summertime," said John Clemens of the U.S. Geological Survey. He also expected conditions to worsen considerably.

"It doesn't appear that hydrologic conditions have improved," Clemens said. "Just the opposite."

While recent weather may have been gloomy and overcast in much of the state, the actual amount of rainfall was lower than normal, Clemens said.

"Unless we get a lot of rain in the next several months, and that is atypical, we are stuck with the amount of water we have now," Getchell said.

The June 1 water supply forecast from the state showed the Chelan River was at 59 percent of average; the Cowlitz River at Mayfield Reservoir, 72 percent; the Okanogan River, 47 percent; the Skagit River, 67 percent; the Snake River at Lower Granite Reservoir, 60 percent; the Wenatchee River, 59 percent; and the Yakima River, 57 percent.

Despite the low water, the National Park Service last week announced that the water level behind Grand Coulee Dam reached normal levels two weeks earlier than normal.

Lake Roosevelt, as the reservoir is known, reached an elevation of 1,280 feet above sea level, which was enough to open most of the boat launches on the lake.

But the lake level is expected to drop to elevation 1,278 feet by the end of August, the Park Service said. Normally the lake would not be dropped below elevation 1,280 all summer.

Fish are also suffering from the drought.

Near-record low flows in the mid-Columbia River have been deadly for upriver brights, one of the region's last healthy runs of chinook salmon.

The brights, which are fall chinook, died at seven times the normal rate during the first five weeks of their migration, which ended April 29.

More than 700,000 juveniles, headed for the Pacific Ocean, were left stranded on the beach and cooking in the sun.

Already this year, upper Columbia chinook and steelhead, both listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, have been delayed in their migration to the sea. They are languishing in reservoirs upriver because of low flows.

Delay can kill young salmon by making them more susceptible to disease and predators in reservoirs.

State regulators are on the lookout for water theft.

Operators of a Prosser farm were recently ordered to stop watering 140 acres of alfalfa and fruit trees after the state suspected they were taking water they were not entitled to from the Yakima River.

The state Department of Ecology ordered A/B Hop Farms Inc. to shut off an unauthorized pump.

"This was the only operation we found that was irrigating with an unauthorized use of water," Getchell said.

The company, which faces stiff fines, plans to appeal the finding.

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