By Conrad Swanson
The Seattle Times’ Climate Lab explores the effects of climate change in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The project is funded in part by the Bullitt Foundation, CO2 Foundation, Jim and Birte Falconer, Mike and Becky Hughes, Henry M. Jackson Foundation, Martin-Fabert Foundation, Craig McKibben and Sarah Merner, Mary Snapp and Spencer Frazer, University of Washington, Walker Family Foundation and Kristi and Tom Weir, and its fiscal sponsor is Seattle Foundation. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over all its coverage.
ZILLAH, Yakima County — Perhaps it’s a sign of how serious Washington’s drought problem has become when farmers begin to say they’re pleasantly surprised to receive just over half their typical water supply.
This spring, irrigation districts braced for dire conditions, coming fresh off a year that gave them 40% of their normal water supply. Farmers curtailed water use early in the season, fallowed land, changed crops. The strategy, plus a little luck, meant this summer’s drought, Washington’s fourth in as many years, wasn’t quite as bad as they expected. Still, it hit hard.
Wildfires, fed by the lack of water, swept through the state this summer, destroying hundreds of homes. Cropland has been strained. Reservoirs and rivers sit well below normal levels. No two droughts are alike, this summer has shown. Even with the best technology and efficiency measures, they’re unpredictable and their compounded damage will continue to wreak havoc.
The pace is unsustainable, said fourth generation Yakima River basin farmer Tanner Winckler.
“If this is the new normal,” he said. “That’s going to be a big problem.”
Climatologists warn the trend will not only continue but it’s likely to pick up steam. Washington will be able to expect a snowpack drought — producing less than three-quarters of the state’s typical water supply — about seven years out of every decade, said deputy state climatologist Karin Bumbaco, according to new modeling this year.
[Image: Map of Washington showing drought conditions. Source: drought.gov (Map by Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)]
Water shortages are plaguing the entire American West, and cities the world around are at risk. No one person, state or country has quite figured out how to solve the problem.
There may be a glimmer of hope in the immediate future with recent late-summer rains, Bumbaco said. But Washington has more warm and dry weather in its forecast.
And the upcoming winter months, when the state needs as much snow as it can get, remain something of a mystery.
The Yakima River basin
Even though he’s wearing sunglasses, you could still see Winckler squinting in the late-morning light. The temperature climbed into the 90s and he had plenty of work left.
In the past six or eight months, more people have offered Winckler their land to rent or buy than ever before. Crop prices are low. Farmers in the Yakima River basin are leaving the business. Not many can afford it any more, he said. Not after four years of severe drought and a haywire market for crops, fertilizer, diesel, labor and more.
Winckler’s one of the lucky ones, he’ll acknowledge. Their family owns most of their land, a little over 400 acres. They carry low debt and have the flexibility to shift their crops — alfalfa, wheat and corn — to suit the expected water supply. Their cows, a few dozen Hereford and Angus crosses, are a fairly hardy bunch as well. Their tails swish and flick away flies in the background.
Winckler said their operation boasts a sort of bespoke customer base and can sell some of their crops directly to customers, a luxury many don’t have.
On this hot Wednesday in late August, Winckler loaded big bales of teff, a specialized low-sugar and low-carbohydrate hay, onto the truck bed of Bruce and Gigi Hiebert, who drove all the way out from their plot in Covington. They started buying Winckler’s teff a few years back because it suited one of their diabetic horses.
Even with all Winckler’s advantages, he said margins are thin. And others aren’t so lucky. He’s seen farmers rip out hundreds of acres of orchards. Dead apple or cherry trees can be seen stacked in neat piles across the region. They’ve fallowed even more land.
This is Washington’s fruit basket, home to some of the state’s most fertile land, if only its people have the water to farm it.
Without that water, production drops and the prices of land follow. Those who have debt leveraged against their property could lose it all, Winckler said.
“It could be a house of cards that comes crashing down,” he said, shaking his head.
Roza
Not only is Winckler a farmer but he also sits on the board of the Roza Irrigation District, one of the Yakima River basin’s most water-challenged collection of farmers, covering some 72,000 acres, or about one and a third the size of Seattle’s footprint.
State officials tend to cut off water supply for junior irrigation districts like Roza early in drought years so those with more senior rights to the resource can still receive their fullest allotments.
This year, Roza’s expecting to see about 58% of their normal water supply, district manager Scott Revell said. That’s better than last year’s 40% but still well below a sustainable level, he said. The hope is that the district’s farmers have enough water to continue irrigating until the end of the month. Last year they made it until Sept. 24, well below the end of the growing season.
Revell drives through the district often, scoping out farms, drip irrigation, dead or dying fields, sizing up this year’s crop against years past. He’ll mutter or declare at varying intervals.
“That looks like crap.”
“Leaves look a little flouncy.”
“I think he went under.”
Revell wants to spread word of the challenges his district is facing. Farmers throughout have installed as many efficiency measures as possible but this isn’t a problem that can be solved just by efficiency, he’s quick to note. Roza holds some $1.3 billion in agricultural value and the district fallowed more than twice as much land this year as it did during the severe drought of 2015, his data shows.
Farmers can plant different crops but that takes money. Orchards cost thousands of dollars per acre and can take years before they produce a crop. Major shifts like that to counteract water shortages or market forces are going to be difficult to swing, Revell said.
“What can we plant quickly, harvest quickly and make a ton of money on?” Revell said. “That unicorn crop, I’m not sure exists.”
What the basin really needs is more storage, Winckler said. Enough to fill another body of water about the size of Cle Elum Reservoir.
Washington’s precipitation is increasingly falling as rain rather than snow, meaning it can’t all be captured because the state’s reservoirs aren’t large or numerous enough.
Several new, smaller storage projects have already been proposed but those are years off if they happen at all.
“I’m 35,” Winckler said. “If I see any new storage built in my lifetime I’ll be shocked.”
The big picture
This drought isn’t limited to the Yakima River basin. Almost the entire state is considered abnormally dry by the U.S. Drought Monitor. More than 71% of Washington’s land area is in “moderate” drought and another 25% is experiencing “severe” drought or worse.
The ripples of four years of drought can be felt through wildfires, crop damage, poor salmon runs, outright water shortage or even higher electric rates.
Utilities serving larger communities such as Seattle, Everett and Tacoma have so far avoided the worst, said Caroline Mellor, a statewide drought lead with Washington’s Department of Ecology. But smaller utilities have less wherewithal in the short and long runs.
One utility district in Clallam County was forced to truck potable water in from elsewhere, Mellor noted. That’s a phenomenon that has repeated several times in recent droughts.
Take solace in the brief spat of rain falling on Seattle this week, said Bumbaco, the state climatologist. Perhaps a bit more will fall through the rest of the month. But in the long run, the national Climate Prediction Center forecasts higher-than-normal temperatures for the entire state through November and mostly below-normal precipitation.
And with a so-called “ super El Niño” on the way, chances are high that this winter is likely to be warmer too. That’s bad news for a state that desperately needs as much snowpack as it can get. But, Bumbaco said, there are a rare few examples of El Niño years that brought with them plenty of snow. Really it’s too early to say how things will shake out, she said.
Conrad Swanson: 206-464-3805 or cswanson@seattletimes.com. Conrad Swanson is a climate reporter at The Seattle Times whose work focuses on climate change and its intersections with environmental and political issues.
