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BPA's Buyback Efforts Focus on Irrigation Project by Mike Lee, Herald staff writer Tri-City Herald, March 7, 2001

The Bonneville Power Administration is working feverishly to finish a last-minute power buyback plan from Columbia Basin Project irrigators that could leave up to 75,000 acres fallow this summer.

Despite limited interest in BPA's earlier buyback plan through utilities, the agency is turning to one of the West's largest irrigation projects to ease the region's power and water crunch.

"Savings from this program could be significant," said a BPA paper issued last week. "Multiple savings ... make this extremely cost-effective for the region."

One tradeoff is uncertainty among farm goods and service providers, which fear sales of seed, fertilizer, fuel and equipment will shrivel if farmers idle large tracts of land.

"There is a critical mass you need to keep or ... the whole ag economy goes down," said state Agriculture Department Director Jim Jesernig, who is concerned the combined effect of farm-reduction programs in coming years will damage the state's infrastructure.

At present, however, the big need is for power.

By reducing irrigation diversions at Grand Coulee Dam, BPA could save a considerable amount of power used to pump irrigation water a few hundred feet up to Banks Lake, from which it flows through 670,000 acres of the Columbia Basin Project.

If that water stays in the Columbia River, it can turn turbines from Grand Coulee to Bonneville -- something the Northwest will need desperately this summer.

How much water BPA's plan leaves in the river depends on how many irrigators choose to forego planting in what could be the basin's largest crop buyout program since the early 1980s.

"Any programs that BPA has cannot impact landowners who are not in the program," said Shannon McDaniel, manager of the South Columbia Basin Irrigation District.

Participation will be up to individual growers with irrigation district ditch riders monitoring for compliance. If the basin buyback floats, irrigators would have to enroll quickly to participate, given the start of irrigation season next week in some farm blocks.

"It's almost getting too late," said Dick Erickson, manager of the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District. "Guys are having to make irreversible planting decisions daily right now."

Basin districts, which have been discussing buyout ideas for a month, hope to get a first look at BPA's proposed buyout rate at board meetings today and Thursday.

There's considerable anticipation among irrigators -- though that was quelled a bit last week when BPA's offer to buy power through utility districts was at a much lower rate than many farmers expected.

"There is interest in that because of where the farm commodity prices are right now," Erickson said.

The irrigation district plan is likely to offer a per-acre price instead of the megawatt-hour price offered to utilities last week. Everyone seems to agree the big question for irrigators is how much BPA will offer.

"Rough drafts ... are being fine-tuned as we speak, as is the issue of Bonneville attempting to determine a price," BPA official Ron Rodewald said Monday. He said the complex agreement must work for growers, irrigation districts, the Bureau of Reclamation and BPA.

And, McDaniel said, it must work for Seattle, Tacoma and Grant County utilities, which buy power produced by irrigation water as it drains through the Basin project.

"It's a difficult balancing act," said Rodewald, noting his intent to craft a program that can be used in future drought years to avoid what has become a hectic push to beat irrigation season. "I am optimistic that by midweek ... I'll be able to talk in a lot more detail."

There are other issues, however, including the secondary impacts of idling farmland, which is why there's already a cap of 75,000 acres on the infant program, Erickson said.

At the Wilbur Ellis fertilizer company in Warden, area manager Lynn Pittman is watching closely as farmers make decisions and hoping fallow land is dotted throughout the Basin.

"If it's a pretty localized buyout, its going to be devastating for everyone who feeds from the same trough, and there's an awful lot of us," he said.

With the exception of farmers who participate in a buyout plan, Basin districts are expecting to get their full water supply despite drought conditions. Districts, however, will have to do some juggling to get water where they need it given low levels of Lake Roosevelt behind Grand Coulee Dam.

The average annual volume of water diverted from the Columbia by the Basin project is 2.4 million acre-feet, or about of 3 percent of the flow at Grand Coulee.

"We are anticipating irrigation diversions in what our normal range would be," McDaniel said. "Those quantities will likely be met, and so it looks as good as it can get" in a drought year.