TID sets 18-inch cap on water

The board of the Turlock Irrigation District voted Tuesday to cap water deliveries at about 40 percent of what farmers can get in years with ample supplies.

Two board members, concerned that the Don Pedro Reservoir supply might run out next year, urged an even tighter limit.

The 3-2 vote set the cap at 18 inches, but farmers can go up to 20 to complete their final irrigation. That is better than the 12 to 16 inches that had been discussed earlier this year, but far from the 48 available in average or wet years.

Those few inches matter, farmers told the board before the vote.

“For the guys who don’t have (groundwater) pumps, it’s a huge, huge deal,” said David Graham, who does have that supplement for his nut and feed crops along Carpenter Road.

TID and the neighboring Modesto Irrigation District are dealing with a fourth straight year of drought. MID projects just 16 inches for its farmers this year.

The snowpack in the districts’ Tuolumne River watershed was at just 3.8 percent of average for the end of March, said Tou Her, assistant general manager for water resources at TID.

Some of the lost surface water will be made up with increased pumping of district-owned and farmers’ wells. Her said monitoring of wells shows the aquifer has remained stable over the past year, thanks in part to San Joaquin Valley rain that was much closer to average than the Sierra Nevada snow was.

Some growers will reduce or skip annual crops this year so more water can go to almonds and other permanent plantings. Dairy farmers, however, will face a challenge in getting enough feed for their cows.

Graham said he might forgo a corn crop this year so he can put more water on his almond, walnut and pecan trees.

Mike Seward, an almond grower near Hilmar, said the river water is needed to dilute groundwater that can be too salty for his crop.

Board members Joe Alamo, Michael Frantz and Ron Macedo voted for the 18-inch cap and 2-inch overrun. Rob Santos and Charles Fernandes urged a lower cap so Don Pedro has at least a small carryover for 2016.

“The way things are looking right now, it could be another dry year, and then we have nothing,” Fernandes said.

A staff report acknowledged that the approved cap, combined with continued dry weather, would leave zero water in Don Pedro for irrigation in 2016.

The reservoir held 892,980 acre-feet as of Tuesday, 44 percent of its capacity of 2.03 million acre-feet, but only some of that water is available to TID and MID. About 120,000 acre-feet has to be reserved to provide lower-river flows to benefit fish in 2016. And 309,000 acre-feet is the “dead pool” – water that sits below Don Pedro’s outlets.

Her noted one bright spot: San Francisco plans to release more water than expected from its Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System, upstream on the Tuolumne. That went into the recommendation for an 18-inch cap.

The district also will try to stretch the supply by allowing water transfers among farmers and monitoring the canals for unauthorized use.

TID’s irrigation season is scheduled to run from April 9 to Oct. 7 but could change with weather and crop needs. The start is a few weeks later than usual.

“This 18 inches, we’re going to barely squeak by,” said Mike Reed, who grows almonds north of Turlock. “We’re going to lose production, but we’re trying to keep our trees alive.”

This story was originally published March 31, 2015 at 10:56 PM with the headline "TID sets 18-inch cap on water."