Burnt River Watershed receives $864,900 grant

A total allocation of $58 million for 63 projects nationwide was announced last week by Dave White, chief of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

She said the Burnt River project is one of eight in Oregon that will get federal money.

“It’s all about helping farmers and ranchers implement agricultural water enhancement activities,” Owens said.

The money is intended to help landowners address environmental concerns such as the elevated water temperatures in the Burnt River.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Baker City office is administering the Burnt River grant, and is also taking applications until Sept. 30 for projects to be designed and completed during the 2010 federal fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

She said 14 applications have been submitted to the NRCS office in Baker City, and more are expected before the Sept. 30 application deadline.

“This is really a great opportunity for irrigators within the Burnt River Irrigation District boundary,” Kerns said. “This is a rare opportunity. I hope people take advantage of it.”

Projects must be within the Burnt River Irrigation District, and grants can total as much as $70,000 per project, according to Catie Kerns, NRCS district conservationist for Baker County.

Kerns said local NRCS staff will use a computer program to rank applications based on several factors, with an emphasis on the amount of irrigation water each project would save.

The Burnt River project ranked high for funding at the national level due to the river’s high summer temperatures, which can harm endangered fish, and because a high percentage of farmers and ranchers in the district use less-efficient irrigation systems, Kerns said.

She said projects where a landowner switches from a flood irrigation system to a pivot circle irrigation system would likely save the most water.

However, projects that make incremental improvements in irrigation efficiency are also eligible for funding, such as a step up from an unlined or concrete ditch flood irrigation system, where notches are cut in the ditch to allow irrigation water to flow where it may, to a pipe system with floodgates that better controls how much water is released, and reduces the amount of water that seeps into ground.

Applicants tell NRCS staff what crops they intend to plant and what improvements they plan on making to their irrigation system. Based on the soil type, weather patterns, the crop’s water consumption rate and other factors specific to the property, NRCS determines how much water the new system will save.

If the water savings measures up in comparison to other applications, the NRCS staff determines a flat rate based on labor costs, equipment costs and other factors, and sets a flat rate to be paid to the landowner.

While the flat rate is calculated to cover half the total cost of the improvements, Kerns said if the landowner does all or part of the work, and finds inexpensive suppliers for pipe, pumps, wheel lines, pivot irrigation systems and other materials, it’s possible that the flat rate paid by NRCS will wind up covering more than half of their out-of-pocket expenses, Kerns said.

To be eligible for funding, Kerns said landowners or other applicants must sign a contract with NRCS in which they agree to install water-measuring devices and monitor water use to make sure they manage their new irrigation systems as efficiently as possible, and within guidelines set by NRCS.

To help irrigators who use grant money to replace flood irrigation or a wheel line with a pivot system, Kerns said the Burnt River Irrigation District and conservation district staff and volunteers are offering to provide training in how to use pivot irrigation systems as efficiently and economically as possible.

Properly operated pivot systems are far less labor intensive than flood irrigation, she said.

Kerns said she expects the NRCS staff will rank projects and notify landowners, during October so the staff can work with landowners to design their irrigation system improvements and get them installed between the spring and fall of 2010.

For more information about the Burnt River Project, call the Baker City NRCS Service Center at 523-7121.