“Never Waste a Drought Crisis – Creating Instream Flow By Re-Routing Irrigation Water"

Washington State had never seen a drought like last year’s (2015). Without snowpack to provide a delayed-release reservoir, streams in the Yakima River Basin were running dry as early as April. Salmonid runs were collapsing all over the West Coast, plagued by hot water and low flows, causing passage problems, stranding, and disease.

Yet Kittitas Reclamation District (KRD), an irrigation district did not succumb to catastrophe. Urban Eberhart from the KRD responded to biologists about the desiccated streams and worked through an innovative idea that may serve as a model for other Western irrigators seeking to reconcile that eternal conflict: fish versus agriculture. They needed inventive ideas during an emergency. And this was truly an emergency.

The idea was to use irrigation canals to refill the drying tributaries. Normally, the canal didn’t connect with the streams. They proposed diverting flows into the canal, then rerouting that water through the tributaries. Eventually, the water would flow back into the mainstem river for the farmers downstream. It would simply take a new “fish-friendly” route.

Streams soon brought water to steelhead and baby coho schooled in the refilled creeks. Cottonwoods, willows, and aquatic plants that would have perished stayed green through the summer.