Following are some commonly asked questions about irrigation in North Dakota. Answers come from the North Dakota State University Extension Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Geological Survey, which keeps track of water use across the country.

Q. How many farms in the state have irrigated land?

A. Roughly 800 of the state’s 32,000 farms irrigate some of their land.

Q. Why are some crops irrigated more often than others?

A. Irrigation is best for “long-season” crops, those harvested in September or later. Such crops need considerable moisture in late July and August, when rainfall often is scarce.

Q. What’s the difference between surface irrigation and center-pivot irrigation?

A. The former takes surface water and uses gravity to spread it out across farmland. The latter takes either surface water or groundwater and sprinkles it over crops. Center-pivot irrigation accounts for 85 percent of irrigated land in North Dakota.

Q. Is irrigation a big source of water consumption in North Dakota?

A. Irrigation accounts for about 16 percent of water consumption in North Dakota. Industrial uses account for about 70 percent.

Q. What process do farmers go through before they can irrigate?

A. They need to make sure their soils can be irrigated safely. They must have a readily available supply of nearby water and a water permit from the State Water Commission. The water source must provide sufficient quality and quantity for successful irrigation.

Q. How much do sprinkler systems used in irrigation cost?

A. Prices vary, depending on the type of system. A center-pivot system that’s used in a 160-acre field and irrigates 128 acres costs $103.78 per acre annually to own and operate.

Jonathan Knutson reports for Agweek

Diversion hasn’t always suggested a detour

FARGO – In Fargo today, the phrase “Sheyenne diversion” is associated with flood protection.

Several decades ago, it referred to a different channel with an opposite purpose: to funnel river water toward the city to meet growing residential and commercial needs. The challenge then was the lack of water, and tapping the Sheyenne River was the city’s prime solution.

Severe drought in the 1930s prompted an acute awareness of water supply.

Official discussion began in late 1949 about building a dam and ditch to divert the Sheyenne toward Fargo. By then, Fargo had already paid $150,000 toward construction of the Baldhill Dam north of Valley City, giving the city 52 percent of the rights to access Lake Ashtabula’s water in times of drought.

Fargo Water Commissioner Fred Hagen later said, “That investment will do us no good” without some method to funnel Sheyenne River water five miles east directly to Fargo.

The Sheyenne River naturally flows into the Red River near Harwood, north of Fargo. But city leaders wanted to build a water control project southwest of Fargo to connect the two rivers nearer to the city, providing easier access to a stable water supply.

After years of discussion, the need for a Sheyenne diversion became more urgent in the late 1950s.

Fargo engineers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers formulated plans to build a concrete conduit to funnel Sheyenne River water into a ditch near what is now Horace. The ditch would lead to Cass County Drain 27 and ultimately Rose Coulee. From there, the water would empty into the Red River at a location then still two miles south of Fargo, where 40th Avenue South runs today.
The diversion was intended to carry as many as 37.5 million gallons of water toward Fargo each day.

The project stalled in 1967 after Army Corps of Engineers officials told Fargo leaders that they planned to make a basinwide study of the Red River and its tributaries, potentially rendering the Sheyenne diversion canal unnecessary.
A dry spell in summer 1970 was another wake-up call for the Fargo region, speeding up consideration of the Sheyenne project.

“For days, the river between Fargo and Moorhead was only a trickle,” The Forum newspaper reported. “Red River waters were depleted to their lowest point since the dust bowl days of the 1930s.”
In April 1971, Fargo’s inclusion in the Southeast Cass County Water Management District cleared the final administrative hurdle for the decades-old plans for a Sheyenne diversion to become reality.

Revised plans called for a 400-foot canal starting at the Sheyenne River in Horace that would run east along Cass County Road 6 until it met up with Drain 27 southwest of Fargo. Drain 27 and Rose Coulee would usher the water the rest of the way to the Red River south of Fargo, but the canal would only be used for “emergency water supply” when the Red River ran low.

At the project’s groundbreaking in October 1971, Fargo Mayor Herschel Lashkowitz said the canal would “have the effect of more than doubling the amount of water for the city of Fargo in critical times.”

One year later, the $500,000 project was complete, but it wouldn’t be needed for a few more years.

Drought conditions re-emerged in 1976 when flows on the Red and the Otter Tail ran low.

“Fargo-Moorhead residents will soon get their first taste of Sheyenne River water,” a Forum article in August 1976 stated.

Fargo engineers, in cooperation with the corps, activated the intake and pumping station on the Sheyenne River near Horace, meeting Fargo’s need for water. The canal remained in use for 10 months, as drought conditions continued into the summer of 1977.

The canal has only been needed twice since – in 1984 and 1988 – according to the city of Fargo.

The wet period of the past two decades has given Fargo an abundance of water and made dormant the once-desperately needed water supply project for North Dakota’s largest city.

Kristen M. Daum reports for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.

Army Corps says industrial users must pay

BISMARCK – It takes a torrent of water to keep the oil flowing in North Dakota’s oil fields.

Drilling a well consumes an average of 3 million gallons of water – most of it hauled by fleets of trucks that pound roads and highways, clog traffic and belch diesel exhaust.

In fact, of the 1,200 truckloads required to drill a single well, more than a third, 450, are filled with water, vital for pumping oil.

Water is mixed with chemicals and pumped deep underground to free oil from shale formations, a process called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

But an immense source of water lies strategically in the heart of the booming Bakken Formation in western North Dakota – Lake Sakakawea.

If tapped, water from the reservoir on the Missouri River could help reduce truck traffic and serve as an alternative to drawing down aquifers.

Yet that source of water is off-limits to oil and gas development.

Alarmed by the rapid growth in the water-intensive petroleum industry, the Army Corps of Engineers has placed a hold on issuing water-use permits for the reservoir.

The corps is studying long-term water demand and supply to ensure no shortage develops from the thirsty oil and gas industry.

The corps’ position, still under review: Industries that use water from Lake Sakakawea must pay.

The freeze and proposed water fee, which surfaced in summer 2010, drew angry protests not only from the oil and gas industry but from North Dakota’s political leaders.

They see the move as the latest in a litany of setbacks over decades that have largely thwarted the state’s efforts to tap its most valuable water resource.

How valuable?

Consider that the total combined yearly flow of North Dakota’s other major rivers – the Red River at Fargo, the Sheyenne River at Valley City, the James River at Jamestown and the Souris River in Minot – equal about 4 percent of the Missouri River’s yearly flow at Bismarck.

“The Missouri River is a virtually untapped resource that presents a unique opportunity for development and use in the state’s future,” the State Water Commission stated in a position paper.
The key word is future.

Promises, promises
Massive farm irrigation projects, as well as municipal and industrial water supply, were promised in return for North Dakota’s sacrifices to enable two major dams on the Missouri River.

North Dakota landowners lost 550,000 acres, land set aside for Garrison Dam’s Lake Sakakawea, which begins 75 miles north of Bismarck, and the reservoir for the Oahe Dam in South Dakota.

A massive permanent flood came with the reservoirs. In return, North Dakota has received millions of federal dollars for municipal, rural and industrial water supply.

But the state still waits for water projects that were to be the keystone payoff for Garrison.

After waiting for more than five decades for Missouri River water to augment local supplies in times of prolonged drought, Red River Valley communities such as Fargo and Grand Forks still wait for a project to be approved.

Meanwhile, a project to carry Missouri River water to the Minot area is stalled, held up by a Canadian lawsuit alleging environmental harm would result in the Souris River watershed.

Oil and gas, the roaring engine driving North Dakota’s robust economy and job growth, have now joined the list of users waiting for Missouri River water.

The rationale for the corps’ proposal to make users pay for water drawn from Lake Sakakawea is that it costs money to store water in the reservoir. It calculates the cost at $2 million a year.

North Dakota officials find that argument galling.

The state asserts that the water that would be drawn from Lake Sakakawea flows naturally in the Missouri River, so no stored water would be tapped.

“We have a right to the natural flows,” says Todd Sando, the state engineer for North Dakota.

“There’s enough natural flow that we should be able to take the water out,” he adds.

A 2010 report for the North Dakota Petroleum Council, the voice of the industry, said water the oil and gas industry would take from the Missouri River is miniscule.

It estimated the maximum amount of water consumed per year for oil development would equal about one-tenth of 1 percent of the Missouri River’s daily flow past Bismarck.

Also, a series of congressional acts stemming from the 1944 law that provided for Garrison Dam have recognized North Dakota’s right to Missouri River water and the state’s need for water development, state officials argue.

The corps ended up agreeing with that argument, state officials note, when it concluded last June that a water project in Emmons County was authorized by a 1986 law reauthorizing the Garrison Diversion Project.

Therefore, the corps’ policy of charging for stored surplus water didn’t apply – a decision North Dakota officials contend should extend to the Lake Sakakawea dispute.

The issue is significant because only 79 miles of free-flowing Missouri River remain in North Dakota.

The rest of the river runs within Lake Sakakawea and Lake Oahe, where access to the water is controlled by the corps.

“We need to get to the Missouri River, and our federal government is blocking us,” Sando says.

More is at stake than oil and gas development.

Almost half of the Lake Sakakawea water used in the past two decades has been for farm irrigation, Sando says.

But many of the easements allowing the use of that water expire in the next 10 years, meaning those farmers then could be charged $20.91 per acre-foot of water – an amount Sando says would have “tremendous impacts to our agricultural economy.”

The corps adopted the storage fee policy in 2008 – just when North Dakota’s Oil Patch really started to boom, state officials note – but didn’t move to impose the fee until two years later.

The possibility that North Dakota users would have to pay almost $1 billion over time for Lake Sakakawea water, Sando’s estimated total, is an outcome he finds bitter.

That would be many times the $59 million the corps paid property owners in relocations, land purchases and damage costs when the dam was built in the early 1950s.

All for Missouri River water the state points out exists regardless of whether any of it happens to be stored by Garrison Dam.

Growing demand
One large water supply project is charging ahead in North Dakota’s Oil Patch despite the feud over access to Lake Sakakawea.

West Area Water Supply, with a price tag of $150 million, is on the fast track to deliver Missouri River water to four northwestern counties starting in 2013.

The pipeline project is backed by $110 million in financing from the state, but ultimately will be paid for by delivery fees charged to the petroleum industry.

The project can proceed because it will draw water from the intake for the city of Williston, which taps the free-flowing Missouri River, and therefore is not under the control of the corps.

Pipelines branching from the Williston water treatment plant, which will double in capacity, will deliver water to locations in McKenzie, Williams, Mountrail and Divide counties.

“We’ve always considered water to be an economic development piece,” says Gene Veeder, economic development director for McKenzie County, which includes Watford City.

Homes, ranches and businesses dotting the region’s semi-arid rangeland often rely on groundwater, usually high in minerals, that must be treated.

But the need for water suddenly became urgent with the oil boom.

In fact, the rapid growth – as oil field roustabouts, construction workers, truck drivers and others flock to the area – makes it difficult to predict how much residential water will be needed, Veeder says.

“It’s one of those things, it’s growing so fast we’ve underdesigned everything for the past three years,” he says.

Once operating, West Area Water Supply will help reduce the heavy truck traffic in the Oil Patch.

The corps acknowledges the environmental benefit of reducing truck traffic by using a water pipeline.

The rapid and unpredictable growth in oil development, however, is the corps’ justification for a detailed study of the petroleum industry’s future water demand.

State oil and gas officials predict 2,500 new oil wells will be drilled yearly for the next 15 to 25 years.
The state estimates the Oil Patch’s annual water demand to be the equivalent of a lake 1 foot deep spread over 22,400 acres.

Lake Sakakawea, with a surface covering 368,000 acres, can hold 24 million acre-feet of water.

Alone, it holds almost a third of all of the water in the chain of six Missouri River dam reservoirs.

Finding water
So far oil drilling has gone unhindered by the squabble over Lake Sakakawea water.

The unusually wet weather, which produced the historic flood of 2011 on the Missouri River, has made more surface water temporarily available from ponds and sloughs.

The State Water Commission has issued permits allowing oil firms to tap water from those sources.

In a few cases, with careful monitoring, water officials have allowed oil firms to tap aquifers in northwest North Dakota.

“Aquifers in that western part of the state are very limited,” says Bob Shaver, a hydrologist and head of the state’s water appropriations. “They’re basically little, small bank accounts.”
Aquifers were formed by glacial melt waters thousands of years ago.

Excess pumping can deplete an aquifer or degrade the water quality by drawing in water from surrounding bedrock.

“We have to develop it in increments, and we have to monitor it,” Shaver says. “It’s a conservative approach to water development.”

Piping or hauling water from Lake Sakakawea would be a far better solution, he adds.

“The oil companies will pay for it,” Shaver says. “That’s not a show stopper.”

Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, agrees the industry will be able to find water.

“I don’t think it slows development,” he says. “What it does is, it creates a lot more truck traffic and a lot more impacts.”

Of Lake Sakakawea, he adds, “If you were able to tap that water, it’s less than an inch a year off that lake.”

The corps, originally expected to make a decision before the Missouri River flooded last summer, still is weighing public comments before making a final decision.

Ness isn’t the first to note the irony of the dispute coinciding with a time of catastrophic water surplus – some of which ended up in homes in places like Bismarck during the flood.

“If they want to charge us for storing water in Lake Sakakawea,” he says, “maybe we should charge them for storing it in our basements.”

Readers can reach Forum reporter Patrick Springer at (701) 241-5522

Water supply has not been a problem in our region in the past few years – but that will change.

As I write, the National Weather Service reports that the region is in moderate drought and that the chance of flooding this year is very low.

This is a reminder that too little water is as great a problem as too much water – and that the region needs to deal with shortage as well as surplus.

That’s the point of this third installment of our “Living with Water” series. It explores water for drinking, for agriculture, for industry, for recreation and for wildlife, and it looks at a critical new issue – water to sustain the oil boom in western North Dakota.

Forum Communications Co. has invested hundreds of hours in developing this comprehensive “Living with Water” series. We hope you continue to enjoy these articles.

Next week’s topic is water quality. The series wraps up Feb. 26 with reports about the challenges of managing water across drainage basins and political boundaries.

The series is great reading, and we believe it has significant historical value as well. The series is distributed in Forum newspapers and broadcast on our television and radio stations. It also appears on Forum Communications Co. websites.

We welcome your comments. Please email them to Mike Jacobs, the project coordinator at mjacobs@gfherald.com.
Back copies are available by completing the coupon printed in today’s section.

Thanks again – and good reading.

William C. Marcil, Chairman Forum Communications Co.

Sometimes the river retreats, leaving its cities to scramble

FARGO – When it surges beyond its banks and clashes with levies and sandbag walls, the headlines call the Red a “river on the rampage.” But for a few drought-baked months in the 1930s, it was a river in retreat, dwindling to a trickle and for a stretch coming to a halt altogether.

Fish were trapped in scattered pools. Pedestrians crossed between Fargo and Moorhead via planks set in the mud.

Water scarcity defined weekly routines.
It may seem like a foreign concept for a region that’s been besieged by wet weather for nearly two decades, but it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.

Droughts like those that devastated America’s heartland in the “Dirty Thirties” are not at all unusual for the region. And one study determined a repeat could strike before 2050.
Officials in the region say that could be harder on the region than the record floods of recent years.

“It’s always been a question of, do we have too much water or not enough?” said Pat Zavoral, Fargo city administrator. “We have to give equal time to not only our flood protection but also what happens if we don’t have adequate water.

With that in mind, Red River Valley communities have long been trying without success to line up a supplemental water supply.

Before the 1997 flood, water supply was a bigger concern than flood control in Fargo. A severe drought in 1988 that slowed the Red to a crawl – after another in 1976 that halted the river altogether – had officials thinking about backup plans.

Flooding swept those efforts to the back burner but didn’t stop them completely. The Lake Agassiz Water Authority, a consortium of local governments in 13 Red River Valley counties, has been working since 2003 to solve the water supply problem.

The preferred solution: a $660 million project that would use a canal and pipeline to divert Missouri River water to the Sheyenne River.

The proposal has the state’s backing and has been endorsed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. But it’s been stalled since 2007, stymied by the federal budget crisis and bureaucratic inertia.

A dam, a plan, a canal
The Red River Valley Water Supply Project, as the proposal is officially called, is an offshoot of the now-defunct Garrison Diversion Project, which has its origins in the 1944 law that authorized Garrison Dam and other dams on the Missouri River.

“That’s one item that’s been on North Dakota’s agenda since the dams were constructed,” said Dave Koland, general manager of the Garrison Diversion Conservancy District, which is administering the water supply project.

Actually, North Dakota has eyed diverting the Missouri eastward even longer – since it became a state in 1889.

The Garrison Diversion Project was designed to divert water from the Missouri to central and eastern North Dakota for a number of uses, including irrigation, water supply, and fish and wildlife conservation.

Work on the project started in the 1960s. It stalled in the face of disputes and environmental opposition, and was abandoned altogether in 2000.

But a few key components were completed. The new water supply project would use two of those components: the Snake Creek Pumping Plant on the east side of Lake Sakakawea and the McClusky Canal, which loops east from Lake Audubon.

The project would pump water out of Lake Sakakawea, bringing it 59 miles east in the canal, then another 123 miles via underground pipeline to Lake Ashtabula on the Sheyenne River.

The lake, which is already the backup source for Fargo and other cities, would serve as a reservoir for participating cities to draw on in dry times.

“It’s an insurance policy,” said Hazel Sletten, superintendent for water utilities in Grand Forks.

Worse than a flood
Sletten remembers the 1988 drought well. Grand Forks had just expanded the capacity of its water treatment plant to 16.5 million gallons per day, but pushed the plant to treat 17.5 million – all while the city was using 22 million a day.

Given the city’s growth since then, a shortage could affect critical operations ranging from industrial users to firefighting services, she said.

Grand Forks has about 3,500 more residents today than it did during the last drought.

“You don’t want to be running 100 percent every day for an extended period of time,” she said. “You’re right on the edge.”

A prolonged, major drought, she said, “would be worse” than a flood.

It would be even more of a strain on Fargo, which has about 22,000 more residents than it did during the 1988 drought. Moorhead has about 6,000 more.

For Fargo, which draws all of its water from the Red, a drought of the magnitude of the 1930s would mean hauling in about 1,200 truckloads of water every day to meet basic needs, according to one study.

Zavoral, the Fargo city administrator, said the city has kept the possibility of a drought in mind even as flood protection has dominated the conversation.

“There’s an awareness that at any time, we could have to shift,” he said, pointing to last year’s dry fall and early winter. “We have to give equal time to not only our flood protection but also what happens if we don’t have enough water.”

But a solution like the proposed Missouri transfer won’t materialize overnight. Even if everything fell into place tomorrow, Zavoral said, it would take about four years to complete.

“We couldn’t wait four years if the Red River were to run dry,” he said.

Funding challenges
And everything has not yet fallen into place.

In some respects, the project has moved along. Federal, state and local governments have spent about $26 million so far in developing the project, including an environmental impact statement, engineering studies and right-of-way acquisition. More than three-fourths of the right-of-way easements for the pipeline have been obtained.

Officials won’t go further until the project gets the go-ahead from federal officials.

The federal government has yet to issue a critical document called the record of decision. Initially, North Dakota officials were told the obstacle was the Bush administration’s Office of Management and Budget, which blanched at the project’s $660 million price tag.

At the outset, state and local officials thought the extensive environmental impact study, completed in December 2007, would be the biggest hurdle.

Canada and Minnesota have for years opposed the transfer of Missouri River water to the Red River watershed, fearing transfer of non-native invasive species. The review concluded that water from the Missouri River and transferred to the Red River, would not spread organisms if filtered and treated.
But new obstacles have arisen – the federal budget crunch, and the prospect that any project would have to win congressional authorization.

Plans called for the $660 million cost to be divided roughly equally between the federal government, state and local governments, or $220 million at each level.

Then-Gov. John Hoeven pledged to work to provide the state’s share. The city of Fargo, the biggest user, would pay about half of the local share, and would use about half of the water.

The federal contribution, however, has collided with a ballooning federal deficit and a renewed push for budget austerity. In 2009, then-Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., warned state and local officials that he could not press for both the water supply project and the proposed $1.7 billion metro diversion project.

Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said the choice put the city “between a rock and a hard place,” but permanent flood protection emerged as the consensus top choice.

Going it alone
That left the state and water authority to mull trying to go forward with the project without federal help.

“We’re thinking, are there other ways to do this?” Zavoral said. He said the city is working with Garrison Diversion and the governor’s office to come up with a workable plan.

The project’s backers have weighed alternatives such as groundwater from the Red River Basin or from Minnesota.

Koland of the Garrison Diversion Conservancy District said those options are hampered by a lack of quality groundwater in the region and high costs of treatment.

The Dakota Sandstone aquifer north of Fargo, for instance, was considered as a source. But the cost of treating the aquifer’s water pushed that option’s total estimated cost to $1.1 billion.

“We’re going to go back and look at these things,” Koland said. “Did we look at everything? Is there new information?”

However, based on earlier studies, “I think we will find most of these other options are cost-prohibitive,” he said.
At minimum, state and local officials believe the federal government should at least pay the estimated $120 million cost for a treatment plant.

“Ultimately, we’re going to have to ask Congress to fund that project,” Bruce Furness, former Fargo mayor and chairman of the Lake Agassiz Water Authority, said of the treatment plant.

He said the plant is needed to meet boundary water treaty obligations the U.S. government has with Canada.

The project is also trying to cut through a catch-22 of red tape: The Bureau of Reclamation maintains it needs congressional authorization to use Missouri River water, for a project that doesn’t yet have the administration’s final OK.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced in December 2010 that it wants to charge a storage fee for water taken from Lake Sakakawea.

The state of North Dakota opposes the charge, insisting the water it proposes to draw for water supply uses is from the Missouri River’s natural flows, which state officials assert North Dakota has a legal right to use without charge.

And the project must remain affordable for water users in Fargo, rural Cass County, Grand Forks and elsewhere in the valley – who, in the case of Fargo and Cass County, might also have to help pay for the $1.7 billion diversion channel.
“Are they going to have enough for this project?” Furness asked. “It’s really up in the air at this point.”

Amid the questions without answers, one thing is certain, Furness said:
“We’ll have another drought at some point.”

Marino Eccher and Patrick Springer report for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.

Irrigation provides a ‘fail-safe’ for Valley farmers

Jon McMahon farms sandy land with subsoil that doesn’t hold moisture well – land on which thirsty crops can run out of water quickly.

“We’re always 10 days from a drought,” he said. McMahon farms in Inkster, N.D., about 40 miles northwest of Grand Forks.

But McMahon has what he calls a “fail-safe.” He began irrigating in 1990 and now irrigates about a third of his farmland.

Irrigation doesn’t guarantee him good corn, wheat, dry bean and soybean crops; weather hazards such as hail and early frost sometimes damage his fields. But irrigation gives him a better shot at nice yields and profits.

“It’s really good to have,” he said.
For more than a century, farmers in frequently dry North Dakota have looked to irrigation.

Variable weather and crop prices, as well as improving technology, cloud predictions about irrigation’s future. But by all accounts, demand for irrigation will grow.

McMahon and others involved in irrigation agree on another point: Irrigation brings money into the state, benefiting both farmers and nonfarmers.

Irrigated farmland, on average, provides a per-acre economic return four to five times higher than the return on nonirrigated fields, said Milton Lindvig, field representative for the North Dakota Irrigation Association. The association consists of irrigation supporters, including irrigators and irrigation equipment dealers and suppliers.

Irrigation is “a win-win for everyone,” McMahon said.

Maybe not now, but…
The region’s nearly two-decade wet period has dampened farmers’ interest in irrigation.

The amount of irrigated farmland in the state is growing, on balance, by only 2,000 to 3,000 acres annually, said Thomas Scherer, North Dakota State University Extension agricultural engineer, who has 30 years of experience with irrigation. In a state with roughly 28 million acres under cultivation, that’s a drop in the bucket.

About 274,000 acres are currently irrigated, less than 1 percent of the state’s cropland.

Even with the wet period, however, farmers in relatively dry pockets of the state are interested in further irrigation, Scherer said.

“If we hit a drought or mini-drought again, there’s going to be a lot more interest in irrigation,” Scherer said.
A dry fall has left much of North Dakota in low-level drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor Index, an Omaha-based partnership of federal and academic scientists.

Relatively high crop prices make irrigation more appealing, too, Lindvig of the irrigation association said.

A rule of thumb is that North Dakota farmers, on average, need to gross at least $100 more per acre on irrigated land to cover irrigation cost.

It’s much easier to reach that break-even point when corn is selling at current prices, roughly $5 to $5.50 per bushel in late 2011, instead of the $2 to $2.50 per bushel corn had been bringing, McMahon said.

New technology also makes irrigation more attractive by allowing water to be applied more efficiently, he said.

Nobody has a good handle on how many acres might be irrigated statewide in, say, five to 10 years. There are just too many variables. But Lindvig described the potential as “considerable.”

The Missouri River could supply enough water to irrigate an additional 80,000 to 140,000 acres, he said. That would be equal to 29 to 51 percent of the acres now irrigated.

Farmers outside the Missouri River Corridor have the potential to increase irrigated acreage. Producers in northeastern North Dakota might be able to draw on several rivers for additional irrigation, Lindvig said.

Underground water, or groundwater, is important for irrigation, too.

Currently, groundwater and surface water each account for about half of the water allocated annually for irrigation in North Dakota, although all the allocated water isn’t always used, according to the State Water Commission.

Groundwater typically accounts for a little more than half of the water actually used in irrigation, with the percentage varying annually.

All groundwater used for irrigation in North Dakota comes from aquifers, underground layers of rock or soil that contain water. They are not, contrary to popular imagination, vast underground rivers. Aquifers are found across much of North Dakota.

The State Water Commission issues permits to use water from aquifers for irrigation. Water levels can fluctuate in the aquifers, especially in times of drought, which affects how many permits are issued.

North Dakota’s glacially derived aquifers are much smaller than regional aquifers such as the Ogallala Aquifer, which extends from Texas to South Dakota, said Jon Patch of the State Water Commission.

Glacial aquifers in North Dakota “have very limited storage capacity,” calling into question their reliability when there’s less rainfall to recharge them, he said.

Here’s the rub: The dry conditions that would encourage farmers to make greater use of aquifers also could reduce the amount of water that aquifers might provide.

Why 1973 matters
Irrigation in North Dakota can be divided into two main eras: before 1973 and after.

Before 1973, most irrigation was in the western part of the state. Gravity was used to irrigate fields with Missouri River water.

After 1973, farmers statewide began irrigating, often with water from aquifers.

Why the change? Credit, in part, massive U.S. grain sales to the former Soviet Union in the early 1970s. Grain prices skyrocketed, which made irrigation more attractive.

Farmers at the time increasingly turned to a center-pivot system, a form of overhead irrigation in which equipment rotates around a pivot in the center of a field. Water from a center-pivot system can be controlled much more easily than water from surface irrigation, Scherer said.

“Center-pivot irrigation really has been a driver in North Dakota,” he said.

From 1900 to 1973, the number of irrigated acres in North Dakota grew to 73,000. By the late 1980s, after the arrival of center-pivot irrigation, about 210,000 acres were irrigated, a threefold increase in less than two decades.

Potatoes gave a further boost to irrigation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when poor commodity prices limited interest in irrigating other crops.

Processors such as Simplot were looking for a reliable supply of potatoes, which led farmers to begin growing irrigated spuds in parts of the state where the crop hadn’t been grown previously, said Chuck Gunnerson, president of the Northern Plains Potato Growers Association in East Grand Forks, Minn.

Thanks in part to potatoes, the number of irrigated acres in North Dakota rose to about 245,000 in 2002. Since then, because of the wet period, the growth in irrigated acres has been sluggish.

Despite the current wet, farmers and others across the state recognize that irrigation is important and here to stay, McMahon said.

“It’s accepted,” he said.

Jonathan Knutson reports for Agweek

Water, CRP have been a boon for ducks, pheasants, deer

Every year since the mid-’90s, Mike Johnson has written basically the same thing when he compiles the results from his annual survey of North Dakota ducks and wetland abundance.

“I’d just say the unprecedented wet cycle continues,” said Johnson, a longtime waterfowl biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Bismarck.

Much of North Dakota and surrounding area has been immersed in a wet cycle since the summer of 1993, and the water, on balance, has been a positive for wildlife.

The timing couldn’t have been better for ducks, Johnson said, because the beginning of the wet cycle coincided with peak enrollment of grasslands in the federal Conservation Reserve Program. The grasslands provided ample nesting cover, the abundant shallow wetlands attracted breeding ducks and the nutrient-rich water was ideal for rearing broods.

The result, Johnson said, was duck numbers North Dakota hadn’t seen since the Game and Fish Department began its annual duck and pond count survey in 1948. In a matter of years, nesting success for species such as mallards rose from 15 percent – barely enough to sustain the population – to rates that now are in the 30 to 40 percent range.

“It was really the combination of the water and CRP that created duck breeding conditions like we hadn’t seen before,” Johnson said. “We had no idea CRP was able to crank out the ducks it did once the water hit. It was unprecedented, and we had no idea it could happen.”

Johnson said the wet cycle also was unprecedented, surpassing anything North Dakota has experienced since settlement.

“Just go out and look at all the potholes with cottonwood trees around them that are dead,” he said. “Those trees are 70 to 80 years old or more, I’m guessing, and they never had water around the bases before. They’re all dead. It’s pretty spectacular what happened.”

Few losers
For wildlife managers such as Johnson, the wet, grassy landscape proved Mother Nature had no substitute when it came to putting wildlife on the ground. Back in the ’80s, Johnson said, managers were working to build nesting structures, electric fences and protected islands and peninsulas to improve duck production on tiny blocks of habitat.

“We were working hard to come up with intensive management strategies to produce enough ducks to keep hunters hunting,” Johnson said. “We were spending huge amounts of money.”

It couldn’t compare with grass and rain, though. John Devney, senior vice president of Delta Waterfowl, said the Dakotas now attract more breeding ducks than prairie Canada.

“Ten years ago, that would have been unheard of,” Devney said. “It’s driven breeding duck populations just off the charts here in the Dakotas.”

In terms of wildlife, at least, it’s difficult to find a loser in the wet cycle, Johnson said.

“We saw record numbers of pheasants; we saw record deer populations,” Johnson said. “So many of our species are wetland dependent; pheasants depend on those wetlands in the wintertime for cover. It’s hard to say there were too many negatives.”

One exception, he said, was Hungarian partridge.

“Hungarian partridge don’t do very well in wet years,” Johnson said. “We haven’t really seen the partridge come back like they were in the ’80s. You just don’t see many partridge anymore.”

Management issues
The water has presented a few challenges, as well. Dan Svedarsky, a natural resources professor at the University of Minnesota-Crookston, said the wet cycle has decreased managers’ ability to conduct prescribed burns on prairie landscapes.

Fires, historically, helped maintain prairie ecosystems by keeping brush and other invasive plants at bay. Now, it’s too wet to burn many years.

More brush has been good for species such as sharp-tailed grouse and short-eared owls, Svedarsky said – and not so good for prairie chickens and other birds that do best in open country.

“If prairies are getting brushier, that’s going to benefit some wildlife species and be to the disadvantage of those that require more openness,” Svedarsky said. “In general, the wetland wildlife is going to be doing better in a wet cycle, but if it interferes with our ability to keep grasslands open, then the grassland species are going to be disadvantaged.”

Because the wet cycle has persisted, Johnson said some wetlands have gotten so large they’re now supporting fish instead of ducks. Once wetlands become too large and too deep, aquatic vegetation stops growing, he said, and bulrushes favorable to both broods and duck hunters disappear.

“We could have used some drying out and re-flooding with some of our temporary and seasonal wetlands,” Johnson said. “It affected the submerged aquatics like wild celery and widgeon grass that swans and canvasbacks rely on.

“A lot of traditional canvasback and swan lakes just aren’t holding birds anymore.”

At the same time, more water has meant more flood control impoundments. That’s a mixed blessing for wildlife, Svedarsky said, because the impoundments tend to quickly become choked with cattails and other emergent vegetation if left unmanaged.

The ideal wetland, which Svedarsky calls a “hemi-marsh,” is 50 percent water and 50 percent vegetation.

“A lot of our wetlands are 90 percent-plus emergent vegetation – especially hybrid cattails,” he said. “That’s certainly not optimum for wetland wildlife.”

What’s ahead
It’s too soon to make predictions on how much longer the wet cycle will persist, but Johnson said conditions in 2011 went from extremely wet to extremely dry.

Perhaps the bigger question is what happens as CRP acreage continues to decline. By next fall, North Dakota will be down to about 1.5 million acres – less than half what the state had at its peak just a few years ago.

As more set-aside land returns to production, farmers will install more drain tile to gain every tillable acre. More native grasslands also will be going under the plow.

It’s happening already, Devney of Delta Waterfowl said.

“Lots of water like we’ve had the last three years can whitewash duck production issues, simply because those temporary and seasonal wetlands are full,” Devney said. “If we lose that grass and it gets dry, I think we’ll see the effects at a population scale fairly quickly.”

The only certainty, perhaps, is that the wet cycle will end eventually. Floods and droughts are part of the dynamics of the prairie.

“We could be at the end of the wet cycle, but who knows?” Johnson said. “This is all pretty new and enlightening to us because we’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Brad Dokken reports for the Grand Forks Herald.

PIERRE, S.D. – Eric Stasch is looking forward to a better summer on the Missouri River.
Stasch, the South Dakota Army Corps of Engineers’ operations project manager for the Oahe Dam in central South Dakota, dealt with record flooding that plagued the Midwest in 2011. It damaged property, displaced people and shifted shorelines.

The high water also impacted recreational opportunities for people who boat, fish and enjoy other activities along the Missouri River, Stasch said. The relatively dry early winter of 2011-12 offers the promise that won’t be repeated.

“I’m hoping this is more of a normal year for us,” he said. “We’re all hoping for a more normal year to get people’s lives back to normal, to let them have fun and not worry about flooding.”

Having fun and spending time in, on and along the Missouri River has been a part of human existence in the area as long as man has walked, swam and boated in the area.

Archaeological digs and discoveries prove that humans have interacted with the river for more than 10,000 years.

Numerous American Indian tribes depended on the river for food, travel and pleasure. But the massive floods that plagued the Missouri led some to call for greater controls on the river.

The Pick-Sloan Missouri Program was created by the federal Flood Control Act of 1944, and designed to create a plan for water use in the Missouri River Basin. It is named for Lewis A. Pick, director of the Missouri River office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and William Glenn Sloan, director of the Billings, Mont., office of the United States Bureau of Reclamation.

While flood control was a major concern after repeated flooding, the program was also intended to assist navigation, offer irrigation to landowners, supplement water supply, generate power, provide municipal and industrial water supplies, and perform stream-pollution abatement and sediment control.

Recreation also was a part of the plan from the start – the preservation and enhancement of fish and wildlife habitat, and the creation of recreation opportunities, were listed as goals.

Recreation got a boost nearly 50 years ago, when the Federal Water Project Recreation Act of 1965 directed the corps to erect campgrounds, boat ramps and other recreational areas and facilities by the reservoirs.

The Missouri National Recreational River covers 98 miles of near-pristine river that flows along the South Dakota and Nebraska border. It was designated by Congress under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1979 and expanded to its current size in 1991.

Overall, the Missouri River has more than 1,500 square miles of open water, and millions of people take advantage of the water to do what their ancestors did: swim, fish, boat and enjoy life along and in the river.

All that recreational use is a major economic engine for the region, dumping up to $100 million into the economy, according to estimates.

Tom Curran, the project manager for the Fort Randall Dam in southeastern South Dakota, has fished in all the reservoirs along the Missouri River during his 25 years with the corps, the last 12 in charge of the dam.

Curran said the corps has to take a variety of uses into consideration as it manages the water in the Missouri River system.

Water supplies for downstream communities, irrigation, intakes for power plants that need cooling water in the summer, navigation for barge traffic – all must be factored in, he said.

Recreation is just as important, Curran said.

“There’s all those uses that kind of compete for the water,” he said. “All those uses are authorized by Congress, and the corps tries to balance and provide for those authorized purposes.

“The corps is required by that legislation to operate the project for all those purposes. They’re all equal except for flood control. Protection of life and property is first. The rest are all handled equally.”

He said he oversees several forms of recreation, including camping, fishing, boating, skiing, scuba diving and other kinds of outdoor activity.

Curran said while flooding made headlines in 2011, drought is a far more common concern.

“Even though we had the high water last year, people were able to get in and boat and fish,” he said. “Some stretches of river below Fort Randall were closed by the state of South Dakota and the corps. There were impacts to navigation as well.”

But in the end, the corps’ decisions are guided by rules, not whims and personal views, Curran said.

The Master Manual governs the system and serves as a guide for decisions on the release of water, he said.

John Cooper of Pierre said recreational facilities on and along the river have never been better, but it’s taken a lot of effort and several legal battles.

Cooper served as secretary of the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks for 12 years under Govs. Bill Janklow and Mike Rounds, then spent two years as a senior adviser on Missouri River issues to Rounds before he was named to the GF&P Commission, where he has served for two and a half years.

He said the corps has not always fulfilled the promise of providing adequate recreational opportunities along the Upper Basin of the Missouri.

“I don’t agree that it was given the same budget priority for the Corps of Engineers that the other beneficial uses have received,” Cooper said. “People from the Upper Basin felt navigation was given a greater emphasis.”

It took three lawsuits filed in federal court by the state of South Dakota during the Janklow administration in the 1990s to convince the corps to be fair with the water, he said.

“We proved that the recreation industry was not getting the same priority, the same legal priority, that it should be given,” he said.

“Changes were made to upgrade, to at least put as much on the Upper Basin as the lower,” Cooper said. “It’s a matter of public record.”

What was particularly irritating during the debate and legal battles was the marked decline of the boat and barge traffic on the Missouri, he said.

But he said the fact that other states along the Missouri River have larger populations and more political power often was a deciding factor.

In lean years, South Dakota and the Upper Basin went wanting for water, Cooper said. In wet years, they flooded.

“The Upper Basin stores the water during major flood events, sometimes to the detriment of recreation businesses,” Cooper said. “It also covers farmland.”

He said a deal struck in 2000 turned land along the Missouri over to tribes and the state, and many more recreational facilities were added, Cooper said.

“You’d have to be blind not to see the massive improvement state Game, Fish and Parks did with the land turned over to us,” he said.

Boat ramps and electricity were added, recreational facilities built and more people and dollars came to the areas.
He said despite winning battles in the past, the struggle continues. Cooper noted that Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has declined to attend meetings with the Corps of Engineers, saying all they wanted to do was drain his state’s reservoirs.

“And he has a point,” Cooper said. “The downstream states have a lot more Electoral College votes and more population. We’re often given short shrift.”

Karen Kern, the executive director of the Great Lakes of South Dakota Tourism Association, said while the 2011 flooding was a challenge, it was met and will be overcome.

“The flooding this past year had a negative impact on some areas, and others were not affected,” Kern said.

“As for Lake Oahe, the fishing was wonderful, lasted forever, and flooding for the most part was not an issue.
“But, below the Oahe Dam, there was much destruction and loss of income, plus the repair of damage is huge. Campgrounds were closed, ramps closed, marinas had to take boats out – it varied depending on where you were and what the river was doing.”

Many people took a big hit, she said, especially since the flooding lasted for such a long time. Rather than a flood that comes, crests and then goes down, this one lasted for three months.

There are three new islands, “small little things,” he said, that formed in the south end of Lake Oahe.

Two other islands in Lake Sharpe that have long been popular recreational spots, LaFromboise Island and Farm Island, grew larger as soil was deposited on them. A causeway that connected LaFromboise to the mainland was breached, and the island can now only be accessed by boat.

Trail systems on both islands for hiking and biking were undamaged, and natural areas that are popular destinations are still intact, he said. Deer hunting continued on both islands last fall.
There were other impacts.

“There were some fish that came through our tunnels that died in the process,” Stasch said. “But the fishing in the river section downstream of the dam was just phenomenal. It was just fantastic fishing all year long.

“On the lakes themselves, the impacts were not that great. Like Lake Oahe, we were only a foot over our record high. All our boat landings were useable,” he said. “The biggest impacts were on the ‘river’ stretches along the river.
It was just too high and came up too fast.”

Kern said there are physical reminders of the flooding.

“One of the biggest issues now is that the river has changed from what it was before. Channels are different, siltation moved, there are islands where there were none before, and many disappeared. Bank erosion was great from the Oahe Dam to the south,” she said. “Case in point – I heard a bunch of beavers had to relocate because their homes are now under 30 feet of water. And there is debris from the bank erosion.”

Fishing is a major lure for tourists. “We’ve had calls asking about it – whether the bait fish are OK or if they all got shipped down to Louisiana,” Kern said.

Fisheries experts in the state took more sample surveys than they normally do, Kern said, and now they’re trying to see what they’ve got.

The fishing is still good up and down the river, according to Kern; in fact, anglers have been fishing longer this fall and winter than most observers predicted.

Kern said water recreation is one of the top items listed by potential visitors to her area.

“There are many resorts along the Missouri River that cater to anglers and hunters,” Kern said. “The guiding business is huge in this region – many people depend on the income from hunting and fishing, and there are larger upscale resorts to small mom and pop businesses – all bringing in tax money for their communities and counties.”

Other popular forms of recreation on and near the Missouri River include Indian culture sites, historical sites, biking, hiking, museums, canoeing and kayaking, and birding. The Great Lakes of South Dakota Tourism Association invests marketing money in promoting the region along the Missouri River, Kern said.

The relatively dry winter has people wondering if the reverse of last year will be a factor for people playing on and near the river.

Curran said while the mountain snowpack is at a normal depth, there is little snow elsewhere in the region. A dry year is possible, and even likely, he said.
It’s something that has been dealt with in the past, Curran said. Decisions are made every year on how much water can be released, and recreation has a voice in that decision.

“Probably one of the toughest factors we face is to make the public understand that even in drought, we can get to the Missouri River – it’s a huge river, and the bodies of water are large,” Kern said. “The perception is that access isn’t out there.”

As the water has receded, things are getting back to normal for the people who work and play along the Mighty Mo.
The Oahe Marina in Fort Pierre, just south of the Oahe Dam, was the first major business or property to be surrounded and flooded when the Missouri River’s waters began to rise in late May. The business includes a restaurant, convenience store and bait shop and four cabins and is now re-opened.

Boat slips are available for the summer, the marina notes on its website.

Owner Steve Rounds has a lease to run the business with the Game, Fish and Parks Department, since the marina is on state property.

Kern said she expects a good summer.

“South Dakotans are a hardy bunch, and we will get through this, and tourism along the river will be better than ever,” she said.

Tom Lawrence reports for the Mitchell (S.D.) Daily Republic.

The word “ecotone” describes a transitional zone between two regions of distinctly different ecological communities. The Red River Valley is a classic example. The sun rises in the east over the more than 10,000 lakes of the Minnesota North Woods. At day’s end, the sun goes down in the west over the almost treeless horizon of the North Dakota prairie. The flora and fauna of each region is distinctly different from the other, and the Red River Valley forms what appears to be a natural borderland.

But the differences between the North Woods and the Northern Plains are not caused by any river. The difference is the reliability of water. Much of the moisture source for the precipitation that falls on our region is the Pacific Ocean. Some of the moisture is recycled from local bodies of water. But the difference maker is moisture-laden air from the Gulf of Mexico. Weather systems crossing the Rockies have very little Gulf moisture in them, but with each eastward mile, they have an increasing chance of entraining more of that good,
deep moisture supply.

Annual average precipitation in eastern Minnesota is more than 30 inches, whereas in western North Dakota, it is barely 12 inches. In any given year, the actual amount of rain and snow can vary greatly, but the plain fact is that a forest will grow only where there is enough precipitation to sustain a forest. Where there is not enough rain for a forest, a forest does not grow.
But weather and climate are not static.

During times of drought, some of the forest may burn and some of the trees along the western edge may wither and die, allowing the grassland to expand slightly eastward. When rainfall increases for a period of years, the same shifts may happen in the opposite direction.

Devils Lake, sitting as it does in a closed basin, is the poster child for the gradual swings of the ecotone: shrinking to a glorified mud puddle in times of drought, then morphing into an inland sea when precipitation is plentiful.

The rivers of our region are more fickle; an inch of rain causes them to rise noticeably. But the wider swings of the climate also affect the rivers.

During the ongoing, 20-year wet period, rivers have been running higher most of the time, and flooding has become frequent. Times of drought have, in the past, caused some rivers to stop flowing altogether.

During the drier times in the past, there has been a push to bring water from Lake Sakakawea eastward to the Red River Valley. The idea still has merit even though too much, not too little, water seems to be our singular concern at the moment.

Indeed, too little water in the Red River Basin, with a switch of the weather patterns, could easily become a concern every bit as formidable as the recent threat of flooding. During the 1930s, cities up and down the Red River faced significant water shortages, and that was when the area’s population was a small fraction of what it is today.

Obviously, the agricultural sector also faces water needs during dry times. Prairie grass may go dormant for a few years during a drought, but a farmer needs a crop every year. Where soil conditions permit, irrigation can bridge the gaps between the rains. But when the region is in a drought, the water needs to come from outside the region.

Fortunately, the water in Lake Sakakawea comes, to a large extent, from the mountains of Montana and Wyoming, where average annual winter snowfall from 150 to 300 inches can yield the equivalent of 15 to 30 inches of rain when it melts. While it is certainly possible for the Rockies to be dry at the same time as our region is dry, the two climates are not necessarily related.

The amount of water siphoned off the top of Lake Sakakawea to meet the needs of the Red River Valley would be hardly noticeable.

A backup supply of water from the Rockies would go a long way toward solving the water problems of the Red River Basin the next time the weather goes seriously dry. With flooding the problem on everyone’s mind, it may be hard to find the wherewithal for such a project.

John Wheeler, WDAY/WDAZ chief meteorologist