THIS DATA IS NOW OUTDATED BASED UPON RECLAMATION’S 7 MARCH 2025 UPDATE IN THE REAL TIME OPERATIONS UPDATE.

 

2025 Water Supply Update –
As we work on our next newsletter, we would like to share the following:

1) With the recent weather events, our projection for water needs to meet K.I.D.’s legal and contractual obligations in 2025 is still less than optimistic…we still estimate 2017 is a comparable wet year to 2025.
– In 2017 the farmers in the Klamath Project utilized 381,729 acre-feet of water from both Upper Klamath Lake and the Lost River System with no fallow program.
— Of this volume, 315,687 acre-feet came out of Upper Klamath Lake in 2017.

2) Recent Lost River additions to the Klamath River increased opportunities for storing water for agricultural purposes in Upper Klamath Lake. As of this morning, the unofficial volume of Lost River water stored is an additional 43,220 above Reclamation’s models, which, when added to Bureau of Reclamation plan for the Klamath Project, puts the total volume close to 300,000 acre-feet as briefed this morning.
-This volume is continuing to be added to with Lost River by-pass flows and pumping of water into the Klamath River by Klamath Drainage District.
–It is likely additional flood releases from UKL will be required in the near term…in which some of this additional volume would be lost.

3. We anticipate that in April, Gerber reservoir may also need to spill for flood control.

4. We believe that with wet and cool conditions, April demand for irrigation water will be down and Lost River Water will be sufficient to meet early demands.

Current analysis indicates that the irrigation water shortage from UKL for 2025 has reduced from an approximated 75,000-acre-foot shortage to about a 15-20,000-acre-foot shortage (assuming the 2017 volume of flows from the Lost River System is similar to what we will see in 2025).

So What? If your farm plan includes growing a row crop in an area that does not have a supplemental ground water source, there is some risk that water supplies to finish or harvest that crop may be challenging as early as late September or October.

As information becomes available, we will continue to provide updates.