Hydrological and Biological Considerations for Instream Flow Restoration
Stan Isley
Due Diligence and Water Transfers
Columbia Basin Water Transactions Program – Qualified Local Entities
Workshop
April 6, 2004, Walla Walla, WA
Hi;
Thanks for inviting me to speak to you today. I originally thought I was going to be doing
just the hydrological part of this presentation and Perry Harvester of the Washington Dept. of
Fish and Wildlife would do the biological part – but Perry’s on vacation. Then we thought
someone else would fill in for Perry, perhaps Scott Nicolai, a biologist with the Yakama
Nation. But, as it turns out Scott wasn’t available, and no one else was available, so I’m
going to cover both topics, hydrologic and biologic considerations.
I’m a little bit nervous about giving this presentation, for a number of reasons.
- First, there are many of you out there who already know this stuff inside and out – indeed
you could be teaching this course yourselves. So, I hope to provide good information that’s
valuable to all of you, even to those of you who already know the subject well – and that’s
not easy.
- Second, I want to do a good job with this presentation because I care deeply about the work
you’re all trying to do – restoring instream flows, restoring our salmon to sustaining fishable
levels, and in fact – you’re trying to restore our stream systems – flows, fish, floodplains,
form, and function – the 5 F’s.
So, I want to do a good job here, because I care about the work you’re doing, and I care about
all of you. I want to see you succeed at what you’re trying to do. I want to see us all
succeed.
You know, we’re trying to prove to the world that people and fish can coexist just fine.
That’s what I’ve been able to prove with some of my projects, like for example, the work
we’ve done in the Teanaway River subbasin, a tributary of the Yakima River in Washington.
With a combination of water conservation/water use efficiency upgrades, water acquisitions,
and Yakama Nation/BPA/NPCC releases of native Spring Chinook smolts at an upriver
acclimation pond, we are now seeing huge increases in fish production while still supplying
irrigation water to most of the historically irrigated acreage. We have a water conservation
and a fish restoration success story in the Teanaway. It’s a great showcase – even a posterchild subbasin success story in my book.
I DO hope you all feel good about the work you’re doing. In my book, you’re all heroes.
You are DOING THE GOOD WORK! I don’t know all of you, but I know many of you.
AND I’m impressed with you all. Feel good about this work, and feel good about
yourselves. You deserve it. I’m really pleased to have this opportunity to get to know you
all better and to share some of my knowledge with you.
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Use each other. Get to know each other. Call each other. E-mail each other. Use the huge
amount of collective knowledge in this room when you have a question or a problem. Use
this network. Think of this group as your extended family; as your allies in our struggle to
restore our streams. If you don’t already have it, I recommend NFWF assemble and
distribute to you all a list of names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses so we can contact
each other and share our knowledge. That would help every one of us I think – having that
resource network to draw upon.
One final point about our extended family: family members often bicker among themselves.
Don’t fall into that habit. It’s so easy to second guess other people’s acquisition decisions,
after they’re made – for example: “Why on Earth did she buy THAT water right?” I see it all
the time in the Yakima Valley. I suppose it’s just human nature, but it’s also damaging. It’s
okay to disagree. That’s often good. But do so respectfully. Offer your opinions, express
your disagreement, but do so constructively. Don’t ridicule and condemn and create bad
feelings. Always remember, you’re dealing with your “family” members - your allies. In the
final analysis, we all have the same goals – stream and fish restoration. We must remember
we’re a small group of people who need to support each other’s efforts. This job’s not easy.
Support each other!
Well, enough about that…
Most all of your projects and proposals are good ones. Whether irrigation efficiency
improvement, or water acquisitions by purchase or lease, or barrier dam removal, or fish
screening – most all are good. Unfortunately, there’s only so much money available to spend
on these projects, so we have to prioritize. We can’t fund all projects. This program is
focused on restoring instream flows for fish. We must get the “biggest bang for the buck” for
our projects. That’s what this training is designed to help you accomplish.
Interestingly, it took us 200 years to screw up our streams, but we need to show restoration
successes right away. So, we must PRIORITIZE.
REALITY CHECK however:
- Water acquisitions are opportunity driven. They are based on willing seller transactions,
not condemnation proceedings. Sometimes we have to buy lower-priority water rights when
the opportunity presents itself, or we lose the opportunity. That’s OK sometimes to prevent
the lost opportunity and make incremental progress towards our recovery goals.
We know ag has most of the water rights that are used off-stream in the Columbia Basin. We
can only achieve instream flow restoration if we work cooperatively and effectively with
farmers and ranchers, on a willing cooperation basis. That ag relationship is key to our
success. It’s important to publicize and communicate our successes so we get the word out
about the win-win nature of our projects.
You understand already, probably all of you, that our goal should be to restore normative
flows in our rivers – not natural flows, not pre-development flows, not pre-European invasion
flows, not circa 1800 flows, but normative flows.
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Normative flows are: river flows that provide enough habitat to sustain or expand populations
of anadromous salmonid fisheries in all life history stages (Independent Scientific Group,
1999). Normative flows emulate the historic discharge regime or flow pattern of the stream.
Off-stream water diversion and use is a given and will continue. Normative flows will never
be the same as circa 1800 flows. Nor will we ever again have 16 million adult salmon and
steelhead returning to the Columbia Basin like we did in 1800. Our acquisition program
goals are more modest and reasonable: restoring normative flows and restoring sustaining,
fishable populations of fish to our streams.
In regard to form and function of our streams: If we restore the function, the form will restore
itself.
Our streams used to generally have anastomosed channels – multiple channels providing
varied types of habitats and refugia for fish. Our human actions, since 1850 or so, have
greatly changed the form and function of our streams. In the first 40 years or so after 1850,
we substantially dewatered our streams by irrigation diversions. We continued then to
modify our stream flows and form by building storage reservoirs and by cutting our streams
off from their flooplains by building railroad beds and road beds – both acting as dikes – and
then by building dikes and levees and drains to further constrain our streams into one channel
and drain the floodplain lands for ag use.
Our remnant streams don’t provide as much quality fish habitat anymore. We must restore
floodplain function – reconnect streams with their floodplains. Get rid of dikes and levees
where we can. Then the streams will repair themselves. They need access to their large
woody debris, to their sediment sources, e.g., salmon spawning gravels.
Stan’s Pronouncement:
- Without floods, we can’t have salmon! Let our streams flood.
Floods form new channels, scour holes, cleanse and replenish spawning gravels, charge the
shallow ground water with cool spring runoff water that later is released back to the stream to
sustain late-summer base flows. Cool ground water discharges allow salmon fry to survive
through the summer in our smaller natal streams where much of the stream has temperatures
too high for them to survive in. The fry need these refugia to survive. Spring brooks provide
cool water in summer and warm water in winter and are critical habitats for rearing
salmonids.
If we restore the function, the form will come. Restore flows, reconnect floodplains, provide
fish passage past barriers, screen diversions, etc., and the stream will restore itself.
Ray Huffaker and Norm Whittlesey are ag economics professors at WSU – actually Norm’s
retired now, but is on the Board of the WWT. These guys wrote some great papers in the
mid-1990’s that were clear, concise, and persuasive. They were hugely influential to me.
They helped me understand the fate of water molecules diverted from a stream for irrigation.
They made it clear to me just what the difference is between the consumptively used portion
of a water right and the return flow portion of a right. One has to understand, WELL, this
distinction.
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The consumptively used portion is lost to the drainage hydrologic system – most to the
atmosphere as water vapor (by evapotranspiration), some by incorporation into the crop’s
plant tissue. The return flow portion is ALL the rest of the water diverted. The return flow
portion stays a part of the stream’s hydrologic system. [An exception is where unintended
“enhanced weed growth” along a long ditch or drain occurs. This is usually a minor amount
of increased water consumption though.]
Indeed, as our overlay of perfected water rights developed over time in the Pacific NW,
downstream water users have always been entitled to divert and use the return flow water,
once it returned to the stream, off upstream ag lands.
Therefore, there is one hydrologic truth about water conservation/water use efficiency
projects, they increase stream flows ONLY in the bypassed reach of the stream – from the
diversion point, downstream to the last return flow point. Below that, there is no increase in
instream flow.
Whittlesey and Huffaker’s pronouncement:
- There are only two ways to reduce consumptive water use by ag in a basin:
1) Irrigate fewer acres, or;
2) Switch to crops requiring less water to grow (e.g., wheat, from alfalfa).
So, should water conservation/water use efficiency projects be funded? Yes, sometimes.
I’m a great champion of water conservation/ag efficiency improvements. It’s important –
helps water quality, leaves more water instream below the diversion, but maybe should be
funded by programs targeted for ag conservation, like the NRCS EQIP program; not always
by our program.
EXCEPTIONS:
- Sometimes the ag efficiency project eliminates fish passage barrier dams – hugely
important.
- Sometimes the benefited reach is valuable fish habitat.
- Sometimes the benefited reach is many miles long.
- Sometimes the diverted water is an out-of–basin with return flows NEVER returning to the
drainage.
- Teanaway example: upstream ditches were replaced by downstream pumps leaving 100%
of the former diversion water in the stream for several miles downstream to the new
pumpsites.
Water conservation and Ag water use efficiency projects are an important tool in our stream
restoration toolbox.
Clay has already discussed quantification of beneficial and transferable use of water rights.
Generally speaking, a water right transfer can NOT cause any increase in CONSUMPTIVE
USE under a water right. Matching the consumptive uses is critical. An increase in
consumptive use would cause detriment or injury to 3rd-party water rights or instream flows,
and such a transfer can NOT be approved.
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Thus, transferring an irrigation water right to an instream flow right results in creating an
instream flow water right, at the historic point of diversion, equal to 100% of the valid,
purchased, beneficially-used, water right quantity. Below the return flow point however, the
instream flow water right reduces to just the retired off-stream consumptive use quantity.
Calculating the consumptive use portion of a water right is, therefore, important. Retiring an
off-stream water use for instream flow enhancement, where the off-stream consumptive use
is high, produces an intream flow enhancement that’s greater in quantity – and protectable all
the way downstream to the Pacific Ocean.
In Washington, we’re lucky. We have the Washington Irrigation Guide (WIG), produced by
the NRCS and the Washington State Cooperative Extension Service.
The WIG makes it easy for us to calculate the consumptive use portion of a water right. It
provides the Crop Irrigation Water Requirement (CIR) [NOT total crop water need], for 60
different crops (i.e., all the crops commonly grown in the area) at 90 different climatic
stations around the State of WA. The WIG CIR’s are AVERAGE-YEAR (1 in 2 year
returns) CIR’s and are derived by the SCS (now NRCS) modified Blaney-Criddle Method –
used to estimate seasonal consumptive use. The CIR IS the consumptive use portion of a
water right.
The WIG is a great tool for us in Washington. I hope the other Columbia Basin states have
similar documents – or are developing them. Check with your NRCS folks or your
Cooperative Extension agents or Universities.
Here’s another great resource: This is something you ALL need a copy of:
“Washington Water Acquisition Program – Finding Water to Restore Streams
March 2003
Publication No. 03-11-005
Available on the WA Dept. of Ecology website at
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/biblio/0311005.html
Or from:
WA Department of Ecology, Publication Distribution Center
PO Box 47600
Olympia, WA 98504-7600
E-mail: ecypub@ecy.wa.gov
Phone: (360) 407-7472
This document was put together by Hedia Adelsman and a team of people from Ecology,
including Curt Hart, Mike Woodall, Phil Crane, Bill Neve, Peggy Clifford, Dave Burdick,
and Perry Harvester of WDFW. Actually, a number of additional folks contributed to this
document’s preparation. Even I helped.
This document is a great reference for you all to have. It provides concise, bulleted
hydrologic and biologic considerations to review for proposed water acquisitions. It’s a great
reference. I encourage you all to get a copy for your bookshelves. Though it’s over 100
pages long, most of it is appendix. The salient sections are really just a few pages of
concisely-presented information. Get one and get familiar with it. The information is
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directly transferable to all our acquisition work, Columbia Basin-wide. It’s also the primary
source of the information I want to provide you.
The CBWTP website has a couple of documents I recently looked over:
1) Criteria for Evaluating Proposals to Secure Tributary Water, and
2) Water Transactions Checklist for Specific Water Transactions to Increase Tributary
Flows.
These documents were revised in February 2004 and do a good job of asking the important
questions one needs to ask when contemplating an acquisition. Use them. Be very familiar
with them. Understand them.
Perry Harvester has put together a good summary of biologic and hydrologic considerations
for instream flow acquisitions. It’s about 15 pages long. It too is a good resource. I’ve
brought a copy. Perhaps NFWF can make copies and distribute them to each of you.
The future of water allocation is water marketing. Stan Isley 2004
Do what you can to encourage the development of water markets and water banks.
No new water is available for new appropriations. The only way to meet presently unmet
needs is to reallocate existing water rights by the free enterprise system.
We, ourselves, are customers of the water market/water bank. Our cause is aided and
facilitated if a water bank exists to connect us with willing sellers.
We need to ensure, as we create water markets, that protections are included for things like
minimum instream flows and single domestic use, etc. Everything else is marketable, and we
will use the market to buy water to achieve normative stream flows.
A critical component of our effort is monitoring and enforcement. We have to be able to
measure and monitor/track our acquired water. We have to be able to protect our water
against unauthorized downstream diversion and use. A stream patrolperson may be needed.
Hydrological Considerations
- Acquired water needs to be real wet water, not paper water rights.
- It’s best if the water is a senior right with full-season or even full-year availability, not a
junior-priority right only exercisable for the first part of the irrigation season.
- Permanent acquisitions are best. Retired off-stream consumptive use creates an instream
flow water right all the way “to the Pacific Ocean.”
- Leases are less preferable. Long-term leases are better than short-term, better than partialyear or dry-year, but all are tools in the acquisition toolbox.
- Acquire water rights with a high consumptive-use component to maximize the instream
flow increase.
- Banking of water in reservoirs can allow release of water at times for maximum fish benefit
(flow shaping).
- Acquisition of surface water rights is better than ground water rights.
- Gifts or donations of water rights for instream flow use may be eligible for Federal Income
Tax deductions for the donors.
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- Water conservation/water use efficiency improvements don’t reduce ag consumptive use;
they only reduce conveyance and application losses.
- Water conservation projects benefit specific stream reaches – from diversion point to last
return flow point.
- Conservation projects are great where fish migration barriers are eliminated, where WQ is
improved, where the benefited stream reach was dewatered, where instream flow increases
are maximized.
- It can be hard to negotiate real wet water diversion reductions/instream flow increases for
conservation projects on large irrigation districts (there’s much annual variation in water
use/need on districts).
- Ultimately, piped gravity-flow irrigation systems may be more fish-friendly – no pumping
power is needed. Less demand for electricity means fewer smolts in turbines at dams.
- Conserved water from ag efficiency improvements can be applied to instream flows in the
stream, but never to new consumptive uses.
- Capture and consumptive reuse of ag return flows may reduce return flows in the stream
below the return flow point.
- Acquiring out-of-basin transferred water rights may increase instream flows by 100% of the
water right, possibly all the way “to the Ocean.”
- Acquired water rights:
1) 100% go to instream flow at the historic diversion point,
2) The retired consumptive use portion goes to instream flow from the last return flow point
“to the Ocean,” and
3) Consumptive use is determined by month, not averaged over the year. July’s ag
consumptive use is greater than April’s. The instream flow water right Qi will vary by month
as a result (Bell Curve).
- Note: More flow is not always needed in all months in rivers carrying reservoir releases
(think NORMATIVE).
Biological Considerations
- ESA-listed salmonids are present in the stream: highest priority
- Depressed stocks of fish or reduced diversity of species in the stream?
- Stream is a migration corridor or provides spawning or rearing habitat for anadromous or
resident salmonids.
- Stream has fish migration barrier to historic habitat that can be eliminated.
- Stream has inadequate flows caused by diversions, limiting fish recovery.
- Stream has impaired WQ caused by lack of flow.
- Small streams show the best cost/benefit ratio for acquisitions, have best chance for
immediate fish benefit.
- Larger streams with several ESA-species rank high for flow improvement.
- Is the likelihood of long-term flow and fish recovery good?
- Work with your fisheries agencies and Indian Tribes to identify and prioritize the streams
you should target for acquisition/recovery (e.g., Limiting Factors Analysis).
- Determine current habitat conditions & needs.
- Determine the time period when flows are inadequate.
- The acquisition must help achieve instream flow requirements for fish in critical fish habitat
stream reaches.
- The acquisition may also benefit WQ, stream side channels, restoration of riparian
vegetation, and floodplain function.
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Stan says:
Don’t write off the larger streams. The long-term view says each acquisition for instream
flow use is incremental progress toward achieving normative flows in our streams.
Know your fish life histories. Salmon smolts need pulse or flushing flows to the Ocean in the
spring. Spring Chinook and Steelhead and Coho fry live a year in the stream before
outmigrating to the Ocean. Fall Chinook outmigrate their first spring. Late summer flows in
small streams are almost always a limiting factor for salmonid fry and resident fish. Tailor
water acquisitions to provide the most benefit to your target fish.
Teanaway River example:
- From 1980 through 1999, an average of 1 Spring Chinook salmon redd was counted
annually in the entire Teanaway basin. In many of those years, no redds were counted.
- Purchase and lease of water rights for instream flow use, by both Trendwest and
Reclamation, occurred in the late 1990’s.
- BPA/NPCC/Reclamation/and Yakama Nation provided funding for 3 new ag irrigation
systems, eliminating diversion berms and improving flows in specific stream reaches,
completed in 2000.
- The above improvements greatly improve fish passage through the lower Teanaway River.
- 21 Spring Chinook salmon redds were counted in 2000, 21 counted in 2001.
- BPA/NPCC/Yakama Nation supplementation facility-reared native Spring Chinook salmon
fry were released at the Jack Creek acclimation pond on the North Fork Teanaway River in
2000.
- 110 Spring Chinook salmon redds were counted in 2002 in the Teanaway Basin.
By using all the tools in the toolbox, we have achieved this water conservation success story
in the Teanaway River Basin. Let’s do this in other river basins too.
That’s it. Thanks again for the opportunity to talk to you today. Get ahold of those reference
documents I recommended – and network back and forth when you have questions or
problems. We’re all happy to help out.
Stan Isley
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