Prepare For A Very Bad Water Supply Year

“The main message is they need to know that it's a very bad water supply year and they need to be doing the things that they can do to adapt," said Roza Irrigation District Manager Scott Revell.  "And most Roza growers have probably a dozen different things that they can do, and in many cases have been doing in the good years, to be ready for the bad years.”

Water isn’t flowing yet, but the Roza Irrigation District wants central Washington growers to be prepared for what could be a long season.  Revell said it’s shaping up to be the 4th year in a row of drought.

And he expects there will be farmers who chose not to put water on their fields this year.

“Probably hay and some corn that's not going to get grown this year just because they don't have the water," Revell said.  "And on top of that, the price [for those commodities] is really low anyways.  And I think you're going to see some decent demand internally, inside the district between farmers.  You know, farmer A pays farmer B for their water, and then the farmer B just doesn't grow their pasture or their hay or something like that for the year.”

Revell said at this point, 2026 is very similar to the numbers the farming community saw in 2015, which was a challenging drought year across the Northwest.

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