Please take this short survey and help us prepare for the irrigation season.
With the historic drought and lack of available water for the District, we are considering two options for the upcoming irrigation season once Tumalo Creek water runs out (usually at the end of June). We hope to have enough water to do a 7-day on, 7-day off rotation (as we did last year) for the month of July. This will only be for the month of July. By August, we will have to choose one of the two options listed in this survey.
Please take this short survey and help us prepare for the irrigation season. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Tumalo
Note: Starting the season later, does not mean we are able to run water longer. The water we deliver in the beginning of the season comes from Tumalo Creek, which is a live flow and is fully dependent on the past year’s snowpack. We do not currently have a reservoir that will hold storage water here in Tumalo so if we don't take the Tumalo Creek water when our certificates allow us to, it will just stay in-stream. Every year when Tumalo Creek snow melt runs out, we switch from Tumalo Creek water to storage water from Crescent Lake. Unfortunately, because of the relatively small drainage area around Crescent Lake, the lake is slow to fill and is mostly filled with spring runoff from the snowpack, which at this time is below average and the lake is not refilling as quickly as it has in past years. This is the reason that we now have to resort to a rotation, because there is not enough water in the reservoir to deliver to all patrons for a full season.