Over 70 Years of Representing Farmers and Ranchers of the Klamath Project

loader-image
8:51 am, Feb 15, 2025
temperature icon 25°F
broken clouds

Klamath Water Users Association reporting impacts to irrigation caused by power shut-offs

KLAMATH COUNTY, Ore. – The Klamath Water Users Association, a group that represents farms and ranches in the Klamath Reclamation Project, says that de-energizing is impacting ranchers in the area who use irrigation pumps on their crops.

Irrigation pumps are powered by electricity, bringing water away from local lakes and marshlands into drier areas. Pacific Power de-energizes lines in impacted areas during fire season to reduce wildfire risk, but services that require that energy are also impacted.

“Row crops like onions need to have water on a routine schedule,” Gene Souza, the manager for the Klamath Irrigation District, said. “If the water is not applied in those schedules, the crop is not as marketable.”

Souza said some of the changes he’d like to see from PacificCorp include isolating higher-risk areas and instating a public utility district to specifically serve the Klamath Irrigation District.

KWUA encourages any farmer experiencing an outage to their irrigation system to reach out to Pacific Power’s irrigation hotline at 800-715-9238.

NewsWatch 12 reached out to Pacific Power for more information on power to pump irrigation, and has not yet received a response.


KDRV, July 19, 2024
https://www.kdrv.com/news/waterwatch/klamath-water-users-association-reporting-impacts-to-irrigation-caused-by-power-shut-offs/article_83335c54-462f-11ef-ae5f-0b3f3b069738.html
By, Liv Collom

Share News: 

Scroll to Top