Treasure Valley Undervalues Water, Study Says Depletion, Pollution Of Idaho Wells Tied To Region’s Lack Of Appreciation
The people of Treasure Valley may be undervaluing the precious ground water beneath their irrigated cropland in the high desert of eastern Oregon and southwest Idaho, government scientists say.
The National Academy of Science’s National Research Council reviewed polluted wells around Ontario, Ore., as one of seven case studies of failure to fully recognize the economic and environmental value of ground water.
Ground water in the United States is usually taken for granted, the council said.
“As a result, depletion and pollution continue largely because it is not recognized that ground water has a high or long-term value.”
The council report issued this week says more attention should be paid to reducing agricultural pollutants, which may require changes in irrigation operations that make possible the production of potatoes, sugar beets, onions and hay over 180,000 acres in the region. Treasure Valley gets only 10 inches of rainfall annually.
As in most places, the benefits of ground water have not been estimated for the valley, the report said.
“Economic analysis has been limited to assessment of the consequences to farmers of meeting” water-quality standards, the council said.
“An understanding of the values of ground water could aid in comprehensive water management,” said the case study for Oregon.
The private, non-profit council provides science and technology advice under congressional charter as the principal agency of the National Academy of Sciences based in Washington, D.C.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality found elevated nitrate levels in two-thirds of the wells in the Treasure Valley area from 1983-86. In more than one-third, levels exceeded the federal drinking-water standard for public water supplies.
Agricultural fertilizers were identified as the primary contributors to the nitrate pollution, along with pesticides associated with onion production. In 1989, the state agency declared Malheur County a ground water-management area and set special nitrate-level maximums that must be adhered to by the year 2000.
Most efforts to reduce agricultural effluents reaching the aquifer - the below-ground formation of sand and porous stone containing ground water - call for better irrigation-water management, because irrigation appears to elevate the levels of agricultural pollutants in ground water, the report said.
Russ Hursh, a Malheur County administrative court judge who owns a mobile home park, said he has been battling the water problem for 30 years. At certain times of year, bottled water has to be purchased for affected residents because other techniques don’t do enough to reduce the nitrate levels, he said Thursday in a telephone interview from Ontario, Ore.
“A lot of it has come from the fertilization of our crops. But without fertilization of the crops, people wouldn’t be living here and we wouldn’t have the jobs,” Hursh said.
“You could just close the area up and put it back to being a desert like it was before, or you can try to work to minimize it,” he said.
The council noted that the importance of water quality has increased in Oregon because of growing concerns about endangered salmon fisheries in the Snake and Columbia rivers.
In addition to supplying more than half the nation’s drinking water, ground water plays a “crucial but often overlooked role in sustaining wetlands and other ecosystems,” the report said.
“Yet it is undervalued because no widely accepted means exist to measure its inherent benefits to society,” the council said in the report, which also included case studies in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, California, Arizona and Massachusetts.
The case study for Oregon suggested a range of ways to better measure the value of ground water.
“For example, the value of unpolluted ground water for household uses can be estimated through expenditures on averting behavior, such as purchase of bottled water or purification systems,” the report said.