MEDFORD, Ore. – It’s been a wet January in the Rogue Valley, and many local agencies say they’re happy to report reservoir levels rising.
The Talent Irrigation District said they use water from Howard Prairie, Hyatt Lake and Emigrant Lake.
The district says they’ve seen a gain of almost 4,000-acre feet, thanks to the recent storms and weather activity.
They say it puts them at around 32% on overall storage between the three lakes, which totals for over 37,000-acre feet where last year it was only at 16% at this time.
Staff say that the rainfall has been very beneficial thus far to the drought conditions in Southern Oregon.
Talent Irrigation District’s Wanda Derry said,
“We should be able to make a full irrigation season or very close to it, if we’re able to get a halfway wet spring, that will allow us to put the irrigation season off a little bit longer and that will allow us to run a later in the season.”
Derry says last summer they were only able to run irrigation for 17 weeks.
Longer irrigation seasons allow farmers to take better care of their crops.
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