Highlighting technology
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 1:18 PM PDT
Larry Meyer Argus Observer
Adrian
Old and new technology highlighted the annual agriculture tour Tuesday as participants viewed a waterwheel that lifts water out of a drain ditch to be delivered to wetlands and watched the latest in technology and equipment for sprinkler irrigation.
The traditional tour is sponsored by the Malheur County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce.
Leaving from the USDA Service Center, Ontario, the first stop was at the Three P's Project, a wetland with waterwheel, at the eastern edge of the Big Bend area, east of Adrian.
One of two constructed wetlands in Malheur County, the Three P's Project's unique feature is the waterwheel, which removes runoff water from a ditch, which drains into the nearby Snake River, for removal of sediment and other pollutants before that water goes into the river.
Landowner and farmer Bill Prather said the wheel was not operating at full efficiency because water in the drain ditch was about foot or more below its normal flow and only about a half of the plastic pipe - used as scoops - were going down into the water. The water is piped to the wetlands.
Prather said there was very little engineering information available for the waterwheel, most of it related to producing electricity, running a pump or wheels used in landscaping. They could not find anything about wheels that lift water, he said.
"Rome built them, but getting information on them is almost impossible," he said.
His wheel was built from materials he had on hand, he said.
By using the wheel, Prather said he stays away from pumping costs.
The wetland project will help with water quality, Ed Gheen, a retired soil and water conservation district staff member said.
"We're trying to clean the water up, provide wildlife habitat," he said.
Pollutants include nitrates, phosphorus, E-coli and heavy metals. Wetlands remove more than 70 percent of the nitrates and more than 80 percent total suspended solids, which carry E-coli and phosphorus. Helping with the water purification, Gheen explained, are a variety of filtering plants, plus good bacteria that do about 80 percent of the purification activity. Commenting the costs of building a wetlands is expensive, Gheen said 5,000 plants were purchased for one part of the wetlands, at $1 per plant. It may cost $20,000 to $30,000 for one wetland project, in plants alone, he said.
Lance Phillips, Malheur County Soil and Water Conservation District manager, said the Fletcher Gulch Project at Barlow Farms, north of Mitchell Butte, was designed to use water more efficiently to reduce soil erosion and improve production. The project, which switched the farms from flood irrigation, to sprinklers, has reduced erosion to almost nothing. Jay Chamberlin, manager of the Owyhee Irrigation District, said the projects link today's technology with a 70 year-old systems, referring to the Owyhee Project.
"We're changing our practices as growers change from flood (irrigation) to sprinklers," he said, referring to the district. "We've spent about $100,000 on canal automation," he said.
That equipment helps monitor and control the flow in the main canal, he explained.
With the sprinkler systems, growers use much less than their allotted four-acre-feet of water during a growing season, Chamberlin said.
