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50 Wines&Vines January 2015 grapegrowing G rowers in California's Sonoma and Napa counties can sign up for an evaluation of their drip-irriga- tion systems to ensure they're watering as effi- ciently as possible. The resource conservation districts in Sonoma and Napa counties are offering irrigation system evaluations through their mobile irrigation labs. After scheduling an evaluation, a district staff member spend about six to eight hours evalu- ating an irrigation system. Keith Abeles manages the program in Sonoma County. He said the evaluations typically involve an interview with the property owner to get a sense of the system before conducting a thorough audit using a protocol developed at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and the California Department of Water Resources. Abeles conducts a number of tests of the irrigation sys- tem to evaluate if emitters are working as designed and if the entire system is operating with the right pressure to ensure there is not too much or too little water being used. Testing includes a full system flush to look for plugged emitters and to evaluate what may be in the system like sand, clay, insects or algae. This also provides insights into the pump and filter system. The tests also are combined with a site evaluation to determine how topography can impact flow rates. Abeles said an optimal system is one that is providing a uniform rate of flow. "The idea is to get the distribution uniformity as even as possible," he said. Abeles has conducted a few of the evaluations in Sonoma County and said the district is offering the service for free— although they may need to start charging in the future. The Napa Conservation Resource District also is offering the evaluation free to the first 10 vineyard owners who sign up and at a cost of $200 per evaluation after that. Frances Knapczyk, who is managing the program for the Napa County Resource Conservation District, said the district could waive the fee if the vineyard manager provides an employee to assist with the evaluation. Pilot program in Russian River Valley These vineyard evaluations are the brainchild of Kara Heck- ert, executive director of the Sonoma Resource Conserva- tion District. She heard about mobile water labs that other resource conservation districts in the state had set up for crops in 2009 and decided to gauge local interest in a similar program for vineyards. "We have a forward-thinking vine- yard community, and after talking to several local growers, it seemed that there was quite a bit of interest in this kind of program," she said. That year Heckert said she wrote up a grant proposal and received $74,505 from the Natural Resources Conservation Service to start a pilot program in the Russian River water- shed. The pilot program received input from a technical committee that included the Sonoma Winegrowers Associa- tion, Advanced Viticulture and the University of California Cooperative Extension; then the district trained staff mem- bers to conduct the evaluations. The pilot program proved suc- cessful, and the state Department of Water Resources and Natural Resources Conservation Service Environmental Quality Incentives Program responded with $272,355 in grants for 2013 and $195,000 in 2014 to fund the program in Sonoma and Napa counties. Abeles said the program isn't intended to provide guidance for how to achieve specific grape- growing goals but to help ensure an irrigation system is operating as efficiently as possible. He said a common issue he's seen is when emitters are replaced by models KEY POINTs The resource conservation dis- tricts for California's Napa and Sonoma counties are offering free/low-cost irrigation audits. Irrigation audits can identify where a system is applying too much or too little water, whether there is adequate pressure and if there are any issues with emitters. Coupled with a pump-efficiency audit, the irrigation-review program can help improve operations and reduce costs. To perform a "catch can" test (seen above in a Sonoma County, Calif., vineyard), water is collected from each emitter to ensure flow rates are consistent. Irrigation Audits Available Sonoma and Napa counties' mobile water labs conduct on-site evaluations By Andrew Adams