March 6, 2015
CapitalPress.com
13
Water summit comes to Eastern Oregon
Sessions touch on
legislation, funding
for projects
By GEORGE PLAVEN
EO Media Group
PENDLETON, Ore. — It’s
no secret that water is a pretty
big deal in Eastern Oregon.
Faced with growing de-
mand and economic reward,
local farmers have been trying
for years to secure new water
supplies for irrigation from
the Columbia River. But the
answer isn’t that simple; en-
dangered fish also need water
to survive, and hydroelectric
dams need water to keep the
power grid in balance.
The result is a complicated
maze of laws, regulation and
compromise. It’s against that
backdrop the agricultural team
from Dunn Carney law firm of
Portland held a water summit
Feb. 28 in Pendleton.
About 40 people gathered
at the Slickfork Saloon to hear
a brief presentation from Tom
Byler, director of the Oregon
Water Resources Department,
as well as a panel discussion
about the future of water
availability for agriculture.
Dunn Carney — the same
firm that represented an area
farmer in the mysterious case
of genetically modified wheat
in 2013 — has hosted a num-
ber of agricultural summits in
the past, but never one east
of the Cascades. The timing
is appropriate, with potential-
ly millions of dollars in state
funding for water projects
working its way through this
year’s legislature.
Newly inaugurated Gov.
Kate Brown has said she will
pursue a $51.6 million water
development fund that John
Kitzhaber proposed before
his resignation. Friday also
marked the first day of rules
advisory meetings for Senate
Bill 839, which was approved
by the 2013 legislature and au-
thorizes a $10 million Water
Supply Development Account.
Agriculture already ac-
counts for 85 percent of the
state’s water use, yet forecasts
show it will need another
million acre-feet to keep up
with demand. One acre-foot
is equal to 326,000 gallons of
water.
“We know there’s new de-
mand on the horizon,” Byler
said. “However we solve our
problem is going to take time,
it’s going to take energy and
it’s going to take money.”
SB 839 is the horse they’re
riding to get there, Byler said.
A four-member panel talk-
ed in greater detail about how
to get projects off the ground,
from navigating complex laws
to building a system that can
efficiently pump water to the
farm.
Any water taken from
the Columbia River must
be mitigated through buck-
et-for-bucket
replacement,
said Kate Moore, environmen-
tal attorney with Dunn Carney.
It must also remain in stream
between April 15 and Sept. 30,
when it’s needed for fish runs.
“Despite all these difficul-
ties, there’s a lot of opportuni-
ty here,” Moore said.
Craig Reeder, board chair-
man for the Northeast Oregon
Water Association, believes
they have a balanced solution.
Their project calls for up to
500 cubic feet per second of
new water into three distinct
critical groundwater areas, in
exchange for mitigation work
farther upstream.
Last November, a top re-
sources aide for Kitzhaber
said they were “weeks away”
from a deal between NOWA
and environmental groups that
would clinch a smaller chunk
of water to get the project
started. That was before all
the drama in the governor’s
office, and Reeder said they
have been reassured the sup-
port is still there under new
Gov. Brown.
“We’re closer than we
have ever been,” Reeder said.
“We’ve got a shot. So be in-
volved, and ask how you can
participate.”
Environmentalists claim feds minimized logging impacts
Timber sales
challenged before
9th Circuit
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
PORTLAND — Environ-
mentalists claim the federal
government tried to minimize
the harmful effects of a log-
ging project they’re seeking
to stop in Southern Oregon.
Soda Mountain Wilder-
ness Council and several
other groups have asked the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Ap-
peals to reverse the findings
of a federal judge who previ-
ously ruled the U.S. Bureau
of Land Management law-
fully approved the 600-acre
“Sampson Cove” timber sale.
The BLM failed to consid-
er the “cumulative impacts”
that the logging project
would have in conjunction
with a nearby timber harvest
that the agency was planning,
said Marianne Dugan, attor-
ney for the environmental-
ists, during oral arguments in
Portland on March 2.
“There is an incentive not
to mention adjacent timber
sales,” she said.
The BLM had already
named the neighboring “Cot-
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Pioneer Courthouse in Portland, where the 9th Circuit held oral arguments in logging cases March 2.
tonwood” timber sale and
knew the geographic area in
which trees would likely be
logged even if the final plans
weren’t yet laid out, Dugan
said.
The BLM’s claim that
the Cottonwood project
wasn’t “reasonably foresee-
able” at the time it approved
the Sampson Cove project
“stretches credulity,” she
said.
The government should
not be allowed to engage in
regulatory “gamesmanship”
by excluding the adjacent
timber sale from its broader
consideration of environmen-
tal effects, she said.
“There’s no mystery as to
the location of the trees,” Du-
gan said.
Nina Robertson, the gov-
ernment’s attorney, said the
BLM was contemplating the
Cottonwood project at a pre-
liminary stage but critical
10-2/#4N
factors were still unknown.
Before wildlife surveys
and stand examinations were
completed, it was too early to
include this timber sale in the
cumulative impact analysis
of the Sampson Cove project,
she said.
The situation would have
been different if the two
projects were developed in
parallel, Robertson said. “In
this case, that overlap never
occurred.”
The cumulative impacts
were nonetheless considered
during a later environmental
assessment of the Cotton-
wood project, she said.
During the March 2 hear-
ing session, the 9th Circuit
also heard oral arguments in
another dispute over a federal
timber project.
Bark, an environmen-
tal group, opposes the U.S.
Forest Service’s 2,000-acre
Jazz timber sale in Oregon’s
Mount Hood National Forest
because the thinning project
would allegedly aggravate
large soil shifts known as
“earth flows,” leading to sed-
iments runoff into streams.
The government exagger-
ated the economic costs of
Bark’s suggested alternatives
for the project in order to re-
ject them, said Brenna Bell,
attorney for the environmen-
tal group.
Bark’s main concern is
with the rebuilding of 12
miles of previously decom-
missioned roads, which Bell
likened to “picking off a
scab.”
“That will set back the re-
covery for years in a protect-
ed watershed,” she said.
Robert Oakley, attorney
for the government, said the
Forest Service examined the
group’s alternatives but found
they’d reduce the project’s
size by 75 percent to 95 per-
cent, rendering it unpractical.
The Jazz timber sale aims
to thin overcrowded trees
that are unlikely to grow any
thicker because they were
planted so close together, he
said.
“Old growth” stands
won’t be logged as part of the
project, which actually in-
tends to help the forest recov-
er such “late successional”
characteristics more quickly,
he said.
As for the impact of roads,
the project will actually im-
prove conditions in much of
the project area, Oakley said.
“The government could not
have been more transparent
on the status of the soils.”
Runoff of sediments from
log hauling in the timber sale
area is so small as to be im-
measurable due to mitigation
measures, said Rob Molinelli,
attorney for Interfor, a timber
company that intervened in
the lawsuit as a defendant.
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