Friday, August 6, 2021
CapitalPress.com 11
Water: Experts say temporary transfers underutilized
Continued from Page 1
University of Nebraska, Ore-
gon has one of the most com-
plex and bureaucratic water
transfer systems in the West,
making it difficult for farm-
ers to move water. Experts
say temporary transfers are
underutilized in Oregon.
A pilot program, called
the Irrigation District Tem-
porary Transfers Pilot Proj-
ect, has shown promise as a
way to make transfers easier
and cheaper, but the tempo-
rary program is in use in only
15 of Oregon’s more than 40
water districts. Advocates say
it should be expanded and
made permanent.
The pilot program, how-
ever, is not a one-stop solu-
tion. Water experts say Ore-
gon also needs an irrigation
infrastructure overhaul.
Knowing the risks
Wait — not too fast, say
critics. Transferring water,
though appealing, carries
risks.
Farmers in California,
where transfer systems are
better established, say the pro-
cess has pros and cons.
Larry Cox, owner of Coast-
line Family Farms in the Sali-
nas Valley, warned that trans-
fers-gone-wrong can damage
the environment, disrupt irri-
gators and hurt the local ag
economy — suppliers and
farm stores — if too many
farmers in one region lay land
fallow.
Cox calls himself a “skep-
tic,” yet said he believes bene-
fits outweigh costs.
“It’s difficult to put your
own personal needs aside to
look at the needs of the whole
district,” he said. “It’s hard to
transfer your water to some-
one else for a time. But you
know the old adage: Either
we hang together or we hang
separately.”
Seth Fiack, a fifth-gen-
eration farmer growing rice
and walnuts near Ordbend
in Northern California, has
allowed neighbors to use his
water through district-level
temporary transfers.
Fiack said transfers have
drawbacks. Over-transferring
can create system-wide loss;
and transferring can expose
a farmer to “social backlash”
from other farmers concerned
about land being laid fallow.
“But do I appreciate being
able to do (water transfers)?
Yes, I do,” he said.
Oregon’s traditional
method
According to the Daugh-
erty Water for Food Global
Institute, Oregon is the only
state requiring a full state-
level departmental review and
approval of transfers within a
district. It is also one of only
two states requiring a public
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
Left to right, Josh Kraemer, Brent Stevenson, Jim McKay and Kathy Bridges at San-
tiam Valley Ranch.
notice period.
“Oregon’s water right
transfer process is painfully
slow and overly bureau-
cratic,” said April Snell, exec-
utive director of the Oregon
Water Resources Congress, a
nonprofit representing irriga-
tion districts.
Critics say the Oregon
Water Resources Depart-
ment, OWRD, is understaffed,
underfunded and must work
with other agencies, making
the traditional process expen-
sive and time-consuming. The
minimum application fee is
$950 and can reach thousands
of dollars, and the process
often takes 6 to 9 months.
“The state is totally bogged
down, short-staffed and suf-
fering from budget holes. That
needs to be cleaned up, in my
opinion,” said one irrigation
district manager, who did not
wish to be named.
According to Bryn Hud-
son, water policy analyst
and legislative coordinator
at OWRD, the department
in 2020 approved only 49
temporary transfers. Critics
say more could have been
approved if the process was
simpler and cheaper.
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
Rows of young hazelnut trees and nursery crops at Jim
McKay Farms, grown with water transferred from Kathy
Bridges’ farm.
district) and get things done. I
think they should make it per-
manent. No doubt about it.
I think every district should
have access.”
Ray Kopacz, district man-
ager of the Stanfield Irrigation
District, between Hermiston
and Echo in northern Oregon,
agreed.
“I think it should be perma-
nent,” he said. “Every district
should have the opportunity to
use it.”
Randy Cooper, owner of
Cooper Farms, whose family
has been farming in the Stan-
field Irrigation District since
1942, said the pilot program
makes temporary transfers
“so much easier than the old-
school way of doing it.”
Pilot project
Single irrigator transfer
In 2003, the Oregon Legis-
lature authorized a pilot proj-
ect allowing three irrigation
districts to make transfers with
oversight at the district rather
than the state level. The pro-
gram has since been expanded
to 15 districts and its sunset
date extended several times.
Giving management to dis-
tricts has saved OWRD staff-
ing time, said Hudson of the
department. Districts still
work with OWRD watermas-
ters, but the bulk of the work is
done by districts.
Brian Hampson, district
manager for the Rogue River
Valley Irrigation District in
Oregon, said the program cuts
excessive paperwork, is inex-
pensive and fast. A district-led
rather than state-led trans-
fer can be completed in time
for growers to make planting
decisions.
“I’m in love with the tem-
porary transfer program,”
he said. “It’s easy, we can do
things in house (within the
Some Oregon farmers
have used the pilot program
to transfer water to themselves
— from one plot or parcel
of land they farm to another,
a process sometimes called
“pooling.”
This can be done through
traditional or pilot channels
within a district.
Kevin Richards, 39, who
farms carrot and grass seeds,
peppermint oil, wheat and
hay at Fox Hollow Ranch
near Madras, has used the
pilot program to transfer water
between plots of his family’s
hundreds of acres of owned
and leased land.
“It’s quite easy to do,” he
said.
Farmer-to-farmer
transfer
Another type of temporary
transfer happens between two
water users.
In Oregon’s Willamette
Valley, two farmers — one
lessor and a lessee — have
discovered how powerful this
tool can be.
Kathy Bridges, 69, is a
sheep rancher in Turner.
Bridges, who grew up in
suburban New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, was exposed to
agriculture at age 12.
“I fell in love with farming
and knew that’s what I wanted
to do for the rest of my life,”
she said.
Her property, Santiam Val-
ley Ranch, consists of pas-
tures, croplands and wetlands
she’s called home since 1980.
Bridges and her husband,
Ken, have produced vegeta-
ble crops and hay on this land,
and, at its peak, about 300
head of Suffolk sheep.
For years, the couple strug-
gled with some sections of
acreage that “wanted” to be
wetlands.
“We finally decided to let
wetland be wetland,” said
Bridges. “We left the best
cropland in agricultural pro-
duction and stopped fighting
the acres that didn’t want to be
farmed. You can’t fight land.”
Bridges knew that if she
stopped irrigating the wetland
portions of her property, she
would forfeit her water right
on those acres. The state of
Oregon has a forfeiture rule
— “use it or lose it” — requir-
ing farmers to make beneficial
use of their water once every
five years to keep the right.
Agriculture counts as a bene-
ficial use.
Property without water
rights is worth little, so Bridges
wanted to keep her right with-
out having to use her water.
The solution? She enrolled
some acres in the Natural
Resources Conservation Ser-
vice’s Wetland Reserve Pro-
gram and offered other acres
for a temporary transfer,
knowing that if another farmer
used her water, it would count
as a beneficial use under state
law.
Meanwhile, a farmer about
6 miles north of her had the
opposite problem: land with
no water right.
Jim McKay, 44, a sixth-gen-
eration grower whose family
has been farming the Willa-
mette Valley since 1856, had
recently invested in a prop-
erty in southeast Salem, Jim
McKay Farms.
The investment, made in
2018, was a risk.
The property was formerly
a dairy whose owners had per-
manently sold the water right
once attached to the land.
McKay bought the land hop-
ing to find water and knowing
he could plant non-irrigated
crops if all else failed.
Bridges and McKay didn’t
know each other, but Brent
Stevenson, the district man-
ager at the Santiam Water
Control District, had a bird’s-
eye view.
When Stevenson saw the
dilemmas — Bridges had
too much water and McKay
too little — he realized they
may be able to solve each oth-
er’s problems. Stevenson sug-
gested a pilot program trans-
fer. McKay could irrigate,
while Bridges could keep her
water right.
The farmers would also
be “part of something bigger
than themselves,” Stevenson
said: keeping land and water
in farm use.
In 2018, Bridges made her
first transfer, the allotted water
for 59.1 acres to McKay. She
has applied for the transfer
each year since.
McKay said he’s grateful.
“Water is life,” he said.
McKay and Bridges
walked along McKay’s ponds,
talking of duck hunting, fish-
ing and the valley’s farming
history while Bridges’ Aus-
tralian Shepherd, Tolkien,
scampered alongside. The air
carried the song of Western
Meadowlarks and the smell of
midsummer blackberries.
A few hours later, the farm-
ers walked McKay’s property,
which today bears the stamp
of water: rows of vigorous
young hazelnut trees crown-
ing a hillside and pots of
blooming nursery stock.
“You can see what
(Bridges’) water has allowed
us to do,” said Stevenson, the
district manager.
Josh Kraemer, McKay’s
farm hand — himself from a
longtime farming family —
said that although McKay
could’ve grown non-irrigated
hazelnuts, the crop performs
better with water.
This summer, McKay and
Kraemer are digging ditches
for new irrigation pipes and
installing drip irrigation
systems.
Standing among the trees,
Bridges smiled.
“This is the type of ag we
need to protect,” she said.
“I’m glad my water’s being
used this way.”
Instream leasing
Another type of tempo-
rary water transfer is called
an instream lease, in which a
water right holder temporar-
ily transfers water into a local
stream. This is considered
“beneficial use” and protects
the farmer from forfeiting
that water through non-use.
Long-term and split sea-
son options are available.
Environmental nonprof-
its and government agencies,
believing the instream flow
to benefit fish, are the most
likely agents to pay a farmer
for this kind of transfer.
Complex transfers
A transfer between two
river drainage basins is a “big
deal,” water experts say, and
doesn’t happen often.
Transfers between dis-
tricts in the same basin are
more common, though still
complicated.
One of Oregon’s most
heated inter-basin trans-
fer debates this summer is
between the North Unit Irri-
gation District, NUID, and
the Central Oregon Irrigation
District, COID.
Central Oregon users have
senior rights and “first dibs”
on water, while North Unit
users, representing thou-
sands of acres of productive
farmland, have junior water
rights.
Desperate North Unit
farmers this summer have
pleaded for water from Cen-
tral Oregon users, offering to
pay.
Although some COID
users are willing to transfer
water to the North Unit, Shon
Rae, deputy managing direc-
tor of COID, said the volume
isn’t enough to push the water
through COID’s 100-year-
old, slow-moving canal sys-
tem. It’s a basic physics prob-
lem that could only be solved
by modern, high-pressure
pipes, she said.
Rae said she sees “poten-
tial momentum” for inter-dis-
trict transfers in future years,
but a better legal system,
like the pilot program, won’t
be enough on its own. New,
modern infrastructure like
piping and improved meter-
ing mechanisms are needed,
too.
For farmers across the
state whose districts have anti-
quated infrastructure and only
the traditional method at their
disposal, temporary water
transfers may still seem like a
futuristic idea.
But for farmers like
Lisignoli,
Bridges
and
McKay, the future is now.
River: ‘I think it’s a way to push people off the land’
Intermittent streams
Continued from Page 1
by 2,500 Oregonians, according to
Wyden’s office.
But county commissioners
worry the proposal — which wid-
ens protective stream buffers from
a quarter-mile to a half-mile on
both sides — will lead to greater
restrictions for timber harvest,
livestock grazing and outdoor
recreation that power their local
economies.
“I think it’s a way to push peo-
ple off the land,” said Wallowa
County Commissioner Susan Rob-
erts. “I think that’s where we’re
headed.”
The River Democracy Act would
total approximately 3 million acres
of newly protected land. That’s an
area roughly the size of Connecticut.
Wyden began soliciting nomina-
tions from the public for proposed
wild and scenic river designations in
October 2019. The nominations were
announced in February 2020.
In October 2020 — four months
before the bill was introduced —
Wyden sent two letters to the Asso-
ciation of Oregon Counties seek-
ing input from local elected officials,
though Roberts said she and her
colleagues were never consulted
directly.
“We can’t find any commissioner,
other than the one who might have
received the letter in the first place,
who knew about this,” she said.
“Especially when it’s this impactful
to your county, your economics and
your people who live here, to me, it
was extremely rude and a slap in the
face.”
The bill would add 404 miles of
wild and scenic rivers in Wallowa
County. Despite repeated requests,
Roberts said neither Wyden or Merk-
ley have provided commissioners
with detailed maps showing how the
county would be affected.
Commissioners instead hired
Anderson Perry & Associates, a con-
sulting and engineering firm based
in La Grande, to do mapping earlier
this year. In their resolution, com-
missioners stated most of the pro-
posed designations are not actu-
ally labeled as “rivers,” are not
free-flowing and do not carry water
year-round.
“Many of the nominations are
creeks or headwaters that carry snow-
melt during the spring and early sum-
mer, and are dry for the remainder of
the year,” the commissioners wrote.
“We fail to understand Wild and Sce-
nic Act protection of free flow for
intermittent streams that carry water
only a few months of the year.”
The American Forest Resources
Institute, a timber industry group,
offered the same criticism in its anal-
ysis of the bill, finding that just 15%
of nominated waterways in the bill
are actually labeled as “rivers.”
Environmental groups and
Wyden both have pushed back
against this complaint, arguing that
small and ephemeral streams are
not only allowed under the Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act, but are critical for
protection.
In a previous statement, Wyden
said 1.7 million Oregonians receive
drinking water from public systems
that rely at least in part on inter-
mittent, ephemeral or headwater
streams.
Drought: 24-month period that ended June 30 was West’s driest ever
Continued from Page 1
since 2000. The percentage
of the West in “exceptional
drought,” the worst category,
has never been higher. More
than 95% of the nine West-
ern states is in some stage of
drought.
Heim said the combination
of prolonged above-average
temperatures and below-nor-
mal precipitation set this
drought apart from two mul-
tiyear droughts that spanned
the 1930s and 1950s.
The U.S. entered another
extended dry episode in 1998,
he said. The drought has
eased periodically, but never
really went away and reas-
serted itself beginning last
spring, he said.
A 24-month period that
ended June 30 was the dri-
est such two-year period ever
in the West, according to
records dating back to 1895.
The same time period was the
sixth warmest.
Other two-year dry peri-
ods, such as 1976 and 1977,
were not as hot, Heim said.
“I would define this
(drought) as still part of a
20-plus-year drought,” he
said. “In the last year and
a half, we have been on an
intensifying trend.”
The drought’s depth, dura-
tion and cause varies by state,
making comparisons between
U.S. Drought Monitor
the current drought and past
droughts imperfect.
In measuring drought,
“there is no simple best way,”
Bond said. “There are differ-
ent flavors of drought.”
Washington’s
1977
drought was much worse
judged solely by the precip-
itation index. About 90% of
Washington was in excep-
tional drought in June 1977,
compared to less than 1% this
June.
Idaho and Oregon also
were in deeper droughts in
June 1977 than this year,
according to the precipitation
index. California, however, is
worse off this year.
Long dry spells lead to
hydrological droughts, when
streams and reservoirs are
low and wells are dry.
Southern Oregon has
fallen into a hydrological
drought, and it will take a
long time to recover, O’Neill
said.
“Even if we get normal
precipitation in the winter,
we would expect to be in at
least moderate hydrological
drought next year,” he said.
The federal Climate Pre-
diction Center says that odds
favor a La Nina forming next
winter. The climate phenom-
enon generally means a good
snowpack in Washington and
a poor snowpack in Northern
California.
In Oregon, La Nina often
has less pronounced effects,
O’Neill said. The dividing
line between good and poor
snowpacks in La Nina years
falls about Roseburg, he said.