Friday, March 4, 2022
CapitalPress.com 5
Low reservoir levels foretell another lean
irrigation year in Central, Southern Oregon
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
MEDFORD, Ore. —
Last year was unlike any-
thing Wanda Derry had ever
seen before at the Talent
Irrigation District in south-
west Oregon.
With the region in severe
drought, there was only
enough water stored in
the district’s reservoirs to
last five weeks during the
summer irrigation season.
Famous Rogue Valley pears
went unharvested, and hay
fields that would normally
get two or three cuttings
struggled to muster one.
“It was devastating,” said
Derry, the district manager.
“I know for a fact that a lot
of orchards weren’t able to
harvest at all, because they
didn’t have enough water.”
Derry said 2021 was a
record dry year for the sys-
tem dating back to 1959.
TID serves 3,000 patrons
and 16,300 acres of farm-
land south of Medford.
As difficult as conditions
were last year, 2022 could
be even worse. Storage in
the district’s three reser-
voirs — Hyatt Lake, How-
ard Prairie Lake and Emi-
grant Lake — is down a
combined 2,500 acre-feet
compared to the same time
a year ago.
The region recently suf-
fered through its longest
stretch of winter days with-
out measurable precipita-
tion, breaking the previous
record set in 1976.
“It’s just not looking real
good,” Derry said. “We still
have a little more time, but
not much, and we have a lot
of room to make up.”
Multi-year drought
TID is not alone. Reser-
voir levels are down across
central and southern Ore-
gon, in some cases well
below their 30-year median,
according to the state cli-
mate office.
What that means for
the 2022 irrigation season
remains to be seen, though
farmers and ranchers are
eager for answers as they
decide which crops, and
how much, they can grow.
Larry O’Neill, Oregon
state climatologist, said
dwindling reservoirs is the
result of several consecutive
years with below-average
snowfall and precipitation.
There simply hasn’t been
enough carryover to help
refill reservoirs each year.
“This is just a reflection
of many dry years in a row,
and having very few recov-
ery years,” O’Neill said.
“We’re going through this
very long, dry period.”
Looking at the last two
combined water years,
O’Neill said eight coun-
ties recorded their lowest
total precipitation on record
dating back to 1895. They
include Sherman, Wheeler,
Jefferson, Crook, Wasco,
Deschutes, Klamath and
Jackson counties.
Statewide, 16 of the last
22 water years have had
below-average
precipita-
tion, O’Neill said.
“Unless we have a mir-
acle (storm) system, this
(year) will be 17 out of 23,”
he said.
Data from the USDA
Natural Resources Conser-
vation Service show reser-
voir levels at critical lows
around Oregon. Phillips
Lake, near Baker City in
Eastern Oregon, is virtually
empty, storing 2% of capac-
ity. Gerber Reservoir in
the Klamath Basin is simi-
larly drained at just 4% of
capacity.
Prineville Reservoir in
Central Oregon is at 19%
of capacity, or 33% of its
30-year median. The much
larger Owyhee Reservoir,
which provides storage for
the 67,000-acre Owyhee Irri-
gation District in southeast
Oregon, is at 20% of capac-
ity, or 56% of the median.
Both reservoirs are lower
than they were at this time
last year.
“I think this will be a
big story this year,” O’Neill
said. “We saw how adverse
the impacts were last year.
It can only be worse this
year, without some sort of
historical rain event this
spring or some prolonged
wet period, which we are
expecting less and less as
the weeks go on.”
Return of the convoy: Group holds rally outside
Oregon Capitol opposing timber restrictions
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
SALEM — A large American
flag hung from a crane in front of
the Oregon State Capitol on Feb.
24, serving as the backdrop for
a rally hosted by the grassroots
group Oregon Natural Resource
Industries, or ONRI.
Speakers decried a growing num-
ber of government restrictions on
them and others, while hay and log
trucks circled the statehouse blaring
their horns for legislators inside.
The scene was reminiscent of
demonstrations organized by #Tim-
berUnity in 2019 and 2020 protest-
ing cap-and-trade legislation. In fact,
both groups share the same roots.
Jeffrey Leavy, a log truck driver
from Clatskanie, is the president of
ONRI and was one of the founding
members of #TimberUnity. Leavy
rebranded the association as ONRI
on Feb. 3 following a trademark
dispute with the #TimberUnity
political action committee.
The rally in Salem, which drew
George Plaven/Capital Press
Jeffrey Leavy, president of the grassroots group Oregon Natural
Resource Industries and original founder of #TimberUnity, speaks
during a rally Feb. 24 at the State Capitol.
several hundred people, was an
opportunity to introduce ONRI’s 11
board members and included speak-
ers opposing a litany of grievances
— from mask mandates to pro-
posed new restrictions on farming,
ranching, mining and logging.
“We’ve been shut out of the Cap-
itol for two years,” Leavy said, refer-
ring to COVID-19 closures. “Our
voices haven’t been heard.”
Members pointed to the Pri-
vate Forest Accord — negotiated
between environmental groups and
the timber industry — as a blow to
small-scale loggers and landown-
ers. The deal would widen no-har-
vest buffers along streams, and
calls for a “habitat conservation
plan” for protected species in pri-
vate forests within five years.
The Legislature is now consider-
ing Senate Bill 1501 requiring the
state Board of Forestry to adopt the
rules by Nov. 30.
A companion bill, SB 1502,
would create tax credits for small
landowners to meet the more rigor-
ous standards, compensating them
for unharvested timber.
Mike Pihl, who owns a logging
company in Vernonia, said the rules
strip landowners of the right to cut
timber on their own property.
“What we are doing is already
right,” he said. “We have to keep
fighting.”
ONRI also opposes a bill that
would turn the 93,000-acre Elliott
State Forest into a research for-
est managed by Oregon State
University.
Board member Jen Hamaker
said the state is making it harder for
natural resource-based businesses
to remain viable by imposing
increasingly stringent regulations.
“We’re a natural resources
state,” Hamaker said. “Why they
keep on shutting us down, why they
keep on encroaching on us, why
they keep restricting us and regulat-
ing us and taxing us on it is beyond
me.”
Dave Sullivan, a retired OSU
business professor and president of
the Oregon Advocates for School
Trust Lands, said he is suing the state
for “gross illegal mismanagement”
of the Elliott State Forest. He spoke
at the rally, saying the forest had 600
million board-feet of timber when
the state acquired it in 1930.
Today, he said, it has between
2.5 billion and 3 billion board-feet
— more than four times as much
timber.
“When you pack that much tim-
ber onto a small area, (come) August
when there’s an east wind, if there’s
a spark anywhere, we don’t know
how to stop that kind of wildfire,”
Sullivan said. “We’re just setting us
all up for a fatal catastrophe.”
Leavy encouraged supporters to
join ONRI, contact their legislators
and push back against the state’s
Democratic supermajority.
Oregon’s Douglas County
must reconsider farm and
forest zoning decisions
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Oregon’s Douglas County
must reconsider its decisions
allowing new dwellings on
forestland and creating a new
zone for 20-acre rural home
sites.
Last year, the county gov-
ernment changed its land use
plan to allow so-called “tem-
plate” dwellings in its timber
resource zone.
Such dwellings are per-
mitted if a property is already
surrounded by other homes
and smaller parcels, subject to
statewide criteria and county
land use regulations.
Farmland
conservation
groups — 1,000 Friends of
Oregon and Friends of Doug-
las County — challenged that
decision before the state’s
Land Use Board of Appeals.
In response, the county
government admitted that the
change didn’t comply with its
own comprehensive land use
plan.
LUBA has now remanded
the issue to the county, find-
ing that allowing the tem-
plate dwellings isn’t consis-
tent with its policy to prohibit
development that’s incompat-
ible with forest management.
While Douglas County
conceded the problem with
the template dwellings, it
defended creating the “rural
transitional” zoning desig-
nation, which would allow
new 20-acre home sites on
certain farmland.
In this case, LUBA rejected
those arguments and ruled that
the new zoning designation
could negatively affect big
game habitat and violates the
statewide land use goal of pro-
tecting natural resources.
In 2019, Douglas County
was required by LUBA to
reconsider a similar plan to
authorize 20-acre home sites
on 22,500 acres of farm-
land under a new “rural open
space” zoning designation.
The county argued that res-
idential development would
only be allowed on proper-
ties that aren’t suitable for
agriculture or timber produc-
tion. LUBA ruled the new
zoning designation didn’t
comply with farm and forest
preservation goals.
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