OPINION
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
A5
State needs information about water use to manage it
OTHER VIEWS
Randy Stapilus
L
ike other Western states, Oregon has a
water department — the Department
of Water Resources — and extensive
water law and regulation, and there’s a rea-
son for this. Water is an essential resource,
our lives depend on it, and ensuring we
have water available means regulating it
intelligently.
To do that, we need information, and high
on the list of data points we depend on is
this: Who uses the water — the largest por-
tions of it — and what does that mean for
other water users? You could say that’s a
question of essential public interest.
It’s also a question for lawsuits, current
Oregon lawsuits that may portend whether
we have enough information to manage our
water.
In many places around the West (and
around Oregon), water use is easy to track.
Most Western states operate under the prior
appropriation doctrine — first in time, first
in use — which allows the first person to
put a claim for a specific source and amount
of water to use, to have priorities over other
users. This system of priorities is carefully
recorded in public records. A 2015 report
from the U.S. Geological Survey relied on
that information in estimating, for example,
that 42% of freshwater withdrawals are used
for irrigation agriculture.
But some users of water, who get theirs in
a subdivision from primary water right hold-
ers, aren’t so openly recorded, and these can
account for some big water uses.
Last September, a reporter from The Ore-
gonian requested information from the city
of The Dalles about how much water the
tech giant Google was using at its operations
there. The city refused to release the infor-
mation, saying it amounted to “trade secrets”
considered confidential under state law. Resi-
dents in the area, including farmers and busi-
nesses, have raised questions and expressed
concern about how much water Google may
be using.
That argument was rejected by the Wasco
County district attorney, who reviewed the
case and concluded that although a trade
secret might be considered confidential, the
city hadn’t shown that information about
raw water usage qualified; he said the infor-
mation should be turned over. (The situa-
tion was linked to a $28.5 million agreement
between the city and Google, so city officials
had some interest in the arrangement.) The
city of The Dalles fired back with a lawsuit
against the Oregonian. The case continues.
This year, another effort to find out who is
using scarce water has surfaced at Bend. But
while the case at The Dalles centers on infor-
mation kept by a public agency, the Bend
dispute concerns a private company. Maybe.
The Source Weekly newspaper had
decided to look into water use in its mostly
dry east-of-Cascades area, and said what
started out as a basic records request has
evolved into an inquiry about oversight for
this community’s “most precious and basic
of resources.”
With that in mind, it asked leading water
utilities for information (including addresses)
about their major water users. In many parts
of the state information like that could be
gleaned from state water records. The cit-
ies of Redmond and Bend complied. (The
records turned up many cases of major water
leaks that led to water loss and bloated bills.)
But Avion Water, which serves about 8,000
households and others in the Bend area by
contract, is a privately held business, plac-
ing it typically outside the reach of the
state’s public record laws. Avion rejected the
request, saying the public records laws didn’t
apply to it.
The issue here, too, went to the county’s
district attorney, in this case John Hummel.
He took a similar tack as his counterpart to
the north, while noting that Avion is a private
company. In its article, the Source described
his take this way:
“Hummel sided with the Source and
ordered that Avion must release the records,
because it is ‘the functional equivalent’ of a
public body, according to Hummel’s deci-
sion, meaning it would be subject to public
records laws. To support this, he cited that
Avion currently has a franchise agreement
with the city of Bend and is regulated by the
Oregon Public Utility Commission. He also
stated that Avion did not provide enough evi-
dence that the addresses of its customers
were exempt from disclosure.”
The DA added: “Because Avion failed
to convince me that residential addresses of
their water users constitute a type of person-
ally identifiable information … I find that
these residential addresses are not exempt
from disclosure.”
What a court will make of that is unclear.
Many private organizations clearly exempt
from public records laws are regulated, as
Avion is.
In many areas public oversight of infor-
mation can be and has been limited when
services move from public to private con-
trol. Is water a special case — or should
we rethink what’s really public and what’s
private?
———
Randy Stapilus has researched and writ-
ten about Northwest politics and issues since
1976 for a long list of newspapers and other
publications. A former newspaper reporter
and editor, and more recently an author and
book publisher, he lives in Carlton.
OTHER VIEWS
Leon Werdinger
Pause Joseph’s
proposed
Urban Growth
Boundary swap
J
OSEPH — As most Wallowa County res-
idents know only too well, our communi-
ties are seeing out-of-control growth that is
having negative impacts on our rural way of life.
Local workers are struggling to find affordable
housing. Local businesses (from restaurants to the
hospital) can’t keep employees because new hires
can’t find a place to rent or buy (properties are
priced high and sell within hours of being listed).
And just this week, the city of Joseph
announced its intent to add another 74 acres to the
city’s current Urban Growth Boundary, much of
it along the riparian zone of the Wallowa River on
the west side of town, which currently provides
open space and protects fish habitat. The city is
calling this a “UGB swap” because it plans to add
the parcels at the same time it removes the 70 acres
of the Iwetemlaykin State Heritage Site from the
UGB.
But this swap, which Joseph is not required to
do, does not address the most pressing issues that
our town faces. We need to hit pause and embark
on innovative, careful, strategic planning so that
we can protect the rural nature of Joseph. If we
don’t, we will wind up becoming a smaller version
of Bend or Bozeman — cities that have been inun-
dated with an influx of new residents and are now
dealing with the fallout of unplanned growth.
In Joseph, there has not been a survey of exist-
ing buildable land in the city since 1996. Shouldn’t
we prioritize infill of existing vacant lots within the
current UGB, instead of just expanding the UGB
into open space at the edge of town?
The city also has no functioning Planning Com-
mission (it is working to establish one), so how can
we propose a UGB expansion without a group of
citizens focused on the actual long-term planning
that can help us address the shortage of affordable
housing? In addition, do we know the percent-
age of houses that are vacation homes, used only a
month or two a year by their owners, and therefore
not available to locals?
Even if the city expands the UGB that does not
mean that any of the housing eventually developed
within it will be affordable. We might well wind up
with McMansions and even more vacation homes,
while our local workers continue to struggle to find
housing.
And who ultimately benefits from all this
growth? The real estate industry and some local
businesses. We, the average residents of Joseph
and the surrounding area, do not benefit at all from
the increased traffic, noise and shortage of housing.
Joseph is soliciting written comments and con-
cerns about this UGB expansion (submit to: City
Administrator, P.O. Box 15, Joseph, OR 978467),
as well as in-person testimony at the July 7 City
Council meeting to be held at the Joseph Commu-
nity Events Center at 7 p.m.
This is our chance as local residents to let the
city and county know that we’re very concerned
about the accelerating rate of growth, that we don’t
want to become the next Bend, and that the pro-
posed UGB swap isn’t a well-thought-out solution.
We need to hit pause, put our heads together, get
creative and strategic and come up with an inno-
vative approach to ensure that Joseph retains the
small-town charm and character that make this
place so special to us.
Please mark your calendars and plan to attend
the July 7 City Council meeting.
———
Leon Werdinger has lived in Joseph for 34
years. He is part of a group of Joseph residents
that are very concerned about the runaway growth
of the city.
Conservatives ended Roe v. Wade. They want more
OTHER
VIEWS
Elwood Watson
R
oe v. Wade — January 22, 1973
to June 24, 2022.
What a month it has been.
The right-wing dominated Supreme
Court voted to weaken Miranda rights,
required states to fund private reli-
gious schools, protected border patrol
agents from excessive force claims and
weakened the requirements for con-
cealed-carry laws.
Oh, and Roe v. Wade was officially
overturned.
The ruling nullified a precedent that
had been the law of the land for almost
half a century. While the judgment was
not totally surprising, the court’s deci-
sion sent seismic shockwaves through-
out the nation and reverberated abroad
as well. As if this announcement wasn’t
chilling enough to many people, an
adjacent opinion written by Justice Clar-
ence Thomas indicated that the increas-
ingly ideological court may target more
established decisions.
The far-right justice stated that the
court should consider revisiting cases
relating to access to contraception and
also to same-sex marriage and relation-
ships. Among the previous decisions
that Thomas mentioned are:
• Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
established the right of married couples
to purchase contraception without gov-
ernment restriction.
• Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
set that criminal punishments for
those who commit “sodomy” were
unconstitutional.
• Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) estab-
lished a constitutional right to same-sex
marriage.
Thomas argued that: “(W)e have a
duty to ‘correct the error’ established in
those precedents. … After overruling
these demonstrably erroneous decisions,
the question would remain whether
other constitutional provisions guaran-
tee the myriad rights that our substan-
tive due process cases have generated.”
As some other pundits and politi-
cal observers have deftly noted, in his
list of established precedents, Thomas
omitted Loving v. Virginia, the 1967
Supreme Court case that legalized inter-
racial marriage. I guess this ruling hits
too close to home for Thomas.
The truth is the conservative right
has shrewdly and strategically (albeit in
a perverse and sinister manner) played
the long game. Republicans took cog-
nizance of the success that the left had
garnered during the 1960s, such as its
monumental victories with the Civil
Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights
Act (1965), culminating with the ratifi-
cation of Roe in the early 1970s.
Conservative activists then real-
ized that they could employ similar
strategies.
Unlike previous generations of con-
servatives, who were largely content
with the status quo, this group of reac-
tionary right-wingers have demanded
radical and regressive change. Such
conservatives hate the left, as they deem
them as being with sympathetic or indif-
ferent to communism. They view main-
stream Republicans as pretty much
harboring the same values as centrist
Democrats on fiscal matters and as lib-
erals on social issues. They deeply
resent the civil rights movement for
striking at the heart of Jim Crow and
segregation. The modern feminist move-
ment has earned their ire as well.
However, abortion became the poster
child for their decades-long crusade.
Just as liberals championed politi-
cians like Lyndon B. Johnson, Eugene
McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, con-
servatives rallied around political fig-
ures such as Ronald Reagan and Pat
Buchanan. Although many saw Rea-
gan as the political leader who would
lead them to the promised land, Rea-
gan largely gave lip service to the polit-
ical and cultural right without enacting
much of its political agenda.
George H. W. Bush had an adversar-
ial relationship with this group, and his
son, George W. Bush, was viewed as the
sort of neoconservative who personified
the epitome of all they despised. Iron-
ically, it was the thrice-married, wom-
anizing, crude-talking, habitual sinner,
occasional Democrat-voting, and non-
ideological Donald Trump who deliv-
ered much of their agenda for them. The
old adage “politics makes strange bed-
fellows” certainly rings true in this case.
Now, after realizing their decades-
long goal of getting Roe repealed, as
Justice Thomas has made it clear, the
conservative far right is wasting no time
in making sure as much of its political
plan is swiftly implemented. Indeed, in
response to the verdict, Texas Sen. John
Cornyn remarked, “Now do Plessy v.
Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Edu-
cation.” After predictable public out-
rage, the senator attempted to clarify his
remarks claiming that he had been try-
ing to say that Brown v. Board (1954)
overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
The truth is the far right is increas-
ingly saying out loud the quiet parts
of their discourse. Feeling ever more
emboldened by the rulings of the
past few years, including last week’s
Supreme Court judgment, they have
made no secret of their long-intended
goal to do everything in their power
to ensure that non-White Christians,
women, the disabled and LGBTQ peo-
ple have few, if any, rights, protections,
or claims to citizenship.
As many of them believe, the light
at the end of the tunnel can be seen and
they intend to reach it. People of good
will must make every effort to combat
such an outcome.
———
Elwood Watson is a professor of history,
Black studies and gender and sexuality
studies at East Tennessee State University.
He is also an author and public speaker.