Water dominates resource discussion: Central Oregon better than most of West

            Maybe no other issue has dominated the discussion of resources in the American West  this Spring than water - the lack of it and the consequential impact on agriculture, business and individual homeowners.

            California, the nation’s largest state and by some estimates home to the world’s seventh ranking economy, is facing another season in a multiyear drought that has resulted in fallowed crop land and the  prospect of rising food prices in and outside its borders.

            Much of California’s massive agricultural economy, consuming an estimated 80% of the state’s water, was created with the largesse of water captured from the Colorado River and other sources far from where crops are grown.

For the past two years junior water rights holders in the vast Central Valley, where almonds, tomatoes, melons and apricots are among crops, have been unable to irrigate as water has been allocated by a federal agency  to senior rights holders in southern California.

Watering California's growth

            Apart from agriculture, urban areas such as Los Angeles could only exist with water originating from far away sources such as aqueducts connected to interior sources in the state and  the Colorado River, which also enables Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson and other desert cities to exist.

            The California situation has prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a statewide emergency and impose a mandatory goal to reduce water use by 25%, excluding agricultural consumption.  Brown dramatized the declaration by standing on a grassy area of the Sierras that is usually buried under several feet of snow this time of year.

            Costly desalinization projects are underway in San Diego County and elsewhere in the state to squeeze potable water from the vast Pacific coastline. Farmers and ranchers are turning to groundwater sources by digging new wells, which are not regulated by the state--unlike Oregon, Washington and other states.

            The snowpack in many other areas west of the continental divide is at historic lows including single digit percentages of normal in some places, with a few exceptions.

Only near normal or above rainfall has helped fill many reservoirs as the irrigation season begins and residential lawns revive with the spray of sprinklers that have been idle over the winter.

In Oregon the southern part of the state is again facing the toughest water challenges. Klamath Basin irrigators will once more face curtailed water diversions tied to a low snow year combined with continued reductions related to allocation of water to the Klamath Tribes for fish habitat.

            Bend and Central Oregon, with the exception of the upper Crooked River and the Sisters are to part of Lower Bridge in Terrebonne relying on  Wychus Creek drainage, are in better shape than southern Oregon. The Three Sisters Irrigation District which relies on Wychus Creek (formerly Squaw Creek, has  no reservoir storage to augment water from snowmelt and springs, unlike the other Deschutes basin districts .

Gov. Kate Brown has declared a drought emergency for Crook County, where irrigators rely primarily on the Crooked River drainage. Prineville Reservoir on  Crooked River is only at 84% of normal as of April 6 and the low snowpack in the Ochoco Mountains portends there will be marginal recharge from Spring and Summer runoff.

         On April 6 of this year the stream gauge of the Bureau of Reclamation above Prineville Reservoir recorded Crooked River flows at 216 cubic feet per second (cfs), below half of the 439 cfs logged on the same date in 2014 and less than 25% of the historic average.

         The snowwater equivalent measured by the Natural Resources Conservation Service at 14 stations in the Deschutes/Crooked river watersheds ranged from a low of less than 1% of median to slightly more than 38% at Irish-Taylor Lakes west of Waldo Lake and Summit Lake nearer to Crane Prairie Reservoir.

         Wickiup and Crane Prairie reservoirs which hold water from the upper Deschutes River were at 100% of normal as irrigation districts with water rights in that basin opened canal headgates for the season.

         The low snowpack  in the Deschutes watershed has been offset, as elsewhere, by above normal rainfall this winter. But, as in the Crooked River basin and Prineville reservoir, Wickiup and Crane Prairie will not benefit as usual from replenishment of a steady snowmelt.

Understanding Central Oregon Water Use

        Central Oregon agriculture, unlike much of California, benefits from water drawn from within its river basins--with an  interdependent system of wells, reservoirs and irrigation canals that from April through October enable crop production in an otherwise arid environment.

       Originating in the Cascade mountains, water from springs and snowmelt makes its way into the upper Deschutes Basin reservoirs such as Crane Prairie and Wickiup, both of which were created through efforts of the region’s major irrigation districts.

       These and other irrigation districts in Oregon serve as trustees for water rights for specific agricultural lands, some of those rights dating back to the late 1800s.

       Some landowners have senior rights to divert water directly from the Deschutes or other streams, including the City of Bend which takes water through pipelines for residential domestic use from the Tumalo-Bridge Creek watershed that joins the Deschutes.to the north of town.

    In efforts to mitigate losses of water from leaking canals several districts including Wychus and the Central Oregon Irrigation District have started piping sections of their systems.  Although the projects reduce transmission losses from the canals, some opponents argue that piping also lowers natural recharge of aquifers and results in loss of nearby trees and vegetation.

The major irrigation districts in the region are COID which serves farms and ranches south and east of Bend into the Powell Butte area, and the North Unit providing water to the region’s large agricultural operations from Redmond to the Culver and Madras areas.

The Tumalo, Swalley and Arnold districts provide water in the Tumalo area west of Bend and the Three Sisters Irrigation District delivers waters of Wychus Creek from the Cascades through the town of Sisters and down to the Lower Bridge area of Terrebonne.

The Ochoco Irrigation District distributes water from the Crooked River below Bowman Dam which captures runoff from the Ochocos, the area most imperiled low snowpack.

One byproduct of the continued California drought is an increase in visits by ranchers and farmers considering relocating cattle and crop operations to Central Oregon where water problems are much less severe.