Legislators keep water bills afloat

Committee sends along diluted versions

Mitch Lies
Capital Press Staff Writer

May 4, 2007

SALEM - On a day more notable for bills that didn't move than bills that did, two watered-down water bills managed to stayed afloat.

The House Energy and Environment Committee on April 30 - the final day for committees to move some bills - gave life to bills promoting water-use measurement and tightening down on well exemptions.

The amended version of the bills, however, were a far cry from the original bills that drew heated opposition testimony earlier this session.

In its original form, the bill promoting water-use measurement called for all water users in the state to measure and report water usage. Farmers and ranchers from around the state flooded the Capitol to testify in opposition to that bill.

Likewise, the original bill limiting well exemptions was far more draconian than the version that cleared the House committee earlier this week. Under the amended version that passed the committee April 30, the amount of water use exempt from permit requirements is scaled back from 15,000 gallons a day for a single dwelling to 5,000 gallons a day.

Debbie Colbert, a communications specialist with the Oregon Water Resources Department, said most homeowners should continue to be exempt from permit requirements given that a family of four generally uses approximately 300 gallons a day.

Other existing exempt uses, such as digging wells for stockwater, were not addressed in the amended version of the bill and will continue to be exempt from permit requirements.

A new expedited schedule for moving bills implemented by legislative leaders earlier this session called for lawmakers to move bills out of committees of origin by April 30. Bills that failed to do so are dead. The schedule was implemented in an attempt to close the session by June 29.

Among bills that failed to move by April 30 were bills banning field burning and a bill restricting application of pesticides near schools.

The amended version of House Bill 2564, which originally called for all water users to measure and report water use, does little outside giving legislative stamp of approval to an existing Oregon Water Resources Department program.

The program, adopted in 2000 by the Oregon Water Resources Commission, calls for the department to promote water-use measurement at significant points of diversions. The water department worked with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to identify the significant points.

Lawmakers in recent days stripped from HB2564 several provisions that concerned natural resource groups, including provisions that the department could require water-use measurement in areas of unresolved water disputes or areas where an instream water right is not being met. Also cut out of the amended version unveiled last week is a provision granting the state authority to shut down a water user's diversion if the user fails to comply with water-use measurement reporting requirements.

Language requiring that all water users measure and report their water usage previously was stripped from the bill.

The amended bill calls for Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board to designate $250,000 per biennium to the Oregon Water Resources Department to help landowners and industrial water users install water-measuring devices at significant points of diversion.

Also April 30, the committee moved a bill to help parties move forward water-storage projects. House Bill 3203 creates a place-holder fund in the Oregon Department of Economic Development to be used for funding water storage projects' pre-development costs, such as hydrological analyses.

The amended version of the bill calls for the state to put $1 into the fund.

The House Energy and Environment Committee moved House Bills 2566 and 3203 to Ways and Means with a do-pass recommendation and moved HB2564 to the floor with a do-pass recommendation.

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