Russell Sadler: Time to take a look at Oregon's water

Guest column:
Time to take a look at Oregon's water

By RUSSELL SADLER
For The Daily Astorian
March 20, 2007

Although is it politically fashionable to be preoccupied with petroleum these days, the most contentious resource in Oregon over the next 50 years is likely to be water.

Ironically, in a state where it rains so much you see bumper stickers proclaiming "Oregonians don't tan. They rust," there is growing concern about the future adequacy of drinking water supplies.

Water shaped the European-American settlement of the Oregon Country more than 150 years ago. With the exception of Oregon City, the territorial capital, Oregon's oldest cities were not built on the valley floor of the Willamette, Rogue and Columbia basins. The oldest cities, Astoria, McMinnville, Silverton and Ashland among them, were built on higher ground in the foothills of Cascades, Siskiyous and the Coast Range to avoid the periodic flooding that inundated settlements on the valley floor.

And the real growth of the Rogue and Willamette valleys did not occur until after World War II when federal dams were built on the tributaries allowing development on land once swept regularly by seasonal flooding.

Oregon's population doubled in the 1950s and '60s. It doubled again between 1970 and 2000. It is projected to double again by 2025. The fastest growing part of the state over the last 30 years is Central Oregon - Bend, Redmond, Prineville and La Pine - and is expected to remain the fastest growing region during the next 25 years.

The drinking water for nearly all Western and Central Oregon cities comes from tributaries fed by rain and snowmelt in the Cascades, Siskiyous and Coast Range. These rivers provide the water that recharges the aquifers that supply rural well water for domestic use and agricultural irrigation. The water rights to virtually all Oregon rivers are overappropriated, and builders and developers are turning to groundwater to supply the growing population.

The State Water Resources Department has growing evidence that ground water is being consumed faster than it can be replaced. The department fears the aquifers are declining, especially in drier Central and Eastern Oregon, where irrigators and cities are more dependent on groundwater supplies than in Western Oregon.

Decades ago the Legislature tried to get a handle on this problem by requiring large-volume water users to replace ground water they pumped out by creating a "banking" system of water rights that can be purchased from others who do not use their entire water right. This exchange of water rights provides extra instream flow to recharge the aquifers.

But the Legislature exempted certain "rural wells" on individual ranches and farms that were used for "domestic" purposes from the requirement to replace the water they consume.

This exemption has become a loophole that encourages rural development. The Water Resources Department estimates there are 230,000 exempt wells in rural areas of the state and they are growing by 3,000 a year. Measure 37, the deceptive developer rights measure that appears to permit more rural residential development, threatens to steeply increase the number of exempt wells.

Exempt wells for domestic consumption compete directly with regulated well water for agricultural irrigation. At a time when farmers are considering growing new crops to produce biofuels, they will have to dig deeper wells to keep up with the declining water levels in the aquifer. The problem could become acute as the number of wells exempt from the requirement to replace the water they consume grows rapidly.

There are new exempt wells going in on aquifers where the Water Resources Department has already restricted large volume uses in the Umatilla Basin and further east in Christmas Valley in Lake County.

Exempt wells can pump as much as 15,000 gallons of water a day from underground aquifers before becoming a regulated large-volume user. Not every rural well consumes 15,000 gallon daily, but that's the problem. They are not regulated so no one knows how much water is pumped from exempt wells.

It is time to regulate exempt wells to tally their consumption and restrict new wells until we get a better picture of underground water supplies. Rep. Jackie Dingfelder, D-Portland, who chairs the House Energy and Environment Committee, has convened a working group that includes lobbyists from the Oregon Farm Bureau who want more regulations on exempt rural domestic wells and the Oregon Association of Realtors who don't. But there are larger public interests involved than just these to economically interested lobby groups.

There are important signs that many of Oregon's river ecosystems are no longer functioning properly because of human impacts. That should be enough evidence to persuade the Legislature to act on water conservation issues before the problem becomes a crisis.