I recently attended a program about the future status of the Deschutes River presented by the Deschutes River Conservancy (DRC). The presentation was primarily self-congratulatory about how collaboration promised to restore some of the river’s flows with the assistance of irrigators.
At one time, the Deschutes River had the most even flow of any river in the country. Due to numerous springs that provide most of its waters, the river’s height varies by little more than 6 to 8 inches between summer and winter, with flows of 700 to 800 cubic feet per second.
Today, the river may be as low as 100 cubic feet per second in winter and over 2,500 in summer when irrigators use the upper segment of the river as an irrigation channel. This variation in flow is devastating to the river’s aquatic ecosystem and dependent species.
The irrigators consume 86% of the river’s water, and communities consume 2%. Does anyone other than me see a significant imbalance here?
There were a lot of what I would call myths, lies, and distortions in the Deschutes River Conservancy presentation. They would be more honest if they renamed their organization the Deschutes Irrigation Conservancy.
First, throughout the presentation, the DRC representatives asserted the irrigators had “water rights.” The “rights” determine how much water each irrigator is entitled to use—if the water is removed from the river. Irrigators do not own any rights to the river water. All water in Oregon is owned by you and me, the state’s citizens. I prefer to call “water rights” “water privileges.”
The Oregon Supreme Court has stated that the primary purpose of public water is to provide for wildlife, recreation, and other PUBLIC USES. All other uses, including irrigation, are secondary and only allowed when they do not impinge or degrade the primary public benefits.
Irrigation is causing great harm to the river and the Public Trust.
For nearly a century, due to this mistaken idea that irrigators have “rights” to the water, they have continued to remove water from our rivers to the detriment of the aquatic ecosystems.
Worse for the citizens of this state is that irrigators remove this water-the majority of the flow of the Deschutes River—and they get the water for free. They pay nothing for that water. Nada.
The only thing they pay for is the water delivery, but they do not compensate Oregonians for the water they use for their profit, and DRC doesn’t seem to have a problem with this ripoff.
At the very least, they could demand irrigators pay a fee for the water they take from our river. No environmental groups demand that irrigators pay something for the water they remove from the public’s waterways.
And while they are at it, they could suggest the irrigators should pay some compensation to the public for the ecological and economic degradation of their de-watering costs all of us. To name one price, we citizens are all paying for the recovery of the bull trout, Oregon spotted frog, as well as fish like salmon and steelhead in the lower river that suffer from irrigation impacts.
A second myth promoted by the DRC was from a sign they used in their presentation. The sign said: “No Water. No Farms. No Food.” The implication is that the water removed from the Deschutes River is being used to produce food we humans consume.
Again, this is a distortion because nearly all the water removed from the Deschutes River is going to grow pasture and hay (alfalfa). Much of this hay is being shipped out of state and even into the country. Thus, we are exporting the Deschutes River water from the basin.
The Central Oregon Irrigation District delivers water to the 3,700 landowners, most of whom could be thought of as “hobby farmers.” The average COID irrigator owns 11 acres, and over 96% of those landowners use the water for pasture and hay. And most of their operations are not “real” farms. They are people who have a few horses or llamas or simply want a large parcel of land, and claim an Ag use for tax purposes.
According to the Agricultural 2022 census, Deschutes County had 1,572 farms. The average size was 97 acres, but the median was 11 acres. If you remember your arithmetic, you know this means that half of the farms were well under 11 acres. 1,167 farms, 74% of the total, had revenues of less than $10,000, and the average farm LOST $8,571.
Even Jefferson County, which is considered to have the most “real” farms, has a significant number of hobby farms. There are 348 farms with an average size of 1,558 acres but a median of 66 acres. Of these farms, 174 farms, or 50%, had a net income of less than $10,000 with an average of $4,306.
It is obvious that farming is not the main source of income.
The reason for this has to do with climate. It is too cold to produce much more than alfalfa.
In other words, if there were no farms, there would still be food because nearly all of our food is imported from California. Again, there is a small fact that DRC failed to point out.
The DRC could have noted that growing a water-loving plant (alfalfa) in the desert is insane. Is this really a “beneficial use” of our river? Maybe a hundred years ago, when the goal was to settle the country, destroying the river to create farms seemed like a reasonable use of water. But does it make sense today?
Hay and silage occupy more than 22,000 acres of Deschutes County. Wheat occupies around 1000 acres. The few farms that grow food that can be consumed by humans are a fraction of the operations in Deschutes County and the amount of water they use for irrigation is minuscule. They are not the problem.
Even the North Irrigation District in Jefferson County has nearly 24,000 acres of hay/silage. Seed crops, the next most extensive acreage, are about half that number at 11,000 acres.
A third distortion promoted by DRC is that these farms are somehow crucial to the economy of Central Oregon.
Yet agriculture (all Ag, of which irrigated crops are a subset) contributes to only 1.3% of the income of Deschutes County residents. In other words, all farms and ranches could disappear; they would barely be noticed.
Central Oregon’s main economic activities are lifestyle, retirement, recreation, and tourism. Some dismiss these activities as “trivial” compared to getting your hands dirty by raising crops or livestock. However, these support most of the jobs in the area, and restoration of flows would benefit these economic sectors.
A fourth distortion is that DRC implies the irrigation districts are piping canals and implementing sprinkler irrigations to save the river. DRC neglected to say that taxpayers are paying for nearly all these upgrades, which may run over a billion dollars. While these improvements do result in a small amount of water in the river’s flow, the cost is prohibitive.
Oregon’s average farmland cost is less than $4,000 per acre. That number includes properties growing “high value” crops like vineyards, fruit trees, etc. Even at $4000 an acre, a billion dollars could purchase most of the irrigated acreage in Central Oregon and restore all that water to the river. The public would benefit from removing those acres from production and eliminating all their ecological costs like water pollution, wind and water soil erosion, habitat fragmentation, and other impacts.
But the Deschutes River Conservancy isn’t really about conserving the river. It’s about preserving the irrigation system while bilking the taxpayer into paying for it all.
Even if such de-watering were legal (a questionable assumption), the willful destruction of the public’s waterways would be criminal. It’s time for the Deschutes River Conservancy to live up to its name and advocate for the river instead of the irrigation districts.
We need an honest environmental group to emerge willing to advocate for the river and its wildlife. Given the timidness of most conservation groups today, I’m not holding my breath waiting for such a river hero to emerge. But there is a need that is going unfulfilled.
The unfortunate reality of the Deschutes River situation is repeated over and over across the West, where irrigation for livestock forage production de-waters and destroys aquatic ecosystems to produce something—like hay or alfalfa—that can be produced elsewhere without irrigation.
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