{"id":168,"date":"2026-06-29T07:07:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T07:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=168"},"modified":"2026-06-29T07:07:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T07:07:02","slug":"how-oregon-is-trying-to-fix-water-shortages-in-the-deschutes-basin-propublica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=168","title":{"rendered":"How Oregon Is Trying to Fix Water Shortages in the Deschutes Basin \u2014 ProPublica"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"How<\/div>

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Every year, about 90% of Central Oregon\u2019s Deschutes River disappears into networks of canals and pipes traversing high desert. Between April and October, what\u2019s left in this major river \u2014 one of the largest spring-fed waterways in the U.S. \u2014 looks more like a creek trickling out of Bend, Oregon.<\/p>\n

Six irrigation districts \u2014 quasi-public corporations \u2014 divert the water to green up the properties of about 7,500 landowners in one of the state\u2019s driest regions. Of the six, none is as powerful as the Central Oregon Irrigation District. It has rights to use more than half of the Deschutes\u2019 volume \u2014 more than all the other districts combined. And under state law, in times of scarcity, most of the others must cut back to protect COID\u2019s share of the river.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the last drought, state water law forced commercial farmers downstream to fallow their land while COID diverted four times what its landowners\u2019 crops consumed, an Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica analysis of state data found.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our analysis showed similar ratios across both wet and dry years, roughly aligning with estimates of what COID told the state its crops required. While state water managers did not dispute our analysis, the irrigation district said it didn\u2019t trust the satellite-based data we used, which Oregon lawmakers backed to study water availability.<\/p>\n

COID landowners are doing exactly what the law encourages them to do, state legislators said. To keep rights to the water, districts have to prove to the state that their customers are consistently using it \u201cbeneficially.\u201d In the district, our reporting found, more than 9 out of 10 acres were pasture \u2014 grass for grazing or landscaping, or hay for livestock \u2014 considered beneficial under the law.<\/p>\n

Oregon and other Western states have so far rejected any legislation that restricts what people can grow or how efficient they must be: Opposition to change is strong because water rights are a form of property rights. Water rights also raise property values and can bring agricultural tax breaks.<\/p>\n

If lawmakers took on bedrock water law, \u201cwe\u2019d get crushed by the powers that be and we might even not be reelected,\u201d said state Rep. Ken Helm, the Democratic co-chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources and Water.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat should we do? I think we should leave more water in the river. Legally speaking, that doesn\u2019t have to happen,\u201d he said. Helm, a land-use lawyer, grew up in Bend and has watched the region transform. \u201cAffluent people are moving into Central Oregon for reasons that have nothing to do with growing a crop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"A
The Central Oregon Irrigation District diverts water from the Deschutes River through roughly 30 miles of canals and pipes to irrigate fields and estates at the Ranch at the Canyons development in Terrebonne, Oregon. The subdivision\u2019s website promises those who own its multimillion-dollar mansions \u201cthe peaceful rhythm of agricultural life \u2014 without the work.\u201d<\/span> Brandon Swanson\/OPB<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As things stand now, COID\u2019s Managing Director Craig Horrell said he \u201ccan\u2019t tell people what they can and can\u2019t farm, if it\u2019s allowed.\u201d The district\u2019s job is to distribute water to its customers and to \u201cdeliver it much more efficiently and sustainably in the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The question is how.<\/p>\n

Oregon has pushed three main solutions:\u00a0<\/p>\n

1. Pipes<\/h3>\n

COID delivers most of its water through open canals built 120 years ago. Blasted from porous lava rock, the canals have to be completely full for gravity to push water across the district\u2019s more than 42,000 acres. Nearly half the water evaporates or seeps into the ground under the canals before reaching its destination. COID\u2019s state water rights factor this in.<\/p>\n

Replacing the canals with pressurized pipes could save a lot of water. It could also take 50 years and cost more than $700 million. The district is in the final planning stages of what could be a $360 million project to pipe a main artery leading to more than a thousand landowners between Bend and Redmond, Oregon. Few make their living as farmers, our reporting found. In exchange for federal and state funding for piping, COID has pledged to send water downstream to farmers outside the district.<\/p>\n

\n
\"A<\/figure>\n
\"A<\/figure>
At the end of a Central Oregon Irrigation District canal, pipes and valves allow water from the Deschutes River to be passed along to people outside the district. The more COID uses pipes, rather than open canals, to transport its share of the Deschutes, the more water it will share with water-poor farmers downstream, say district officials Watermaster Cary Penhollow, on the left in the first image, and Deputy Director of Water Rights Jessi Talbott.<\/span> Emily Cureton Cook\/OPB<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
\"A
Emily Cureton Cook\/OPB<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/figure>
At the end of a Central Oregon Irrigation District canal, pipes and valves allow water from the Deschutes River to be passed along to people outside the district. The more COID uses pipes, rather than open canals, to transport its share of the Deschutes, the more water it will share with water-poor farmers downstream, say district officials Watermaster Cary Penhollow, on the left in the first image, and Deputy Director of Water Rights Jessi Talbott.<\/span> Emily Cureton Cook\/OPB<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The plan has gotten broad support, especially from Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley: \u201cRepeated severe droughts make every drop of irrigation water highly valuable, and the best way to preserve irrigation water is to pipe it,\u201d he told OPB and ProPublica.<\/p>\n

The catalyst for focusing on COID, he said, was a threatened species of frog, which lives exactly where irrigation districts have long siphoned water, destroying its habitat. To stave off lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act, the districts agreed to leave more water in the river over time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As it switches from canals to pipes, COID is supposed to send the water it saves to a neighboring district that will have to take less from the river as part of the plan to restore the frog\u2019s home. That district, North Unit, serves a valley famous for commercial farms, but it\u2019s already water-poor. It has rights to far less water from the Deschutes than COID does. Evan Thomas, a fifth-generation farmer and leader of North Unit, put the stakes plainly at a March public meeting in Redmond: \u201cThis pipe has to go in the ground by 2028 or North Unit, all of Jefferson County, basically quits farming.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even those who acknowledge that piping is a critical solution note that it won\u2019t stop COID from diverting more water than its customers need \u2014 or from sending that water to a lot of residential properties growing grass and pasture. Last year, the nonprofit Central Oregon LandWatch pushed for a bill to put limits on overwatering. Helm and Republican state Rep. Mark Owens started drafting legislation, but they never introduced it. Owens, a hay farmer in Eastern Oregon, said irrigation districts weren\u2019t happy with the proposal. \u201cI weakened,\u201d he said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t going to get it through the building. We lived to fight another day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

2. Sharing<\/h3>\n

The Deschutes has never had enough water for all the landowners who laid claim to it more than a century ago, said Deschutes River Conservancy Executive Director Kate Fitzpatrick. Leaving water in the river for fish and wildlife wasn\u2019t even considered a legal, beneficial use of the resource until the 1980s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A
Kathryn Styer Mart\u00ednez\/OPB<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A
Participants in the Deschutes River fish rescue event use nets to catch and move fish trapped in a side channel of the Deschutes River above Bend, Oregon, in 2024. At the end of each growing season, irrigation districts reduce flows in the river to refill upstream reservoirs, stranding fish.<\/span> Kathryn Styer Mart\u00ednez\/OPB<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSo that\u2019s what we\u2019re working with,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to win the game by pointing fingers at who\u2019s doing what with the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

With more demand than supply, her nonprofit works with irrigation districts to roll out incentives for landowners to be more efficient or share voluntarily. One program pays landowners to dry up land so COID will leave more water in the river. But the district limits participation, and the program\u2019s efficacy has plateaued for decades, state data shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

State lawmakers last year also created a pilot \u201cwater bank\u201d program. The concept marks a big change in the law and could allow COID landowners to keep what water they need and rent out the excess to farmers downstream without losing rights to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But since Oregon\u2019s governor signed the bill into law nearly a year ago, COID and other key players haven\u2019t signed anyone up. That\u2019s because the canal system fails if it doesn\u2019t have enough water in it, Horrell, the district\u2019s manager, said. Piping could allow the district to scale up these other solutions in the future, he said.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another problem, too: To rent out part of a water right without completely drying up their property, landowners would need to measure their use precisely \u2014 something many don\u2019t want to do.<\/p>\n

3. Data<\/h3>\n

COID said it doesn\u2019t measure or report the volume of water it delivers. This is typical across Oregon, where the vast majority of water goes to agricultural lands. But policymakers and experts have long said the state can\u2019t tackle water shortages unless it knows how much the people with irrigation water rights use on their properties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Legislature\u2019s attempts to require meters on all individual farms and wells have faced fierce public backlash. \u201cAt one point my office was getting a call a minute,\u201d Owens, the state representative, recalled of an effort last year. The fear, he said, is that the state will use data to take away water rights or to try to charge by the gallon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Owens has given up on trying to force statewide metering for now, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On his own Eastern Oregon hay farm, he started a pilot project<\/a> that uses a weather station and satellite data to track how much his fields drink. He can look on his phone and see how many days he should irrigate the following week, he said. He also led the charge for Oregon to invest in a cutting-edge study to apply this technology to statewide water planning. Scientists with the Oregon Water Resources Department co-authored a report with researchers from the Nevada-based Desert Research Institute. It provides estimates over nearly 40 years of how much water crops consumed on every irrigated field in Oregon. The data, which OPB and ProPublica used in our reporting, was published last year. Horrell said such data has too many variables and is not ready to guide how the district monitors water use.<\/p>\n

State managers are not currently using that data to regulate<\/a> how water is used, but instead to account for where it goes, Oregon Water Resources Department Director Ivan Gall said in a recent interview. He said tight state budgets have so far kept his agency from sharing it \u201cwith the public and decision makers in a way that is understandable and meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owens and Helm said they tried and failed to make it easier to learn from critical data about Oregon\u2019s water \u2014 how much there is, how clean it is, where it\u2019s coming from and where it\u2019s going \u2014 but a pilot project ground to a halt after state funding dried up last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, about 90% of Central Oregon\u2019s Deschutes River disappears into networks of canals and pipes traversing high desert. Between April and October, what\u2019s left in this major river \u2014 one of the largest spring-fed waterways in the U.S. \u2014 looks more like a creek trickling out of Bend, Oregon. Six irrigation districts \u2014 quasi-public…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/4W0C5170-SOCIAL_preview_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_embedColorProfile_true_quality_95.jpg?w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[250,249,247,73,81,248,74],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-basin","tag-deschutes","tag-fix","tag-oregon","tag-propublica","tag-shortages","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}