Oregon Humanities: Becoming Water Wise
How residents of the Deschutes River Basin are adapting a century-old water management system for a drought-persistent era
Photo: Marnie Fisk
Kurt Feigner looked out from atop a hill at K&S Farms shortly after a dust storm blew across the plain below. The thick white cloud of dirt caused drivers on nearby Highway 97 to slow down or turn on their headlights. For Feigner, it may have been just another reminder of the persistent drought afflicting farmers in Jefferson County and beyond.
“The biggest challenge has been the water,” he explained, gesturing to the red, rocky earth beneath his boots.
Over the past six years, Feigner and hundreds of other customers in Oregon’s North Unit Irrigation District have often received less than half of their allotted water. This year, for example, the allotment was six-tenths of an acre-foot from the Crooked River and about 398,000 gallons from the Deschutes River—enough water to irrigate an acre of land a little over a foot deep, but far from enough to meet the needs of many farms throughout the growing season.
“When we have two acre-feet of water allocated for the year, we can manage our farm sustainably,” Feigner said.
For decades, he and his family have grown a variety of crops on their farm outside the small town of Madras, including alfalfa hay for cattle, garlic, and wheat. But their primary crops are seeds: Kentucky bluegrass, wildflower, and hybrid carrot.
“With the drought, we’ve been putting our water on our highest-value crops,” Feigner noted, walking down a gravel path.
But without anything close to a normal amount of water in the last few seasons, he has had to cut back.
“We haven’t been able to use cover crops like biofumigant mustard and tillage to help with soil health as much as we would like,” he added.
The Deschutes River flows from the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range, originating near Little Lava Lake before traveling some 250 miles to the Columbia River. It can be divided into three main sections: the Upper Deschutes, which runs north to the ever-growing city of Bend; the Middle Deschutes, which stretches to Lake Billy Chinook; and the Lower Deschutes, which flows another 92 miles before hitting the Columbia River.
When people talk about the Deschutes River Basin, many issues come up: the preservation of tribal water rights; the health of the river’s ecosystem, including the habitat of the spotted frog and other aquatic species; the growth of urban areas, which require ever-increasing amounts of water for residential and commercial use; the impact of streamflow on tubers, surfers, and kayakers; the irrigation of crops, and more. Often complicated negotiations and challenges arise as stakeholders seek to strike a balance among the many competing demands.
And at the core of the region’s complex resource management issues lies a complicated water rights system.
For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples including the Wasco, Warm Springs, and Paiute tribes have inhabited the Deschutes River Basin, relying on the river for food, water, and travel. But as the area around Bend was developed by settlers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the river also became a reliable source of power for timber production, which attracted thousands of workers to the area.
Around the same time, agriculturalists began to recognize the river’s potential for irrigating crops.
To support the growth of agricultural communities throughout the region, irrigation districts were formed to manage and distribute the river’s water, and farmers built canals, ditches, and reservoirs to irrigate their fields.
Eight irrigation districts were eventually formed, and water rights were prioritized based on the order in which they were established. The principle of “first in time, first in right” became a foundational concept, meaning that those rights holders who arrived first gained seniority over those who came later.
More than a century later, this system continues to exert a significant influence on the dynamics of water allocation, with senior rights holders receiving their full allocation of water before those deemed junior. One of the modern implications of such a system is that established agricultural producers in places like Jefferson County often receive less water than senior rights holders in more urbanized and less agriculturally productive areas, such as Deschutes County.
“You have one- to two-acre farms, sometimes hobby farms, that are getting their water every year, whereas the productive agriculture area, which is the Madras area, is not,” said Jeremy Austin, Wild Lands and Water Program director at Central Oregon LandWatch, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting responsible land use.
For many, the situation has led to a question: How can stakeholders best work with an imperfect system that’s more than a century old?
Agricultural entities are far from the only interested stakeholders when it comes to water in the Deschutes River Basin. For recreationalists engaged in activities like floating, fishing, and kayaking, the Deschutes is a vital resource and the central backdrop for a lifestyle grounded in the outdoors. In recent years, for example, roughly a quarter of a million people are estimated to have floated the Deschutes River each summer.
And that’s not to mention the surfers who ride waves on the Deschutes.
For Ryan Richard, river surfing is a singular experience.
“On the ocean, you’re paddling for two hours,” he explained. “With river surfing there’s almost no paddling or positioning—you get on the wave essentially endlessly.”
About a decade ago, Richard moved to Central Oregon to help shape the waves at Bend Whitewater Park as a recreation specialist.
“I consider my top priority, other than safety, to be creating a surf wave that’s good and usable and the best it can be at any condition,” he said.
Richard’s handiwork has paid off. In the summers, surfers line up to ride the park’s most popular attraction, the Green Wave, from dawn to dusk, frequently dropping into the area from out of town and even other states and countries.
“If the wave is there, people will surf it,” Richard said.
But on a recent chilly October afternoon, river flows had come down below five hundred cubic feet per second, marking the third consecutive year that the wave would cease to exist for the winter season.
“When the river gets [that] low, the water doesn’t have enough velocity to get over the gates,” Richard said. “It crashes back on itself, and it just churns white water.”
If hope seems lost when it comes to issues of water management and conservation in the context of a megadrought, stakeholders in the Deschutes River Basin would like you to know that that is not completely the case.
In fact, a turnaround of sorts may be afoot. As awareness of issues related to water scarcity has increased, diverse interests have been motivated to join forces—not least in the form of the Deschutes River Basin Habitat Conservation Plan, a landmark 2020 agreement between eight irrigation districts in Central Oregon, the city of Prineville, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Currently, the flow dynamics of the Deschutes River Basin are characterized by significant seasonal variation, with water levels near Bend typically increasing during the summer and decreasing drastically in winter. This stark disparity has profound implications for the river’s ecosystem, which includes habitats that may become fragmented as a result, imperiling the survival of fish and other aquatic species. Under the habitat conservation plan, various measures have been taken to conserve irrigation water. These measures are intended to improve and mediate streamflows during critical periods of the year—thus helping fish to spawn and migrate, supporting the preservation of amphibious habitat, and more.
One such measure involves piping irrigation canals, an approach that significantly reduces the amount of water lost through seepage into the ground. Such increased efficiency means that more water will reach its intended destination, effectively increasing the available water supply. Among several piping projects in the works is the second phase of a $35 million initiative to install approximately twelve miles of canal in the Arnold Irrigation District, near Bend. A draft environmental impact statement for the Pilot Butte Canal piping project, an initiative in the Central Oregon Irrigation District, is also expected to advance in 2025.
But while there is widespread support for such projects, it is not unanimous.
Some lawsuits have maintained that piping may be disruptive to local ecosystems and will negatively impact natural flows. Concerns about how such projects could affect property values have also been a common theme. And even some who are in favor of piping, like Jeremy Austin at Central Oregon LandWatch, say there is currently no scenario where water needs could be met in a timely fashion by using piping alone.
“Relying only on [piping] will continue to create winners and losers—juniors in the basin will still not necessarily receive the water that is needed,” Austin said. “We’re supportive of piping, but we need a more integrated plan to look at how to move and share water more efficiently.”
To that end, market-based incentive programs and techniques such as water banking, which can improve the availability of water during periods of drought, have also been proposed. When using water banking, for example, a single entity could collect water and redistribute it using volume-based pricing, charging customers according to how much water is used, similar to other utilities.
What has become clear is that the basin holds more than enough water to meet the region’s needs—the resource simply needs to be better allocated and used.
“We’re looking for the win-win projects,” said Kate Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy, a nonprofit working to restore streamflow in the Deschutes River Basin. “It’s kind of a big puzzle piece.”
Establishing better irrigation standards, minimum streamflows, and efficiency standards may all help. But a long list of questions still remains about whether enough has been done to protect certain species, whether the timeline to improve streamflows is feasible, and much more.
“We’re operating under a really archaic system, and we need to modernize our rules and laws so we have a sustainable water future,” said Kimberley Priestley, a senior policy analyst at WaterWatch of Oregon.
For many, it makes sense to keep past successes in sight as well.
According to the Deschutes River Conservancy, nearly 96 percent of streamflow from the Deschutes River in Bend was previously diverted through irrigation canals. After more than two decades of work, however, the same section of river has now seen a fivefold increase in streamflow as a result of water rights leasing, updated water management policies, permanent water rights transfers, conservation projects, and more efficient irrigation practices.
Furthermore, the partnerships being forged among various stakeholders are unprecedented.
“It’s remarkable for not only eight irrigation districts, but federal, state, county, tribal, and environmental entities to be doing this level of coordination and conservation,” said Josh Bailey, general manager of the North Unit Irrigation District. “There’s a tremendous amount of work and cooperation.”
And while the water rights system may be imperfect, it’s nevertheless the one that Central Oregon has slowly and steadily learned to adapt to, for better or worse.
For river-surfing aficionado Ryan Richard, the forthcoming changes to the management of the Deschutes as part of the habitat conservation plan will help not only the local ecosystem, but recreationalists too.
“Within one to three years we’ll have enough flow to keep the wave up year-round,” Richard recently explained. “It’ll be good for the Oregon spotted frog habitat—and our surf wave.”
On the recent day that Kurt Feigner offered a tour of his farm, he patiently explained the many advanced irrigation technologies and practices he had implemented.
Then he picked up the lacy white umbel of a carrot and rubbed it between his fingers, exposing the seeds that would ultimately be sold to consumers around the world.
While he wouldn’t mind seeing tweaks to water regulations and policy, Feigner said, what’s most important to him is figuring out how to farm regardless of the constraints.
As he spoke, the sun came out from behind the clouds, shining light on the early fall fields as if in reflection of hope.
