Central Oregon Daily News: Hundreds of local farmers are losing water as curtailments of junior rights take hold
BEND, Ore. -- Hundreds of Central Oregon farmers and ranchers are seeing their water deliveries reduced or cut off due to worsening drought conditions.
Streamflows are declining due to this winter’s abysmal snowpack and reservoir storage levels are plummeting. When water supplies decline during drought, the people with the youngest water rights -- also known as junior water rights -- are the first to be curtailed.
It’s happened before -- but not at this scale and never so early in summer.
"This is going to be the earliest shut down on record. The last one was July 23 of 2022. That was also due to a drought but this one is going to be 20 days earlier," said Chris Webb, Arnold Irrigation District Manager.
Arnold Irrigation District will stop delivering water to more than 600 patrons in the south and southeast parts of Bend between July 1-3. Other irrigation districts which serve hundreds more farmers in Deschutes and Jefferson Counties will follow suit.
"After years of prolonged drought, the Deschutes River is running approximately a third less than it normally does," said Jeremy Giffin, Deschutes Basin Watermaster for Oregon Water Resources. "What that means is we are curtailing users with priority dates that are after 1900. That’s most of the water rights coming out of the Deschutes River."
Gov. Tina Kotek has already declared drought emergencies in the tri-counties, which allows farmers and ranchers who lose their normal water supplies to switch to groundwater. But that only works for farmers who already have wells in place.
"We’ve already taken 400 acres out of hay production and doing some fescues. What I’m most excited about, it’s kind of a gamble, but there’s a lot of interest is trying to commercially grow native grass seed," said Ryder Redfield, a Terrebonne area rancher.
Redfield manages 2,000 acres of irrigated cropland near Terrebonne. Most of his water comes from wells and even those sources are being restricted.
"We’ve already reduced our water so significantly and my goal is to transition another 500 acres over to native grass seed over the next five years. It’s scary, because you are basically taking a field out of production for almost two years so you are not bringing in income," he said.
Regulating off-water users is a normal process in Oregon water law.
However, "due to the drought we are regulating back users who have never been regulated back before. The cuts into the water supplies are very, very deep this year," Giffin said.
The old saying "First in time, first in line," is often used to describe water rights. The junior water rights holders who rights date back more than 90 years will lose their water before senior water rights holders who have claims that date back to 1899 and the early 1900s.
