This article was published on: 07/18/12 12:00 AM
The clock is ticking for Crook County’s Bowman Dam and those who hope
to pass a bill to move a line wrongly drawn through its center years
ago. The Central Oregon Jobs and Water Security Act, sponsored by Rep.
Greg Walden, R-Hood River, made it through the U.S. House of
Representatives, but a Senate version of the bill cannot pass without
changes, officials say.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., is working on
those changes now. He understands the difficulty of starting from
scratch if the bill is not approved this year, but negotiations among
the various groups interested in the bill take time.
Walden’s
version of the bill does a couple of things. Most importantly, it moves
the line marking the start of the wild and scenic portion of the Crooked
River from the center of the dam a quarter of a mile downstream. The
boundary was placed in the dam by mistake when the river was designated
wild and scenic in 1988, according to officials at the federal Bureau of
Land Management.
A second change would allow the city of
Prineville to pump more groundwater for city use because it would
increase stream flow in the river by seven cubic feet per second.
Prineville cannot add new wells without replacing what water it takes,
and the additional streamflow would do that.
Walden’s version of
the bill is unacceptable to the Democratically controlled Senate,
however, in part because it gives irrigators an absolute right to first
claim on the water behind the dam. Environmentalists and fishermen, in
particular, worry that would mean no additional instream flows during
drought years. They want a portion of what is stored behind the dam set
aside for fish and wildlife.
Juggling the different interests in
the river and the water in it is no easy task, as you might imagine. Yet
without some agreement ahead of time, no version of Walden’s bill can
make it through the Senate.
Even in an election year, it isn’t
nail-biting time yet. Merkley understands the need for speed — Oregon’s
other senator, Ron Wyden, no doubt does, too — and is moving as quickly
as possible.