Protect and Restore Free Flowing Oregon Rivers

Links:

• Learn more about WaterWatch's legislative advocacy here

In November 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted final approval for decommissioning the lower four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River near the OregonCalifornia line. The decision marked the end of two decades of advocacy, politics, and bureaucratic processes surrounding this hydro complex. It is hoped that the smallest of the four dams, Copco 2, will come down this summer, and that the other three dams will follow to open over 350 miles of habitat closed to native salmon and steelhead since 1918 in violation of tribal treaty rights and common sense.

Klamath dam removal presents a major opportunity to restore important but dwindling fish runs vital to the region, Native American tribes, and coastal communities. This year, as in many other past years, a Klamath salmon collapse sparked a coastwide salmon fishing disaster, causing tens of millions of dollars of lost economic activity, millions of pounds of lost seafood production, thousands of lost jobs, and the loss of world class recreational opportunities. However, dam removal alone cannot restore the Klamath and end the region’s woes. Restoration will require other essential steps. These include providing adequate stream flows and lake levels to support abundant salmon and other native fish, improving fish passage at Keno Dam and other dams upstream of the soon former hydro complex or removing these structures, protecting and restoring depleted groundwater reserves, and reclaiming converted wetlands to recover aquatic habitat and natural water storage while improving water quality. WaterWatch continues to advocate in public, in the legislature, and in the courts for these essential steps towards the Klamath’s sustainable future.

WaterWatch began working towards Klamath dam removal well before PacifiCorp’s hydropower license expired in March 2006. Years before, we joined with Oregon Wild and others to publicly expose and end an exclusive electric pumping subsidy funneling some $10 million per year to Klamath agribusiness at the expense of PacifiCorp’s other ratepayers. These powerful interests had succeeded in connecting this subsidy politically to PacifiCorp’s federal hydropower license when it was last renewed in 1956. In 2006, Klamath agribusiness intended to quietly extend this lucrative and water-wasteful subsidy 30 to 50 years into the future alongside another federal license for the Klamath dams. In this situation, WaterWatch believed ending the pumping subsidy would not only improve water use efficiency in the Klamath, but would also remove a substantive reason for powerful agribusiness interests to support relicensing the Klamath dams.

By April 2006, WaterWatch and our allies had convinced the Oregon Public Utility Commission to rule against the subsidy after a months-long proceeding. The state legislature, over WaterWatch’s objections, then provided Klamath agribusiness a generous multi-year subsidy offramp period paid for by other Oregon utility ratepayers. With the subsidy question resolved in favor of river restoration, WaterWatch and Oregon Wild returned to the PacifiCorp dam relicensing negotiations advocating for our preferred alternative: a standalone deal to remove the four lower dams. Unfortunately over the next 2 years the George W. Bush administration took over as mediators in these talks. They excluded WaterWatch against our will due to our opposition to the Bush Administration’s Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA), which required dam removal wait until Congress passed the bloated and unworkable $1 billion KBRA package favoring agribusiness at the expense of taxpayers, fish, and National Wildlife Refuges. WaterWatch joined Hoopa Valley Tribe and others to defeat the KBRA by 2015. Unfortunately, by then the KBRA had delayed dam removal longer than even PacifiCorp could have hoped. Generally, utilities can expect to delay federal relicensing decisions for 12 years while using interim annual licenses. Klamath was ultimately delayed 17 years. Fortunately, by 2016 a standalone dam removal agreement moved forward. WaterWatch is gratified this long-sought goal for many in the Klamath is within sight.

Links:

• Full Spring Instream Newsletter available here
• OPB reporting on upcoming Klamath dam removals

WaterWatch of Oregon’s 2022 Accomplishments

Thanks to you, Oregon’s rivers and waters are more resilient to a changing climate. Oregon’s water policies are smarter, and the state has made important investments in ecologically appropriate management of the state’s waters. Your support produced these amazing results for Oregon’s waters, rivers, fish and wildlife and people in 2022.

Accomplishments:

Free Flowing Rivers Program. 2022 saw major advances in protecting and restoring free flowing rivers in Oregon. WaterWatch secured three new voluntary agreements to eliminate seven obsolete barriers to salmon and steelhead in the Rogue and Umpqua basins, and raised over $1.6 million in private, state, and federal funds to pay for the skilled engineering and construction workers necessary to complete these projects. With partners, we completed post-project work on 2021’s three-dam removal project in the Rogue Basin. And, in the Klamath Basin, the federal government gave final approval for the removal of the four lower Klamath River dams to proceed to removal without – as WaterWatch advocated for over a decade – any linkage to a damaging upper basin water and taxpayer subsidy giveaway for agribusiness. This will be the largest dam removal project to date in the United States. WaterWatch also participated deeply in the revision of Oregon’s administrative rules on fish passage at dams and other obstructions in Oregon waterways, resulting in several improvements in fish passage requirements without significant backtracking. 

Looking Forward.In 2023, your support will fund efforts to secure new dam removal agreements at several high priority barriers to salmon and steelhead in Southern Oregon, help advance the campaign to remove Winchester Dam from the North Umpqua River and continue our watchdogging of agency decisions affecting fish passage across Oregon. 

Securing Legal Protection for Water Instream - The Most Comprehensive Environmental Water Protection Campaign in North America. In 1987, WaterWatch drafted and secured passage of the Oregon Instream Water Rights Act to create legal water rights for water flowing instream. In 2022, Oregon applied for 159 new instream water rights in the Rogue, South Coast and Umpqua Basins. Forty-six of these are now final, protecting flows on the Rogue, Chetco and many important salmon-bearing tributary streams. Together with 80 new instream water rights recently secured on coastal streams (including the Nestucca, Nehalem, Siletz, Salmonberry, Salmon, Alsea and Drift Creek), these results provide a potent form of natural climate insurance for the affected streams, fish and wildlife and people who depend on healthy streams and salmon. In terms of volumes of water protected and geographic range, this program is arguably the most comprehensive and successful streamflow protection initiative in North America today.

WaterWatch also won an important precedent-setting case in the Oregon Supreme Court (known as the Warm Springs Hydro case) requiring that old, unused hydroelectric water rights be converted to instream water rights five years after the hydroelectric use ceases. In response, the Oregon Water Resources Department began the process of creating a new instream water right from a hydroelectric water right on Rock Creek (a forested tributary to the Powder River near Baker City, Oregon), as well as moving forward on a number of other conversions including a 500 cubic foot per second instream right on the Hood River.

Looking Forward. Many ecologically significant rivers and streams across Oregon lack instream water rights. This program is constantly under attack by extractive interests, yet it is a key to climate resilience and adaptation for fish and wildlife and cold-water habitat in a climate changed Oregon. Your support will keep the program intact and moving forward in 2023 and beyond.  

Groundwater Policy Reform. In 2022, your supporthelped advance reform of Oregon’s unsustainable groundwater management, notably its approach of issuing new groundwater permits when it cannot say whether the proposed pumping would be sustainable. Thanks to WaterWatch, the state is now working to help prevent aquifer declines that disconnect cold, clean groundwater from streams, wetlands and lakes; threaten groundwater dependent ecosystems and domestic wells; and destroy thermal refugia in streams relied upon by fish and wildlife. This is even more critical today because connectivity between groundwater and surface water provides scientifically proven climate resilience for cold-water habitat on iconic rivers like the Deschutes, Metolius, McKenzie, Fall, Wood, Williamson, Donner und Blitzen and Klamath. Groundwater also supplies water to iconic refuges and wetlands like the Summer Lake Wildlife Area, a fantastic wildlife refuge in south central Oregon along the Pacific Flyway and wetlands in the Malheur Lakes region. These and other special places are at risk without permanent reforms to Oregon’s groundwater policies.

Looking Forward. 2023 will be a key year to move these reforms forward and make them permanent. Your support funds WaterWatch’s participation in multiple venues – the media, the courts, the legislature, multi-stakeholder collaboratives, rulemakings, watchdogging agency permitting decisions, and budget negotiations – that all secure needed reforms and prevent backsliding. Your support will help fund reforms that protect the fish and wildlife, cold water habitat, groundwater dependent ecosystems and people who depend on groundwater in Oregon. Groundwater policy reform is a key climate resilience and adaptation measure for Oregon, and WaterWatch will continue its work on this critical issue.

2022 in the Courts. Your support produced several important conservation wins in state and federal courts in 2022 for Oregon’s waters, fish and wildlife. WaterWatch won the Warm Springs Hydro case in the Oregon Supreme Court, setting an important precedent for converting unused hydroelectric water rights to instream water rights after the hydroelectric use ceases. In the Willamette Basin, WaterWatch completed briefing and arguments in the Oregon Court of Appeals to uphold a Water Resources Commission Decision denying a permit for a large new dam and reservoir on Drift Creek, a tributary to the Pudding River providing habitat to fish including cutthroat trout and threatened steelhead. In the Malheur Lakes Basin, our amicus brief in the Oregon Court of Appeals helped stop agribusiness from circumventing rules and policies designed to prevent declines in local aquifers. In the Klamath Basin, WaterWatch (represented by Earthjustice and Karl Anuta) helped stop attempts by irrigators to prevent the Bureau of Reclamation from providing water from Upper Klamath Lake to the Klamath River to meet the streamflow needs of imperiled salmon. In the Deschutes Basin, WaterWatch helped stop an attempt by a municipal water developer to divert 200 cubic feet per second from the Upper Deschutes River in the winter.

Looking Forward. 2023 will be a busy year for WaterWatch in the courts. We are preparing multiple cases across Oregon. One will defend against attempts to develop water for an open pit mine on the banks of Grave Creek, tributary to the Rogue River, that would injure the instream water right that Oregon Water Resources Department holds in trust for the people of Oregon. Other cases involve coastal streams, the Clackamas River, the Upper Crooked River Basin, the Burnt and Rogue rivers and the Malheur region. WaterWatch is also challenging a thermal trading program on the Willamette River that we believe fails to offset the water-temperature impact of a large new water withdrawal and claims phantom temperature benefits for moving a point of diversion downstream on a water right that would not have been developed upstream.   

Collaborative Negotiations. In 2022, your support helped WaterWatch participate in three multi-stakeholder collaboratives: two Place Based Planning (PBP) processes in the Lower John Day and Harney Basins, and the third in the Deschutes collaborative.In the Lower John Day, WaterWatch finished five years of work culminating in development of the Lower John Day Basin Place Based Plan. Our participation ensured that the Plan adequately recognizes all categories of instream flow needs and limits study of new storage reservoirs to locations away from stream channels.

In the Harney Basin PBP, WaterWatch provided a strong voice for aquatic ecosystems. WaterWatch helped develop solutions to the over-issuance of groundwater irrigation permits and advocated for groundwater dependent ecosystems, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and water right enforcement and water management accountability. WaterWatch also worked to ensure that a proposed groundwater Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program in the region will successfully reduce groundwater pumping and to review concepts for a groundwater market. These would be “first of their kind” tools for Oregon’s groundwaters, potentially replicable elsewhere, and it’s critical to ensure that any programs are accountable and achieve reduction of groundwater pumping.

Looking Forward. Your support helps fund thedeep staff involvement required to be effective in these processes. Once created, it remains unclear how these plans will be implemented or how projects might be sequenced. Your support will help fund WaterWatch’s continued participation in the next phases of these collaboratives, to give instream and ecological values a voice in processes that could be dominated by extractive interests.  

Lake Abert, Oregon Largest Saline Lake. In 2022, WaterWatch worked with allied organizations to identify and advocate for strategies to restore water to the stunning and internationally significant Lake Abert, Oregon’s largest saline lake which provides critically important habitat for birds on the Pacific Flyway. Spring boarding from a series of hard-hitting articles about Lake Abert’s decline in The Oregonian in early 2022, WaterWatch and our allies pressed for state action, resulting in Governor Kate Brown and key state agencies pledging to help Lake Abert. Increased concerns for Lake Abert and other Great Basin saline lakes also led US Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to reintroduce federal saline lakes legislation that would help assess conditions of these ecologically critical lakes.

Looking Forward. In 2023, your support will help WaterWatch work on solutions to get much needed water to the lake, advocate against new water diversions from the Chewaucan River above the lake and press for fulfillment of long neglected commitments by upstream interests and state agencies that would benefit the lake and the remarkable birds that depend on it.

None of these accomplishments are possible without your support. We at WaterWatch are grateful for your support and for all that it makes possible across Oregon. Thank you!

Links:

• Read the full report (with pictures) here!

WaterWatch wins in Oregon Supreme Court

The Oregon Supreme Court recently ruled in WaterWatch’s favor in an important case about when an unused hydroelectric water right must be converted to a permanent instream water right for the benefit of public uses, such as fish, wildlife, and recreation.

On a tributary to the Powder River in Eastern Oregon, the Rock Creek Power Plant diverted water for nearly 100 years to generate electricity. Then, in 1995, it shut down after deciding it could no longer operate profitably.

Oregon law says hydroelectric water rights must be converted to instream water rights “five years after the use of water under [the] hydroelectric water right ceases.” The owner of the water right on Rock Creek tried to dodge that requirement by occasionally “leasing” the right for shortterm instream use and claiming use “under” the hydroelectric right therefore never ceased. Another company then purchased the right and proposed to use it for a new hydroelectric plant.

The Water Resources Department was prepared to go along, so WaterWatch went to court. The lower courts agreed with the Department, but the Oregon Supreme Court agreed with WaterWatch and directed the Department to begin the process to convert the water right to an instream right. WaterWatch is now monitoring that process to ensure the hydroelectric right is converted to an instream water right.

Legislature approves $25.6 million drought package for Oregon rivers and freshwater habitat

WaterWatch and conservation partners developed a first-of-its-type $25.6 million drought resiliency package approved in February by the Oregon Legislature.

The package will help buffer effects of climate change and associated drought – benefitting rivers, wetlands and aquatic ecosystems.

THE PACKAGE PROVIDES STATE AGENCIES:

• $2.6 million for mapping cold water refugia, installing real-time temperature and streamflow gages, and securing instream water rights for streamflows;

• $8 million for fish passage barrier removal;

• $10 million for voluntary water right acquisitions to restore water instream;

• $5 million for aquatic habitats restoration projects.

This is a great step forward. However, additional drought resiliency measures are needed if we want healthy freshwater habitat in a climate changed world.

STATE ACTION IS NEEDED TO:

• protect minimum survival streamflows for fish during drought;

• use existing state drought tools to mandate water conservation measures for cities and agriculture;

• require real-time measurement and reporting of water use;

• set basin-specific efficiency standards to help ensure sustainable agriculture in a warming climate;

• enforce against illegal or wasteful water use;

• sustainably manage Oregon's groundwater resources.

As Oregon faces increasing incidents of drought, these and other measures are critical to ensuring protection and restoration of freshwater habitat, including cold water habitat, into the future.

Oregon’s imperiled Lake Abert finally gets state’s attention

Years of hard work by WaterWatch and conservation allies have created positive momentum for Oregon’s internationally significant Lake Abert. This spectacular Southeastern Oregon lake is second only to the Great Salt Lake in importance for migratory shorebirds in the Great Basin.

Used historically by more than 80 species of shorebirds and waterbirds, it’s particularly important to Wilson’s Phalaropes, American Avocets, North American Eared Grebes, and Snowy Plovers. But when deprived of necessary freshwater inflows from the Chewaucan River, increased salinity levels cause food relied upon by the birds to disappear. Water conditions are so dire that Lake Abert has gone dry twice in the last eight years.

Following in-depth reporting by The Oregonian detailing the state’s failure to address the lake’s plight, WaterWatch and six other conservation organizations requested that Governor Kate Brown and key agencies immediately start implementing 12 needed actions. The state has now committed to working towards a solution for the lake.

We are optimistic that monitoring – foundational for understanding and conserving the lake – will soon be implemented. We know that finding solutions won’t be easy, but we’re committed to working with others to ensure that current momentum is translated into action to preserve this amazing lake.

Links:

• Reporting on Lake Abert's imperiled status by The Oregonian
• Second Oregonian Article about Lake Abert and Oregon's agencies
• WaterWatch of Oregon v. Water Resources Dept. 2021 Supreme Court

In addition to the critical reforms WaterWatch advocates to ensure Oregon manages groundwater sustainably, funding and agency capacity are also essential. As a result of past underinvestment in groundwater in many areas of the state, the Water Resources Department lacks adequate data to make sustainable groundwater decisions.

Conducting multiple groundwater studies to better inform water management is a priority recommended action in Oregon’s Integrated Water Resources Strategy. The importance and need for these groundwater studies was highlighted in The Oregonian’s influential series on the mismanagement of groundwater, “Draining Oregon”. The state has 19 river basins, but to date only three United States Geological Service (USGS) groundwater basin studies have been completed (Deschutes, Upper Klamath, and Willamette). Another is nearly complete in the Harney Basin (part of the Malheur Lakes Basin), and an Oregon-Washington effort in the Walla Walla Basin is underway. The Water Resources Department has 12 basins they have identified as priorities for additional basin studies.

Funding for groundwater studies has been anything but steady. In the mid-1990’s the legislature provided the Water Resources Department up to $1.2 million per biennium towards joint USGS/OWRD groundwater investigations. These funds fueled completed studies in the Deschutes, Klamath, and Willamette. However, this funding diminished significantly through the 2000’s. In the 2009-2011 and 2011-2013 biennium, the Water Resources Department received zero dollars for groundwater investigations. From 2013-2017, the agency received $375,000 per biennium. It was a start, but clearly inadequate for the task at hand.

In 2019, the tide began to turn. Thanks to the advocacy of WaterWatch and others, the legislature delivered $1.6 million to the program, which brought with it six staff. In 2021-2023, the legislature delivered an additional $4.38 million and 16 new positions. This funding should allow the state to move forward, from building basin water budgets, to collecting data needed for additional groundwater studies, to beginning USGS/OWRD groundwater investigations in new basins.

After decades of inadequate funding, this transformative package should produce invaluable information critical for sustainable management of our state’s groundwater resources. WaterWatch will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that this package benefits ecosystems and people who rely on groundwater!

Links:

• Draining Oregon reporting by The Oregonian (full)
• Race to the Bottom article #1 by The Oregonian
• Race to the Bottom article #2 by The Oregonian