Oregon Capitol Chronicle story
The following transcript was generated using automated transcription software for the accessibility and convenience of our audience. While we strive for accuracy, the automated process may introduce errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. This transcript is intended as a helpful companion to the original audio and should not be considered a verbatim record. For the most accurate representation, please refer to the audio recording.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. Water, water everywhere, but Not a Drop to Drink. That famous line from Coleridge’s poem, “The rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” is an apt descriptor for Oregon these days. Yes, we live in a region with abundant rainfall and abundant river streams, but as our climate gets drier and drier, a real scarcity of water exists right here at home today on the show, you'll hear a conversation with the environmental reporter at The Oregon Capitol Chronicle about several bills working their way through the legislature to try and bring our water regulations up to date for a state that will be continually navigating the stark impacts of climate change that's next on Oregon on the Record. Alex Baumhardt, who is a senior reporter who covers Education and the Environment with the Oregon Capitol Chronicle, Alex, thanks so much for coming on again and talking with us.
ALEX BAUMHARDT: Thanks for having me.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I read a while ago you did a very large and detailed article in the Capitol Chronicle about water issues in the state. And I wanted to just start by having you encapsulate the article that you wrote.
ALEX BAUMHARDT: Yeah, it was probably longer coming than it should have been. Because, you know, way back in January as this session was just getting underway, I had talked with Governor Tina Kotek, her natural resources advisor, Jeff Huntington, just about some of these legislative priorities for the you know, five months ahead, six months ahead. And they both said water was the big one. And, you know, my God, there were like 3000 some bills proposed at the beginning of this session. So, it was hard to sort of shake through all the water ones. So down the line, I got in touch with rep Ken helm and rep Mark Owens. Ken Helm is a Democrat. Owens is a Republican. They are, sort of year after year, this bipartisan duo really, really committed to trying to update Oregon water law. And they are, I don't want to call them an unlikely duo, because I think they both come to this with pretty earnest concerns and a passion for data and science that backs up the legislation they want to bring up. But these guys are sort of like the water czars of the Oregon legislature, and they co-chair the house water agriculture committee. So, the session starts with Kotek and Huntington saying water's a big deal. Down the line with Helm and Owens, they start laying out some of these bills for me that they're behind. And right now, there's like, at least nine or 10 that are still on the table, and Helm and Owens are behind, like six of them at least, so we're down to the wire every session. These guys try to get, like, at least a few new water issues they wouldn't call it regulations, water management bills passed so that we can start to update Oregon's water laws, which are really antiquated.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And it's funny, because, like in the lead paragraph of your story, I think the quote is about the work that the legislators are doing to allocate what's left of Oregon's ground and surface waters. I mean, how bad is it in terms of, you know, our aquifers and rivers and in our ability to utilize water here in the state?
ALEX BAUMHARDT: So, not good. It's such a great question. I say not good because it's literally a question that these guys have been trying to answer in legislative session after legislative session. You know, I think Mark Owens was like, This is the sixth session they have tried to propose getting this sort of Oregon water bank, this dashboard that would just have every basin in the state on map outlined, and it would include all of this data that would tell you, it would, you know, sort of amalgamate water rights data, groundwater tables, US Geological Survey data about water flows, so we would have a better understanding of surface water flows, groundwater flows, what's been allocated, what hasn't there are a lot of challenges there. There are water rights that people hold that aren't being used. There are water rights that have been transferred for different purposes that haven't undergone major review. So, these guys keep making the argument that, like, we need to do some accounting here. So beyond just asking the very basic and good question, which is, what is left, they also know that in some of these basins, there isn't much left. Rep Mark Owens is in the Harney basin, they've been dealing with massive drought, massive water allocations, people drilling deeper to get to water that's, you know, dried up higher in the groundwater table. So, yeah, I take them at their word. I take in the director of the Water Resources Department; I think all have said the same. It's, you know, we cannot keep handing out new water permits without really confronting the fact that we don't have much water left to give, and we need to really get to a granular level about how much water is left.
MICHAEL DUNNE: There was another great quote that you had from Rep Ken Helm, a Democrat from Beaverton. He said: “We're moving from a bias toward regulation to a bias towards management.” Explain that to our audience a bit?
ALEX BAUMHARDT: Yeah, it gave me pause too, because I tend to think about these state agencies as being regulatory, right? It's like water is a shared resource. It's a public resource, private industry, farmers, private families, individuals, it is an extraordinary privilege that they get to use this shared resource for personal benefit, which is why we have these rules that go along with it, right? Rep Ken Helm's perspective was that much of the way that water is shared or transferred or monitored in Oregon has to do with making sure it's clean, making sure it's not basically that somebody's sort of senior water rights aren't being infringed. You know, we have these basic responsibilities. I think where he's seeing the issue is that too many people in Oregon see the Oregon Water Resources Department as sort of a reactionary coming in late agency that is handing down fines or new demands. I think he wants people to see the Oregon Water Resources Department as somebody who's going to help them manage a resource and a finite resource. Is that right? We want to believe that water is just circularly coming back to us forever, but given the ways we use it in the year 2025 it's not, and it's not coming back to us as clean or as abundantly as it might have you know, groundwater takes millions of years to collect. Aquifers that we use in the United States are older than human beings on this continent. So, I think the way he's positioning himself is that this is a department that can help us manage a shared resource in a smarter way, and maybe feel more like a resource than a cop. But it did cause me pause, because I do tend to think that when it comes to agencies that oversee shared public resources, though they are sort of like the people's enforcer, they are the ones who make sure that when Intel uses our water, when a 1,500 acre ranch in the Klamath Basin uses our water, and I say our water because it is our water. These are states, these are waters of Oregon, and waters of the United States that do not harm them, right?
MICHAEL DUNNE: You know, I imagine generations ago, you know, people who lived in Oregon looked around and said, these trees, they'll last forever. Look how many there are. And I think that, you know, obviously there was such a change of heart in what happened in terms of harvesting timber in our state. And I almost feel like it seems like a lot of these legislative actions are corrective of previous ways in which regulation laws were written around water. And I guess it sort of, I guess it undergirds a new reality of scarcity. Is that kind of, sort of where we are?
ALEX BAUMHARDT: Yeah, yeah. I think there are. It's funny, because I don't think any of these lawmakers would like to even utter the word scarcity. You know, everything's an opportunity to change how we manage something. But we're obviously responding to a problem. And the problem is, you know, to come full circle, people are not they are struggling to access the groundwater they need, be it for agriculture or small business or a home well, and then their concerns with in stream waters and the sort of ciphering of stream waters for industry and agriculture, and even, you know, local water systems, we are responding to something that is, you know, the sort of inception point of it is a scarcity. And I will say Rep Helms, and Rep Owens are really this will to any of your listeners who are like Big Western history, water and geology buffs, there's this really seminal book called Cadillac Desert that was sort of written about the making of the West and how so much of the Oregon And Washington and California that we all inhabit, Colorado, Utah, it would never have existed without irrigation. I mean, this entire part of the country was literally called The Great American Desert, prior to massive, wide scale irrigation, which was surprisingly led in large part by Mormons who basically developed the Bureau of Land Management. So, it's a fascinating history. Owens and Helm are both major buffs of that book, yeah, and I've talked with them about it before, because I think particularly for Rep Owens, it was a really eye-opening read, and it sort of preceded a lot of this, these bills that they're that they're bringing up Cadillac Desert, by all intents and purposes, is the story of how we got here, and does a very good job of laying out how quickly we have overdrawn, specifically groundwater basins across the West.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm wondering, obviously, you know their responsibility is the state there and state government, but I wonder, when you were talking to them, given what's happening at the federal government, and how many sort of executive orders that are being, you know, written almost daily, and some of them really take aim at preserving the natural wealth, including water. Are these legislators sort of concerned about scarcity of preservation at the federal level might impact our state?
ALEX BAUMHARDT: You know, it's a great question, and we didn't talk about it at length, but it's hard, you know, it's like anything right now that has to do with changes happening at the federal level that will, you know, matriculate down to Oregon. It's so speculative, right? Like, sure you know something's gonna happen, but it's hard to know where. And the reality is, even if these guys were, like, we can't control for that Sure, half of Oregon's land is federal. Water transcends all of those ownership boundaries, whether it's surface water or groundwater. So there's not a universe in which you get to pretend that what's happening at the federal level isn't immediately impact when it comes to development on these lands, and isn't immediately impacting water everywhere. So, it's a really big question, and it's, you know, it gives me, I need to go back and ask.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Well, I'm a talk radio guy. Speculative questions are sort of my stock and trade!
ALEX BAUMHARDT: But I appreciate where the brilliant questions come. I appreciate you trying!
MICHAEL DUNNE: Let's do this, because I really like how in your article, you sort of laid out the bills, and maybe just take a brief, you know, 30 Seconds to sort of describe what they do, and I've got the roster right here, so maybe just tell us, like, for example, what is Senate Bill 427, what would it do?
ALEX BAUMHARDT: Yeah, Senate Bill 427, this is one that a bunch of nonprofit environmental groups really wanted passed. Basically, closing this loophole right now, in Oregon, you can transfer a water right for a new use, and it can even be like, let's say, a little bit upstream of where you're currently drawing water from. You can do that without having to have an environmental review, even though the water is going to be used for something else. So they were like, This has to stop, because we then don't have any notion of whether or not that change in use is detrimental to the fish in that stream, the habitat, the flows, My God, what if it the what if the levels go down 20% because you've moved to the point in which you're drawing the water from so this close out loophole, you have to do environmental review before you transfer the water rights.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What about Senate Bill 1153?
ALEX BAUMHARDT: So, this one is a big one that Governor Kotek and her natural resources team wanted. It would basically do the same thing. If you're gonna change the right you gotta do a review. Is it gonna threaten endangered species? Is it gonna harm water quality? And that's for transfers and new rights. And then it also allows tribes to review transfers in some basins in Oregon. So, the idea is more transparency around what water is being used for when it's transferred. More people getting access to that data, okay?
MICHAEL DUNNE: And then I think there's also a Senate Bill, 1154
ALEX BAUMHARDT: Yes. So, 1154 is also one that Kotek really wants passed that would basically give the state way more power to intervene in these groundwater management areas, which are sort of where there's been really deep-seated problems with groundwater contamination. It's not getting better, it's harming people's drinking water. And this would basically lay out how all of these agencies in Oregon would coordinate when it comes to ameliorating these problems. So, for the past, you know, 30 or 40 years, the state has declared these groundwater management areas not really had some sort of tactical idea of how people would go about solving it. Propped up these voluntary committees where the groundwater contamination is, but then sort of been like, all right, please do something about it. This is sort of her way of saying, we're gonna put teeth to it. We're gonna make sure everybody knows what their role is. And the more controversial part of it is that some of these eastern Oregon Republican lawmakers and this sort of nonprofit advocacy group Oregon natural resource industries, have an active Facebook page. Their issue with this is that it allows well testing that can be on private property that's tangential to some of these pollution areas. I think the state is really trying to make people understand this is not like some sort of thing where the state's going to come in and close your well down. But that's been a fear stoked that is sort of clouding the maybe the desired goal of this bill.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, I know there's a few more. Why don't you just pick one or two more that you think are important for listeners to sort of understand what's what they are and what they could do?
ALEX BAUMHARDT: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of this is really, a lot of this is really about improving the state's ability to know how much water is there, water quality, and making sure that the Oregon Water Resources Department is not bogged down in contested cases. So these are, you know, people who are fighting over a water right, or environmental groups who are claiming that a water right was awarded that's detrimental. The idea is making O.W.R.D. sort of like a lean, mean management machine right now. They have more than 200 contested cases that are backlogged. They don't have the employees to review all that. And then I think the state wants to be more progressive about just making sure that when water is transferred, or a new water right comes out, they're covering all their bases. We're not hurting endangered species. We're not hurting people's drinking water. That's the bulk of the rest of these. It's really just like setting up teams in agencies to start taking on work. Some of these don't even involve a ton of money. They just involve sort of thinking more pragmatically about what everybody's job is. Yeah. And then Alex, my last question for you is, assuming they get through the steps they need to take, and it sounds like Governor Kotek is certainly supportive of at least some of these. Do you feel like a lot of these have a chance to get past?
I think they do. I will say the Oregon Farm Bureau, some of the irrigation districts, the Columbia Gorge fruit growers, the Oregon Association of nurses. These are powerful groups that don't love the idea of the Water Resources department having more power, or any state agency having more power to sort of like review their decisions. But I think some of these are kind of no brainers about equipping agencies to just do work more efficiently. Those I don't think will struggle so much, but it's like, what, three and a half weeks until this is all wrapped up. So I'm gonna just say maybe half of them will make it okay.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's not a bad batting average, right there. Alex, always great to talk to you. Alex bombard, who is the Senior Reporter over at the Oregon Capitol Chronicle, and I'll make sure to link to your article. I think it was fascinating. Thanks, as always, for coming on and talking with us.
ALEX BAUMHARDT: Thanks so much, Michael. I really appreciate it.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, you'll hear from Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley about democratic efforts to fight against the Trump administration, and you'll also hear about how cuts to the SNAP benefit program are greatly impacting our state. A special note, on Monday and Tuesday of this week, we ran a special series about the Medical Aid In Dying program and brought you the story of a local man who chose this method to end his life. We want to hear from you. What's your opinion about Oregon's Death with Dignity law, and have you known anyone who's taken advantage of this legal program? Let us know by sending us an email at questions@klcc.org and we'll share your comments on the air. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon on the record from KLCC. Thanks so much for listening.
