We need more than pipes. We need better water-resource management.

A recent front-page article in the Bend Bulletin highlights the flaws within the irrigation districts’ proposed water conservation strategies. Tumalo Irrigation District has chosen a narrow, expensive tactic entirely dependent on canal piping while ignoring viable alternatives that are more cost-effective. Some degree of infrastructure improvement is essential in an irrigation system that is 120 years old, but equally important is creating a conservation culture among landowners.

What would that look like? Encourage them to improve irrigation methods, upgrade irrigation equipment, pipe the irrigation ditches on their property, and offer financial incentives to use less water. These on-farm conservation approaches would significantly reduce water demand at a fraction of the cost of district-wide main canal piping.

© Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin

Cost matters, and time is of the essence. Climate change, prolonged drought, degraded rivers, and threatened species compel us to act more quickly than ever. The water management practices conducted by irrigation districts over the past century must adapt quickly to change, or much of what we cherish about Central Oregon will be lost.

This urgency applies not only to Tumalo Irrigation District but to all the irrigations districts, particularly those with senior water rights. The Central Oregon Irrigation District (COID) consists of over 400 miles of canals and roughly 3,800 patrons.

© Infra Pipe Solutions

Like Tumalo Irrigation District, COID has also chosen a narrow, expensive conservation path - estimating it will cost around $1 billon to pipe these canals, plus those of the other districts around Bend. The piping project on which COID breaks ground this fall will pipe only eight of its 400 miles of canals at a taxpayer cost of $42 million.

Do the math. It doesn’t make sense to spend hundreds of millions of public dollars to pipe canals when on-farm improvements to irrigation methods, plus financial incentives would reduce water waste at one-tenth of the cost of canal piping.

The irrigation districts have a water distribution problem – too much water available to properties that engage little in farming and not enough water to our large agricultural producers or the river.

We can do better for our farmers and for the Deschutes River.