COID requests $42 million in taxpayer dollars to pipe 7.9 miles of canals

Central Oregon Irrigation District’s (COID) latest watershed plan would pipe only 7.9 miles of the more than 400 miles of its canals and cost a whopping $568,000 per irrigator. This plan was submitted to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in order to receive the U.S Department of Agriculture funding made available by Senator Merkley to improve water efficiency, secure water supply for farmers and restore the Deschutes River. COID’s submitted plan is not only insufficient for the scope of the problem, it is exorbitantly expensive in light of the less expensive alternatives available to the district. Public comments on the plan are due TODAY February 18th, 2020. If you would like to join LandWatch in commenting on this plan to the NRCS, you can do so HERE.

The Deschutes River is on the verge of ecological collapse.  Excessively high summer flows and extremely low winter flows caused by irrigation water management puts the River on a disastrous course if we do not act soon.  Severe erosion, loss of critical riparian vegetation, extirpation of native fish and decline of Oregon Spotted Frog populations are indicators of the enormity of this problem.  

Climate change will only exacerbate these bad conditions. The effects of climate change on hydrology will include decreased snowpack, earlier snowmelt, earlier runoff, and potentially slightly more precipitation. The greatest reduction in summer streamflows is anticipated for the eastern slope of the Cascade Range, which includes the western flank of the Upper Deschutes Basin. Earlier snowmelt could result in summer streamflow losses of 40 to 60% by 2040. That is only 20 years away, and this decline has already started.  Not only is the river’s health at stake, the commercial farmers of North Unit Irrigation District (NUID) stand to suffer, too.
 
Rather than use available federal funding to tackle these problems at a meaningful scale, Central Oregon Irrigation District (COID) has proposed to spend tens of millions of public monies on an unreasonably expensive project that provides far less benefit to the River or farmers than the more cost-effective measures at their disposal.

What We're Commenting

COID has delivered a narrow plan to pipe merely eight miles of its Pilot Butte Canal at a cost of $42,000,000. To pipe 7.9 miles of the more than 400 miles of canals in COID, the district proposes to spend $42 million in a project area of only 1300 acres to directly serve only 74 of their 3800 potential beneficiaries and out of a total of 45,000 acres in COID.  Also, the project proposes to conserve 9,392 acre-feet of water each year at the unreasonably high price of $4,472 per acre foot of water conserved.  This is more than four times the price of conserved water generated by other similar piping projects recent years.  

Reasonable alternatives to COID’s proposal exist. The two most important of these alternative solutions are market-based incentives and private laterals conservation. Piping private laterals captures water lost through seepage and spills at the end of the canal and improves deliveries to district patrons. The more controlled, measured deliveries to patrons have the added benefit of facilitating the use of market-based incentives.  Market-based incentives such as temporary leasing and permanent transfers are tested and effective approaches to conserving water for both the River and irrigation. They are flexible, can be scaled for dry years, and can make water available at relatively low cost. These incentives and piping private laterals can supply water at around $400 and $600 per acre foot, respectively, compared to $4,472 per acre foot proposed by COID current plans. 

COID, in its watershed plan with NRCS, has chosen the least cost-effective water conservation opportunity to pursue.  The plan begins to address the major objectives of restoring streamflows in the Deschutes River and securing NUID’s water supply, but for a $42 million investment of public funds, much more water could be conserved and transferred for River and NUID farmers.