N.E. Oregon makes progress on water puzzle

It was a crisis more than 60 years in the making. The Umatilla Basin in northeast Oregon is home to some of the state’s most productive farmland, famously growing more than 200 different crops including wheat, corn, potatoes and watermelon. Irrigation pivots dominate the countryside, transforming scrubby desert into lush, green fields.The development of the region’s farms and cities, however, came at a price underground. As early as 1958, regulators began to see groundwater declines in the Butter Creek area of Umatilla and Morrow counties. Between 1976 and 1991, the Oregon Water Resources Department designated four critical groundwater areas within the basin — Butter Creek, Stage Gulch, Ordnance Basalt and Ordnance Gravel — to address the shrinking aquifers.The designation allowed the Water Resources Commission to restrict groundwater pumping, taking once valuable agricultural land out of production or returning it to dryland crops.Reeder now serves as chairman of the Northeast Oregon Water Association, or NOWA, a nonprofit corporation founded in 2013 to seek and coordinate solutions to the basin’s water woes. The plan, revealed in 2014, involves building three massive new pipelines, up to 78 inches in diameter, to deliver Columbia River water to farms and ranches in the critical groundwater areas. By doing that, farmers would no longer have to pump water from the aquifers, allowing them to recharge.The water would be temporarily offset, or mitigated, by area municipalities with certified water rights that are transferred and left in the river.Wooed by promises of economic and environmental benefits, Oregon lawmakers approved $11 million in grants during the 2015 Legislature for the pipelines. After years of negotiating with key environmental groups and officials, Reeder said they are now on the cusp of moving forward.