Golden for Jackson County

ON WATER                                                                                                 7/2/10

Water is one of the County’s looming challenges over the coming years, especially as we strive to become more food self-sufficient.

Surface water issues

• The challenge is not really one of supply, and calls to impound more water by building new dams or retaining old ones are not well-reasoned. Lost Creek Lake, well-located high on the Rogue River system, has about 38,000 acre-feet allocated for irrigation, of which about 31,000 a/f are still available for purchase.  About 10,000 acre-feet are allocated for municipal/industrial use, of which about 6500 a/f are still available for purchase.  What is lacking is delivery systems to carry water away from the river to dry farmlands, and so far no viable proposal for funding them has surfaced.
• It’s estimated that as much as 50% of available irrigation water around the Valley is lost through leakage and evaporation from open canals.  The much-discussed WISE project would replace ditches with pipes, effectively doubling available water for designated farms,  Estimates peg the cost of piping the entire County at $100 million.. I would join other public officials and our Congressional delegation to pry loose federal dollars for at least some of those costs, and look for creative funding mechanisms (e.g., bonds repaid with revenue from some of the newly captured water).   If only $5-$10 million can be secured in the next year or two, a carefully-chosen section of ditches should be replaced in a pilot project to save some water and develop better design practices for the full project.
• Under current circumstances, the best water development strategy is conservation.  Incentives and joint purchasing agreements should be created to help farmers improve their water-use efficiency, and for the sake of common sense and better water utilization, we may need to take on sacred cows in Salem.  Example: when some landowners in a watershed can’t farm for lack of water,  shouldn’t senior water rights holders, who often have all they can use  be required to meet certain minimum conservation and efficiency standards?
• The County should encourage even more coordination and cooperation among cities, looking for savings in the areas of future facilities construction, equipment with state-of-the-artuse efficiencies, and education and price-incentive programs for conservation/
• Commissioners should be part of a lobbying effort to overturn state laws preventing the use of gray water, which has proven to be safe and  helpful in other states.

Underground water issues

In the last twenty years, the practice of  permitting and regulating rural wells has become mostly accepted.  Rural residents should not have to see their water supplies damaged or eliminated by development of new wells around them.   New wells should be allowed only after reputable testing shows that impacts on neighboring wells will be negligible, and the county needs to dedicate enough resources (probably from well permit fees) to make sure that appropriate restrictions are actually enforced.