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Irrigator Group Wants More ‘Teeth’ for Aquifer Recharge Proposal

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Published 4:57 pm Friday, February 14, 2025
By Mateusz Perkowski

Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill to expedite aquifer recharge projects but a group of irrigators is questioning whether the proposal goes far enough.

Under House Bill 2988, state agencies would be directed to “reduce barriers” and expand the practice of recharging aquifers, which included “storage and recovery” projects in which the groundwater is withdrawn for irrigation.

Though Oregon was once considered a leader in aquifer storage and recovery, it’s recently been hindered by bureaucratic red tape, said J.R. Cook, director of the Northeast Oregon Water Association, which advocates for irrigators in the region.

“In the past 10 years, things have changed drastically toward the negative,” he said during a recent legislative hearing.

The bill is a step in the right direction but needs more “teeth” to actually provide relief to aquifer storage and recovery projects, Cook said.

As recently as 2012, the state’s political leaders were strongly in favor of increasing aquifer recharge as a way to provide irrigators and other water users with more flexibility and storage options, he said.

More recently, however, state regulators have effectively stood in the way of such projects by casting doubt on the data and models that demonstrate they comply with environmental regulations, Cook said.

Regulators have thrown up objections to methods that were considered sound in the past, telling proponents: “We don’t agree with this model, you’ve got to figure out a different model,” he said.

The resulting delays and added costs are threatening to dissuade investors who’d been excited about aquifer storage and recovery, Cook said.

“If you can’t even get to the five-year testing to prove the concept, those funding sources and that interest goes away very quickly,” he said.

While aquifer storage and recovery has been successful in Oregon and remains a promising technique, such projects must be carefully evaluated to prevent disrupting the function of groundwater systems or introducing contaminants, said Doug Woodcock, deputy director of the state’s Water Resources Department.

“There are always consequences. Some are intended, some are not, so we need to go into it with our eyes open,” Woodcock said.

Such projects are “technical and complicated” but the state has no dedicated staff for examining the proposals, he said.

“This work is shoehorned in with other work the agencies do,” Woodcock said.

Under HB 2988, OWRD and other state agencies would be required to identify changes to existing regulations and laws that would promote aquifer recharge, as well as funding mechanisms to support regulatory oversight of such projects.

WaterWatch of Oregon, an environmental nonprofit, doesn’t oppose the bill but is concerned that “removing barriers” will be interpreted as decreasing protections for groundwater quality, public health and ecosystems.

The group is asking lawmakers to amend the bill to eliminate language about removing barriers and instead direct agencies to improve aquifer storage and recovery processes in a way that maintains regulatory protections.

Eastern Oregon group looks toward Columbia River to solve groundwater problems

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Published Nov. 3, 2023 10 a.m.
By Antonio Sierra

The people behind one of the newest irrigation systems in Umatilla and Morrow counties see the promise of their project in an onion shed south of Hermiston.

Local officials broke ground Thursday on the Ordnance Project, an effort meant to transport thousands of acre feet of water from the robust Columbia River to farms throughout western Umatilla County. The day before, the Northeast Oregon Water Association, also called NOWA, took a group of government officials, irrigation experts and business leaders on a tour of one of the projects they already finished.

The tour guides showcased the shed because the extra water had helped local farmers switch their land from growing canola and wheat to more water-intensive crops like onions. Those onions are being packed for shipping to large restaurant chains like Subway and Chipotle.

NOWA said its aim isn’t just to expand the area’s multimillion-dollar agricultural industry, but also to solve one of the western United States’ biggest challenges: a quickly dwindling groundwater supply.

Checking versus savings

Modern irrigation turned Eastern Oregon’s high desert climate into an agricultural powerhouse.

While much of the region is still dominated by commodity crops like wheat and alfalfa, the farmland bordering the Columbia River can sustain root vegetables like potatoes and onions.

Local farmer and NOWA board member Craig Reeder said those crops are often sent to processors at the Port of Morrow, where they can be turned into products like French fries and shipped off to markets around the world. Irrigated agriculture helped turn the port into a place that supports 6,700 jobs with a gross domestic product of just under $1 billion.

For decades, the local agricultural industry supported itself with groundwater drawn from wells. But it’s a practice increasingly seen as unsustainable across the West as climate change delivers less rainfall and an overly permissive water rights system has depleted some aquifers for generations in Eastern and Central Oregon.

NOWA’s solution is to tap into the Columbia River. NOWA director J.R. Cook compared farm irrigation to bank accounts. The Columbia should act as the region’s checking account, with farmers grabbing river water on its journey toward the Pacific Ocean. The savings account is the groundwater, water that should be saved and grown.

NOWA has already been successful in getting farmers off of groundwater. For $94 million, the group and its partners completed east and west pump stations that move water out of the Columbia and into water lines that distribute it throughout Umatilla and Morrow counties in 2020. Most of those projects were funded privately, with less than 10% coming from government coffers.

The latest stage is the $42 million Ordnance Project, which will not only pump Columbia water to western Umatilla County farms but also send water to the city of Umatilla and the site of the old Umatilla Chemical Depot, which is being converted into an industrial park.

Cook said the next step will be to restore groundwater by taking excess river water during the high-flow months in the winter and depositing it back into the ground.

“If you don’t use it this year, it’s out in the ocean and you don’t know what next year is gonna be,” he said. “But if you can use those good years, and you can use a little bit of Columbia River water to save groundwater that’s 30,000 years old … then that’s a pretty good net gain on what we’re doing now.”

Drawing river water brings its own environmental concerns, both over water supply and wildlife habitat. Those concerns are coming to the forefront in waterways like the Colorado River and, closer to home, the Klamath River.

But NOWA officials argue that the Columbia is more robust and less over-extended than other irrigated rivers, making it more likely to withstand the pressures of Eastern Oregon’s agricultural demand.

“There’s the theme about irrigation: Death by a thousand cuts and that’s why we have to limit water policy,” Reeder said. “That’s just such a fallacy in our area because you could irrigate every possible, feasible, pumpable acre on the Columbia River and not come anywhere near to the withdrawals out of the Colorado (River).”

‘We have a chance to fix this’

Large-scale agriculture is a thirsty industry and its water use hasn’t escaped the attention of environmental groups like WaterWatch.

While NOWA and its partners don’t have the most comfortable relationship with environmental concerns, Cook said both sides are willing to talk through their issues. He added that he knew his group needed to make a case of how this water would benefit farms, and how it would contribute to the region’s sustainability.

“If you over-appropriate the groundwater system, you’re kind of stuck. We’re seeing that in the Klamath, we’re seeing that in Malheur,” he said. “(That’s) the reason why we have a chance to fix this. We’ve still got some water in the river to be able to help us fix it without impacting fish.”

Fish are a concern for environmentalists and the Columbia Plateau tribes like the nearby Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, who hold treaty rights to fish the Columbia River.

To protect fish, the irrigation projects’ backers have installed screens on their intake equipment. Reeder said these screens have a high rate of success keeping fish out of the equipment and within the current of the river.

Cook said Columbia River irrigation can’t yet offer the region permanent resilience. Leaders will have to monitor population growth and water intake to make sure the river isn’t overdrawn. But he thinks these projects have put the region on the path to sustainability.

“The best thing we can do is finish this plan and get us to a sustainable future,” he said. “What the next round of legislators or the next generation decides to do with that is probably going to be out of my control. All we can do is send them in what we think is the right way to go and hope that they take advantage of the tools to get there.”

Massive water sustainability project nearing completion in NE Oregon

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Published 12:30 pm Friday, November 3, 2023
By GEORGE PLAVEN

HERMISTON, Ore. — What started as an ambitious concept to improve water sustainability in the Umatilla Basin of northeast Oregon is coming to fruition.

Construction has begun on a third and final pipeline that will deliver water from the Columbia River to boost economic development in the region, while simultaneously relieving groundwater aquifers that have been over-pumped for decades.

State, local and tribal officials gathered on a cold and gray November morning at the former Umatilla Chemical Depot near Hermiston to break ground on the Ordnance Regional Water Supply and Aquifer Restoration Project — more informally known as the Central Project.

The Central Project follows the completion of two other regional pipelines, the East and West projects, spanning northern Umatilla and Morrow counties.

“I’m proud to say we are probably one of the most sustainable regions already in the Western U.S., if not the most sustainable,” said J.R. Cook, founder and director of the Northeast Oregon Water Association, or NOWA. “That’s taken a ton of work, a ton of collaboration (and) a ton of effort to get there.”

A common vision

NOWA formed in 2013 following recommendations made by the Columbia River-Umatilla Solutions Task Force, co-convened by then-Gov. John Kitzhaber and Umatilla County.

Their goal was to figure out how to fix groundwater declines from past generations of irrigated farming and urban development that eventually led to the designation of four critical groundwater areas in the basin from 1976 to 1991.

The task force proposed tapping into the Columbia River to take pressure off the aquifers.

But to do that, every drop of water taken from the river would have to be replaced from another source to avoid harming federally protected salmon.

That’s where NOWA came in, bringing together cities, ports, tribes, environmentalists and private landowners to work toward a common vision.

Temporary mitigation was achieved by taking existing certified water rights — largely held by municipalities — and transferring the water in-stream for up to 30 years. Those water rights add up to a maximum rate of 180 cubic feet per second, or 61,000 acre-feet a year.

One acre-foot is enough water to flood an area the size of a football field 1 foot deep.

The majority of funding for the multimillion-dollar pipelines has also come from private investment. The $31 million West Project was the first to cross the finish line in 2020, followed by the $54 million East Project in 2022.

Central Project

Now the $42 million Central Project has reached a major milestone, with a groundbreaking ceremony held on Nov. 1.

Though it is the smallest of the three projects by area, Cook said it is the most complex.

Water will be taken out of the Columbia River at a pump station between the cities of Umatilla and Irrigon, purchased by Umatilla County from Amstad Farms in 2019.

The new pipeline will initially stretch 6.7 miles from the river south to the former Army depot. The 20,000-acre depot was transferred to local hands in March for future industrial development, wildlife habitat and a training center for the Oregon Army National Guard.

As the pipeline is built out in phases, Columbia River water will flow first to the city of Umatilla, then to farmers in the Westland Irrigation District, which typically relies on the Umatilla River and storage out of McKay Reservoir near Pendleton to grow crops during the summer.

The depot will also benefit as it attracts new industrial tenants. One site is dedicated specifically for injecting water underground to recharge one of the region’s ailing aquifers.

Cook said the region still has a long way to go to fix legacy problems of the past, “before science caught up and told us we were doing the wrong things.”

“There’s a lot of private and public water supply interests that we not only need to take care of from past practices, but also to ensure for future generations,” he said.

Groundbreaking ceremony

At the groundbreaking ceremony, officials praised the project’s potential to ensure water for the next seven generations.

State Rep. Bobby Levy, R-Echo, teared up as she described her family’s personal connection to the project. She and her husband, Bob Levy, farm in the Westland Irrigation District southwest of Echo, with roughly 3,200 irrigated acres.

“The one constant over these decades has been our region, and our determination to prove to our state and nation that we can have a sustainable natural resources-based economy,” Levy said. “We can fix past problems, and we can be a leader in innovation and stewardship without sacrificing our economy, our heritage and our way of life.”

Elizabeth Steiner, a Democratic state senator who represents northwest Portland and Beaverton, was also on hand to present a check for $6 million for the Central Project. Lawmakers previously approved the award in 2021 out of a federal appropriation for pandemic relief.

“This is why we do this work,” Steiner said. “We have to invest now to make Oregon, and in particular this project for Eastern Oregon, the place where not only our children but our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren, and our great-great grandchildren, can grow and thrive.”

Don Sampson, executive director of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, said water is a source of livelihood for tribal people, salmon and farmers. He and CTUIR board chairman Lindsey Watchman led a prayer to bless the Central Project.

“The wiser we are going forward using this very important water resource, the better all of our community is going to be,” Sampson said.

Adding value

Farmers in the region say they are already reaping the benefits of the two completed pipelines.

During a tour of the West Project, Craig Reeder, chief financial officer for Madison Ranches, showed off a facility built in 2019 dedicated to packing onions for several high-profile chain restaurants, including Subway, Chipotle and Applebee’s.

The business, called Madison-Cox Onions, is a partnership with another farm family in the Imperial Valley of Southern California.

It was only made possible, Reeder said, thanks to the Columbia Improvement District providing additional water from the West Project for Madison Ranches to plant onions on about 5,000 acres — rather than growing wheat and canola, which requires less water but brings in less value.

Reeder estimated the onion facility now brings in $10 million of additional revenue to the farm, and employs 19 people. Automated machinery carries onions that arrive from the farm along conveyor belts where they are sorted and bagged, then carried by forklift on pallets into storage.

“We did it right. We did it as a region,” Reeder said of the Columbia River pipelines. “We came at it for all the right reasons, and it was really satisfying to see that that yielded tangible forward progress.”

Bob Hale dies at age 69, remembered as visionary of Oregon agriculture

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Published 3:30 pm Tuesday, August 8, 2023
By George Plaven

ECHO, Ore. — Few people played as big a role in the evolution of Columbia Basin agriculture as Bob Hale.

He was there for the good times, as irrigation transformed the region in northeast Oregon from scrubby desert into an oasis of high-value farmland. And he was there for the difficult times, as water cutbacks forced growers to think about how they can be more sustainable.

All the while, Hale built a successful farming operation that employed hundreds of people, growing and processing onions for a who’s who of well-known restaurant chains — including Subway, Chipotle, Panera Bread, Wendy’s and Applebee’s.

“He was one of the foundational elements of the Columbia Basin,” said Craig Reeder, who worked with Hale for over two decades.

Hale died July 30 following a 34-month battle with advanced cancer. He was 69.

He is survived by his wife, Kelly Kilkenny Hale; daughter Hannah Hale Redfern; grandchildren Rowan, Hank and Bobby Redfern; and siblings Chris, Doug, Jackie and Rick. He was preceded in death by his parents, Bob and Adell Hale.

‘Hard-charging visionary’

Hale grew up on a farm outside Echo, Ore., and returned to the area after earning his bachelor’s degree from Lewis & Clark College in Portland.

Along with brothers Doug and Rick, the Hales bought their first 500-acre farm in the Butter Creek Valley straddling Umatilla and Morrow counties. They initially grew hay and grains while supplementing their income with off-farm jobs.

Hale Farms would eventually grow to 40,000 acres, with a list of crops including potatoes, onions, carrots, peas, corn, blueberries, alfalfa, wheat, barley and grass seed.

Reeder, who joined Hale Farms as chief financial officer in 2000, said Hale was a hard-charging and visionary leader.

“He was always out in front of the game,” Reeder said. “He took risks, but they were calculated risks.”

Hale also founded River Point Farms in Hermiston, which became the largest producer of fresh onions in the country. Reeder said the company supplied onions for every Subway restaurant in North America — more than 20,000 locations — almost year-round.

“He put those marketing relationships together,” Reeder said. “He was just a machine in that regard.”

Focus on sustainability

The Hale companies together processed more than 1 billion pounds of vegetables annually and employed more than 700 people.

Hale Farms and River Point Farms later sold in 2016 to AgriNorthwest, a large farm owner and operator based in Kennewick, Wash.

Fred Ziari, founder and CEO of IRZ Engineering and Consulting in Hermiston, said Hale was a close friend for 40 years. His company developed the irrigation systems at Hale Farms using advanced technology to conserve water and energy.

“We had satellite sensors in all of his fields,” Ziari said. “He believed the best way to grow crops was to manage water, energy and fertility the right way.”

Hale’s focus on sustainability helped lay the foundation for new generations of farmers in the basin now striving to recharge depleted groundwater aquifers.

Between 1976 and 1991, the state Water Resources Department designated four critical groundwater areas, leading to water curtailments and taking prime farmland out of production.

J.R. Cook, founder and director of the Northeast Oregon Water Association, has spent years planning and coordinating a series of projects to deliver mitigated water from the Columbia River, allowing farms to rely less on groundwater pumping.

Those efforts, Cook said, were built on the institutional knowledge of longtime growers like Hale.

Value of irrigation

Cook said Hale was instrumental in communicating how a small amount of Columbia River water could benefit sustainability while also growing the region’s farm economy.

Dryland wheat, grown without irrigation, yields about $100 per acre. Add 1 acre-foot of water, and the value jumps to $500 per acre. Add 3 acre-feet, and farms can grow higher value crops such as potatoes or onions, earning up to $5,000 per acre.

“One of (Hale’s) key traits was the ability to take a discussion about a resource like water and turn it into a slideshow that shows the economic importance of that resource,” Cook said.

In addition to his farming acumen, Ziari said he will remember Hale for his generosity.

Ziari founded the nonprofit Farmers Ending Hunger in 2004, with local farms donating a portion of their harvest to the Oregon Food Bank. Hale was among the first to participate, Ziari said, donating 1 million pounds of fresh onions and 50,000 pounds of carrots each year.

“He thought that was the right thing to do, and always did it with the goal of helping his fellow Oregonians,” Ziari said.

Reeder, who now works as CFO for Madison Ranches in Echo and chief operating officer for Pacific Ag in Hermiston, said Hale’s legacy is putting Columbia Basin agriculture on the map.

“He really moved the needle for this whole region,” Reeder said.

Oregon regulators vote against curtailing stockwater exemption

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Published 5:15 pm Tuesday, December 15, 2020
By Mateusz Perkowski

A worker at a dairy milks cows on a carousel system. Oregon water regulators have rejected a petition to limit the stockwatering exemption in two critical groundwater areas.

Oregon water regulators have rejected a petition to restrict groundwater pumping by large dairies within a 257-square-mile area in Umatilla and Morrow counties.

The Oregon Water Resources Commission voted unanimously Dec. 15 to deny the request by Stand Up to Factory Farms, a coalition of environmental groups and others, to establish a 5,000-gallon daily limit on water withdrawals by new or expanded “concentrated animal feeding operations” in the region.

Under the state’s stockwatering exemption, water can be diverted or pumped for livestock without a water rights permit from the Oregon Water Resources Department, which is overseen by the commission.

Stand Up to Factory Farms contended that “mega dairies” and other CAFOs should be stopped from relying on this exemption to use “unlimited amounts of water” in the two groundwater critical areas in Northeastern Oregon.

Members of the commission agreed the petition wasn’t the right way to resolve problems with declining groundwater in the area, which should involve a more wide-ranging approach than targeting the stockwatering exemption alone.

“I don’t think this is the right venue or the vehicle to do that,” said Katherine Kihara, commission member and retired civil engineer with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

A better approach would be to coordinate with other state agencies that oversee CAFOs, which wouldn’t be accomplished under the regulation proposed by the petition, she said.

Bruce Corn, a commission member and row crop farmer, said he’d prefer a more inclusive strategy instead of the narrow focus of the petition, which seemed “punitive” to a particular industry.

“It’s more complex than implied by the request in the petition,” said Bob Baumgartner, a commission member and official with the Clean Water Services agency.

Instead of dismissing the petition outright, however, the commission directed OWRD to continue discussing the issue as it considers its policy priorities. “

It certainly raises issues that are important and we should consider going forward,” said Meg Reeves, commission chair and retired attorney from Oregon State University.

Tom Byler, OWRD’s director, said he’s made clear to potential CAFO operators that they should look at more sustainable alternatives than relying on the stockwatering exemption.

“It’s not something we want to promote,” Byler said.

While the agency has competing policy considerations and limited resources, the problem of aquifer decline is a significant concern statewide, he said.

“Groundwater is a big priority for us and has been for some time,” Byler said. “I think these issues will continue to percolate out there, whether it’s the Umatilla Basin or another part of the state.”

While proponents of the petition continue to believe the stockwatering exemption should be restricted in the region, they’re encouraged that OWRD will consider the issue in its priority planning, said Brian Posewitz, staff attorney for the WaterWatch of Oregon nonprofit, a member of the coalition.

It’s heartening that OWRD would discourage CAFO operators from relying on the stockwatering exemption, but that may not be enough to dissuade someone who’s determined to rely on it, he said.

The regulation proposed in the petition would provide a simple way to stop such water usage without OWRD having to invoke a complicated administrative process, Posewitz said.

“We’re disappointed they didn’t move forward with the rule-making, but we’re happy the petition brought more attention to this issue,” he said.

Cities, counties and others in the region are “invested and committed” to fixing the groundwater problem, but the petition represents an attempt by “obstructionists” to exploit it for their own purposes, said JR Cook, executive director of the Northeast Oregon Water Association nonprofit.

“It’s not our job to attack specific industries that use water,” Cook said.

Groups involved in Stand Up to Factory Farms, meanwhile, have stood in the way of projects intended to prevent groundwater declines, he said.

“Every time we propose something to fix it, they oppose it,” Cook said. “It doesn’t pass the straight face test, for sure.”