An environmentalist lawsuit threatens to complicate a
planned boost in the amount of irrigation water diverted
from behind 13 dams in Oregon’s Willamette River Basin.
The legal challenge marks the latest snag in a process of
allocating water from the flood control reservoirs that’s
dragged on for about 30 years.
If the lawsuit succeeds in creating additional delays and
difficulties, it’s hard to see how Willamette Valley farmers
will ever access more of the stored water, said Mary Anne
Cooper, vice president of public policy for the Oregon Farm
Bureau.
The Farm Bureau was already concerned about the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers proposal, arguing it dedicates
insufficient water for the future needs of agriculture.
“We’re not happy about it, either,” Cooper said. “We want
the ag bucket to grow.”
Under a proposal that Congress is expected to vote on this
year, the federal agency would devote up to 327,650
acre-feet of water to agriculture from the 1.6 million
acre-feet that can be stored behind the dams.
That’s a considerable increase from the 74,000 acre-feet
that farmers are currently contracted to use, but
substantially lower than the 450,000 acre-feet sought by the
Farm Bureau.
Another 159,750 acre-feet would be allocated for municipal
and industrial uses, while more than 1.1 million acre-feet
would go to fish and wildlife habitat.
The complaint filed by Waterwatch of Oregon, Northwest
Environmental Defense Center and Wildearth Guardian argues
the federal government’s allocation plan should be blocked
for violating the Endangered Species Act.
Rather than only studying the effects of divvying up the
water on threatened salmon and steelhead, the agency should
have analyzed the allocation in the entire context of
impacts from Willamette River Flood Control Project dams,
the plaintiffs claim.
A “consultation” over the effect of dams on protected
species is already underway among federal agencies, but the
allocation plan would prejudice that process and foreclose
the possibility of more water being dedicated to fish, the
complaint said.
“The reallocation plan will tie the Corps’ hands and limit
the agencies’ ability to develop reasonable and prudent
alternative measures that may be necessary to protect those
fish species from the impacts of the Project, which will, in
turn, further jeopardize their existence,” the complaint
said.
The plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to stop the agency
from submitting a report containing those recommendations to
Congress for approval, as well as reimbursement of the
environmental groups’ litigation expenses.
Congress initially asked the Army Corps to examine water
allocations in the Willamette basin in 1988, which led to a
more extensive feasibility study.
However, that study was halted after salmon and steelhead in
the river were listed as threatened in 2000 and only
re-started in 2015, ultimately leading to the agency’s
current proposal.
Aside from being disappointed with the amount of water
devoted to agriculture, the Farm Bureau is also worried
about the treatment of existing irrigators who rely on water
from behind the dams.
The concern is that longtime irrigators won’t be given any
more water assurances than newer users, potentially leading
to a “free-for-all down the road,” said Cooper, the group’s
vice president of public policy.
Another “biological opinion” would also be required to
withdraw more than 95,000 acre-feet for irrigation from the
reservoirs, which would be a major obstacle to accessing the
full 327,650 acre-feet theoretically permitted, she said.
“We have no idea whether we’d ever get more,” Cooper said.
