A Future Without Water Waste
Eight Opportunities to Preserve a Life-Giving Resource
Photo: Arian Stevens
The Deschutes Basin is a dynamic watershed, an Indigenous homeland, a municipal water supply, a productive agricultural region, and the backbone of Central Oregon’s recreation economy. Unlike other basins across the West, the Deschutes Basin is fortunate to have enough water to reasonably meet all of these water users’ needs—if sensibly managed and allocated.
The system we live with today is a product of history, entrenched systems of waste, and ongoing decision-making. Reforming the underlying laws, policies, and practices that have misaligned water rights with community values, created powerful incentives that are driving waste, and exacerbated water scarcity issues will be essential to achieve lasting change. Productive agriculture, municipalities, and ecosystems in the Deschutes Basin all stand to benefit from reform to the system.
To realize that future, we will need fundamental change in how irrigation districts with senior water rights manage water. Many of the solutions for improving efficiency and addressing waste are ideas as old as the water rights themselves. Others are being implemented in some manner already but must be scaled up in order to truly address our water scarcity challenges. All solutions focus on one or more of three core themes: upgrading irrigation district infrastructure and improving efficiency, reducing waste, and improving how we share water.
For example, the Deschutes Basin can address waste, improve efficiency, and better share water by:
Better matching water deliveries to crop water requirements.
Better defining what water waste is.
Scaling market based programs—such as the Deschutes River Water Bank Pilot Program recently established by the Oregon legislature—to better share water across instream and out-of-stream needs.
Scaling water measurement and reporting to better quantify water use.
Rethinking irrigation water deliveries within urban growth boundaries and on rural residential lands.
Implementing volumetric pricing to incentivize water conservation.
Developing a plan to scale canal piping on private lands within irrigation districts.
Continue piping district-owned canals.
All of these options can help address water waste and water scarcity in the Basin. Each has pros and cons, and can be implemented in combination with other actions or as a standalone action. But one thing is clear: change is necessary.
Like flows lost to porous canals, water waste drains away opportunities for Tribes, cities, fish, wildlife, and communities across the Basin to thrive. The choice is ours: continue propping up inefficiency and waste, or finally build a more sustainable and equitable water future worth inheriting.
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