The Deschutes Soil and water Conservation District held an Open House to shine a spotlight on their conservation efforts

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – Water, soil and wild fire were important factors within the soil and water conservation community.

The Deschutes Soil and water Conservation District hosted an open house inviting Deschutes County residents to learn more about conservation efforts.

Erin Kilcullen, District Manager, DSWCD: “Any landowner, both rural or urban, has a lot of different needs, and if you give us a call, we can come out to your property. We could discuss what's going on, resource concerns, whether it's water conservation, forest health quality tours, native vegetation, and we can provide assistance of how to move forward with that. We can provide management plans and hopefully we could provide some funding to assess and implement those projects.”

The district also provided information about Measure 9-176. It's on the November 5, 2024 ballot, and asks voters to approve a permanent tax rate of six cents per thousand dollars of assessed property value.

Board Director, James Warren tell us why this measure is so important: “We need to get more projects on the ground. we're very limited with the projects that we can do right now, and like we said earlier, our grants come from as far away as Washington, D.C. and we have to do what they tell us to do with that money. They write the grants, they get to tell us what to do.”

Board Director, Jeff Rola says, if Measure 9-176 doesn’t pass, just being funded through grants, limits their ability on how they use funds.

“A lot of times we have money for water when sometimes our priority is for weeds. We have money for wildfire reduction, when sometimes we need soils, soils amendment. So, there's a number of different resource concerns that we cannot address because of the restrictions on the funds that we have right now through grants.”

Guests at the open house believe every Oregonian should know about or be involved in soil and water conservation.

“Soil and water is the lifeblood of all living things on this earth. Water is just as important as soil. Water is our lifeblood of plant diversity... The wildlife and humans. Without water, we cannot survive,” said Marilyn Miller, Owner of Miller Conservation Consulting.

Deschutes Soil and water Conservation District say, they do not create or enforce regulations, instead, focus on voluntary conservation efforts.