Concerned residents pack house for irrigation meeting

It was standing room only both inside and outside the Tumalo Community Center on Thursday evening as residents poured in to give their opinions on controversial plans to revamp the region’s irrigation system.

The canals are in need of updating — as much of the water in the canals is lost through leakage.

“In 20 years, there won’t be an irrigation district and there will be no water if we don’t take care of our problems,” Tumalo Irrigation District Manager Ken Rieck said. “When we lose 40 to 60 percent of our water that we divert, I don’t think that will be allowed to continue for very long.”

Piping the canals would change that.

One concern is it could disrupt wildlife, but the plan is to put that extra water to good ecological use.

“When we pipe that water, we can take the conserved water and put that back in stream,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife field supervisor Bridget Moran said.

That would help threatened and endangered species like the Oregon spotted frog and bull trout.

“We’ll have an opportunity to actually meet the reliable water needs of our ranching and municipalities and also conserve our endangered species,” Moran said.

Another concern came from people whose property includes parts of canals, particularly about the aquifers from which they pull water. The fear is piping would cut off the water supply to these aquifers, but studies have shown that might not be the case.

“At that point, if you have a well issue, it’s probably more drought-related or that the well wasn’t deep enough in the first place and you were actually pumping surface water instead of down in the aquifer around here, about 500 feet,” Rieck said.

The district will use money from a grant received by the National Resource Conservation Service for this project.

Nothing has been decided yet, but the deadline for a watershed plan is in September.

Thursday night’s meeting was for the Swalley and Tumalo irrigation districts. Another “public scoping open house takes place Monday night for the Central Oregon Irrigation District, from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Redmond Grange,707 SW Kalama Avenue.

More information: https://wmc.ar.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/or/newsroom/pnotice/?cid=nrcseprd1333630