Deschutes Soil and Water Conservation District, seeking voter funds, holds open house to shine spotlight on their efforts

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

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

District Manager Erin Kilcullen said, “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 Nov. 5 ballot, and asks voters to approve a permanent tax rate - the district's first - levying 6 cents per $1,000 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," Rola said. "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 said they 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," said Marilyn Miller, the owner of Miller Conservation Consulting. "Water is just as important as soil. Water is our lifeblood of plant diversity, the wildlife and humans. Without water, we cannot survive.”