By Amy Graff and Anna Griffin  |  May 12, 2026  |  New York Times After a warm winter that brought more rain than snow, the state’s snowpack is the lowest it has ever been. This time of year, Don Gabbard, a fire chief in eastern Oregon, wants to look up at the Strawberry Mountains and

By Mateusz Perkowski  |  April 16, 2026  |  Capital Press A proposal to build a new 12,000 acre-foot irrigation reservoir in Oregon’s Willamette Valley has again failed to pass muster with state water regulators. The East Valley Water District had urged the Oregon Water Resources Commission to authorize the project, which would inundate nearly 400

By Alex Heard  |  April 15, 2026  |  RE:PUBLIC Last March, the Trump administration announced an initiative to build affordable housing on federal property. Then it went quiet. An innovative idea, or another attempt at a public lands selloff? For staffers at conservation groups like The Wilderness Society and Defenders of Wildlife, the daily routine

By Emily Harris and Natasha White  |  March 23, 2026  |  Uplift Local For decades, The Dalles has been trying to get ownership of 150 acres of Mt. Hood National Forest land around the Crow Creek reservoir that’s a major source of the city’s water supply. For months, the city has been fighting accusations the effort

By Alex Baumhardt  |  March 23, 2026  |  Oregon Capital Chronicle The legal fights are the result of a host of violations the Winchester Dam operators are accused of during botched repairs that left half a million lamprey dead. Legal fights over the future of a small southern Oregon dam are intensifying in the wake

By Martin Gibson  |  March 17, 2026  |  Columbia Gorge News The City of The Dalles wants to double the size of its primary water storage reservoir, Crow Creek, and pull more winter runoff from the Dog River — a project first planned in the 1990s. Through legislation sponsored by Rep. Cliff Bentz, dubbed “The

By Kyle Odegard  |  March 2, 2026  |  Capital Press Oregon’s snowpack looked “terrible” roughly one month from when it should hit its peak, and that could contribute to drought and wildfires and cause irrigation problems, said Larry O’Neill, Oregon state climatologist. The state’s snow-water equivalent was 32 percent of the median from 1991 to

By Zac Ziegler  |  Feb. 23, 2026  |  KLCC Radio A privately-owned dam on the North Umpqua River near Roseburg must update its fish ladder by 2029. Members of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted six-to-one on Friday to adopt an administrative law judge’s order ruling that the Winchester Dam has been in violation

By Mateusz Perkowski  |  Feb. 5, 2026  |  Capital Press Fewer restrictions would be imposed on voluntary groundwater pumping reductions under a bill meant to ease the economic impact on irrigators from new regulations in the Harney basin. Late last year, Oregon water regulators decided to regulate the basinowing them to halt groundwater withdrawals to

By Jim Robbins and Ruth Fremson  |  Feb. 1, 2026  | New York Times Warm temperatures and extremely low snowfall threaten water resources in several western states, including Oregon. While record snowfall and single-digit temperatures pummel much of the United States, an extreme snow drought and unusually warm weather are keeping skiers off the mountains, snowmobilers

By Sam Hill  |  Jan. 25, 2026  |  SFGATE  Concerns about Big Tech have emerged in a proposal to transfer land from the Mount Hood National Forest. Along the scenic shores of one of the Columbia River, a water dispute is growing between environmentalists and a city where Google devours nearly a third of its