By Emily Cureton Cook  |  March 28, 2022  |  Oregon Public Broadcasting Oregon has protected land at Summer Lake Wildlife Area since 1944. Water is another story. Under current water rights, vital springs could run dry within a generation. The ground crumbled, kicking dust behind Marty St. Louis as he made his way down an

By Bo Evans  |  Feb. 24, 2022  |  Scripps The Iron Gate Dam, one of four dams on the Klamath River, will be removed in 2023. It will be the largest dam removal in U.S. history. For Pachomio Feliz, the waters of the Klamath River and Pacific are life. He’s a member of the Yurok

By Andrew Selsky and Manuel Valdes  |  Oct. 25, 2021  |   Associated Press Conflicts over water are as old as history itself, but the massive Google data centers on the edge of this Oregon town on the Columbia River represent an emerging 21st century concern. Now a critical part of modern computing, data centers

By Bryce Dole  |  Aug. 26, 2021  |  East Oregonian A coalition of environmental groups is calling on Gov. Kate Brown to reject a permit application for the proposed Easterday dairy in Boardman. In a press conference on Aug. 24, leaders from the Stand Up to Factory Farms Coalition said the dairy will exacerbate a

By Dawn Stover  |  May 6, 2021  |  Columbia Insight Author Dawn Stover is an independent journalist based in White Salmon, Washington, and a contributing editor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Cody Easterday is still waiting for the Oregon Department of Agriculture to approve his application, submitted in June 2019, for a Confined

By Mateusz Perkowski  |  Jan. 8, 2021  |  Capital Press Oregon irrigators may face complications from the commitment of about 1 million acre-feet of water behind Willamette Valley dams to in-stream environmental purposes. Until now, state water regulators have treated water released from the 13 dams as “live flows,” which can be accessed by irrigators

By Mateusz Perkowski  |  Jan. 8, 2021  |  Capital Press Farmers, under new federal law, have gained access to about 328,000 acre-feet of water stored behind 13 dams in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. However, they’d be wise to wait until further regulatory processes are finished before installing irrigation structures to take advantage of the newly available

By Matuesz Perkowski  |  Dec. 24, 2020  |  The Other Oregon Agriculture in Oregon’s Harney Basin faces a situation akin to being chased by an aggressive dog, according to farmer Mark Owens. Irrigators realize it’s going to hurt, he says, but they won’t know how much until it actually “bites them in the ass.” “Change

Gillian Flaccus  |  Nov. 11, 2020  |  Associated Press A coalition of environmental and fishing groups are suing a water district in southern Oregon over an aging, privately owned dam that they say hinders the passage of struggling salmon populations in the pristine North Umpqua River. The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in

By Mateusz Perkowski  |  Oct 8, 2020  |  Capital Press Critics of large dairies are asking Oregon water regulators to limit new groundwater pumping by such operations within 257 square miles of Umatilla and Morrow counties. A coalition of environmental groups and others called Stand Up to Factory Farms has submitted a petition asking the

By Brian Posewitz  |  June 13, 2020  |  Register Guard The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns 13 reservoirs on major tributaries to the Willamette River, including well-known reservoirs such as Fern Ridge on the Long Tom, Lookout Point on the Middle Fork of the Willamette, Cougar on the South Fork of the McKenzie and

Conservationist urges irrigation districts to focus on water markets by Michael Kohn | April 10, 2020 | Bend Bulletin For decades, Rob Rastovich relied on flood irrigation to water the hay fields on his family-owned ranch outside Bend. The system was archaic and wasted large amounts of water, which ran off the edge of his 200-acre

Environmental groups say the Army Corps of Engineers’ reallocation plan will hurt threatened fish species by Emily Green | March 20, 2020 | Street Roots  The Army Corps of Engineers has proposed a drastic cut to the volume of water stored among its 13 dams and reservoirs in the Willamette River Basin that goes to

By WW Staff | March 18, 2020 | Willamette Week   BUSINESSES SEEK TAX MEASURE RELIEF: Oregon business groups, facing crushing pressure from COVID-19 impacts, on March 17 proposed 14 steps the state could take to help. Among the biggest: “Delay implementation of the new corporate activities tax, at least for the first quarter of 2020, so

by The Conservation Alliance | January 2020 | The Conservation Alliance: Rogue River from Uncage the Soul Productions on Vimeo WaterWatch of Oregon is proud of our role in the dam removal efforts happening along The Rogue River. Of course, many other organizations have played key roles in these projects. Some of these efforts have

by Bill Poehler, Statesman Journal | January 2020 | The Statesman Journal The first time Anna Rankin went to the Scotts Mills Dam, she noticed crosses and flowers on the banks below the dam. When Rankin, the executive director of the Pudding River Watershed Council, asked about the markers, she learned there had been a