By Peter Madsen | April 8, 2025 | The Source Weekly
Circuit court ruled in favor of state regulators’ previous denial.
The developers of a disputed resort were handed the latest in a series of setbacks in their attempt to tap the Deschutes River Basin. On March 31st, the Deschutes County Circuit Court dismissed Thornburgh Resort’s attempt to overturn an earlier denial of a previous limited water use license application.
The proposed 2,000-acre Thornburgh Resort lies in the Cline Buttes area, about 20 miles north of Bend. If completed according to plans, it would include 950 single-family homes, private lakes, a luxury hotel and two golf courses.
In its latest decision, the court upheld the Oregon Water Resources Department’s ruling that the Deschutes River Basin, drier than it has been in the past three decades, is too low to accommodate the requested siphoning. Variations in precipitation and corresponding snowpack, along with the over-tapping of aquifers, have already had a pronounced regional effect on the basin, according to a press release by WaterWatch of Oregon, a conservation nonprofit involved with the case.
Thornburgh’s developers — Kameron DeLashmutt, Pinnacle Utilities and Central Land and Cattle Co. — have been trying to finance and permit the development since the early 2000s. The property was originally the rangeland of DeLashmutt’s grandparents, as reported by OPB in Nov. 2024.
“The department is completely wrong,” DeLashmutt said in a phone interview. He disagrees with aquifer assessments. “The judge completely overlooked the evidence.”
Thornburgh has water rights and approved transfers that provide water for its Phase A development plans, DeLashmutt wrote in a subsequent email.
In 2023, the Oregon Water Resources Department denied the developers’ request to build wells. Local residents, including horse ranchers and others who depend on private wells for their water needs, had already dealt with shortages for years, the Source Weekly reported in July 2022. Drilling deeper wells requires permitting and surplus cash that many residents don’t have. According to a 2017 study from the U.S. Geological Survey, groundwater in the central part of the Upper Deschutes Basin — from Sisters to Powell Butte — dipped as much as 14 feet between 1997 and 2008.
Leaders of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs had also voiced their concerns about how Thornburgh would affect their treaty rights, OPB reported in July 2023.
State regulators granted Thornburgh developers a limited water use license in 2013, but they didn’t build wells before the permit expired, according to OPB.
In court, WaterWatch of Oregon and other stakeholders organized opposition to the resort developers’ requested water draw. Lawyers Mike Sargetakis from Crag Law Center and Karl G. Anuta represented the stakeholders. The court ruled that the Oregon Water Resources Department was “rational, fair, and principled” in its denial.
WaterWatch executive director Neil Brandt said in a press release: “This decision … is great news for the many fish and wildlife that depend on groundwater inputs in the Deschutes Basin to survive. Building a large, water-hungry resort with two golf courses in the high desert in an area with already declining groundwater levels is simply not sustainable.”
Central Oregon LandWatch, a local conservation nonprofit that wasn’t directly involved with the court case, said it also applauded the decision, owing to significant declines in the basin’s groundwater levels, staff attorney Carol Macbeth wrote in an email.
“The judge agreed with [the department’s] decision that the new use would not be within the capacity of the resource and could injure existing rights,” she said.
Thornburgh can appeal the decision, although its reasoning is so tightly worded it’s not clear whether a new appeal would garner a different outcome.
The developers currently have three permits to appropriate groundwater. Eight separate requests are currently winding their way through the permitting process.
Yet, Thornburgh development marches on. An 18-hole golf course has been cleared and shaped while drainage lines are being installed, DeLashmutt wrote in an email. Property tours will begin in late spring or early summer, and would-be buyers can choose between seven cabin models and five home designs — or they can design their own. The second golf course is routed but no construction is scheduled, DeLashmutt said.
“It is not likely to start for several years,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the Source Weekly on April 8, 2025.