The battle over Deschutes River water rights

Water rights on the Deschutes River decide who farms and who goes dry. But every year, about 90% of the river vanishes into a vast network of canals and pipes that snake through the high desert, dictating survival across Central Oregon. Between April and October, this major spring-fed waterway , one of the largest in the United States , is reduced to a trickle resembling a creek by the time it flows out of Bend. Six quasi-public irrigation districts divert this water to green up properties belonging to roughly 7,500 landowners in one of the driest regions in the state. Among them, the Central Oregon Irrigation District holds unmatched influence. COID possesses rights to more than half of the river's volume. That's more than all other districts combined. So under Oregon state law, when water is scarce, most other districts must cut back their own usage to protect COID's share.

This legal hierarchy creates severe disparities during dry spells. During the last drought, state water law forced commercial farmers downstream to fallow their land. Meanwhile, COID diverted four times what its landowners’ crops actually consumed. This pattern of diversion is not unique to dry periods, as data shows similar ratios across both wet and dry years, matching estimates of what COID told the state its crops required. While state water managers do not dispute these findings, the irrigation district has stated it does not trust the satellite-based data used to analyze the water use, despite Oregon lawmakers backing that same technology to study water availability.

The legal shield protecting pasture land

Landowners within COID are doing exactly what state law encourages them to do. It's simple. To maintain their Deschutes River water rights, districts must prove to the state that their customers consistently use the water beneficially, and in COID more than nine out of ten acres are classified as pasture consisting of grass for grazing, landscaping, or hay for livestock. Under current Oregon law, this qualifies as a beneficial use. But Oregon and other Western states have resisted passing legislation to restrict what people can grow or to mandate specific efficiency levels, and this resistance persists because water rights are legally treated as property rights that boost land values and secure agricultural tax breaks.

Political pressure keeps the status quo firmly in place. Lawmakers face immense pushback whenever they attempt to alter these foundational rules. State Representative Ken Helm, the Democratic co-chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources and Water, summarized the political reality of challenging these property interests.

"We'd get crushed by the powers that be and we might even not be reelected. What should we do? I think we should leave more water in the river. Legally speaking, that doesn't have to happen."

Helm, a land-use lawyer who grew up in Bend, has seen a major demographic shift. Affluent people are moving into Central Oregon for reasons that have nothing to do with growing crops. But under the current legal framework, COID Managing Director Craig Horrell explained that he can't dictate what people farm. So the district's role is to distribute the water and work on delivering it much more efficiently and sustainably in the future. It's a simple job.

Replacing open canals with underground pipes

Oregon has focused on three main strategies. But they started with infrastructure. COID currently delivers most of its water through open canals constructed 120 years ago, and because these channels were blasted out of porous lava rock, they must be kept completely full so gravity can push water across more than 42,000 acres. This design causes nearly half of the water to evaporate or seep into the ground before it ever reaches its destination. So the district's state water rights are calculated to account for these massive losses. It's an old system.

Piping is the most direct physical solution. But it's slow and expensive. Converting the open canals into pressurized pipes could save vast amounts of water, yet the process could take 50 years and cost more than $700 million. Currently, COID is planning a $360 million project to pipe a main artery serving over a thousand landowners between Bend and Redmond. Most of these landowners don't make their living from farming. In exchange for state and federal funding for this piping project, COID has pledged to send saved water downstream to farmers outside its district. This infrastructure plan has drawn support from various public officials, including Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, who noted that severe droughts make every drop of irrigation water highly valuable.

Protecting species and downstream farms

Environmental pressures accelerated the push to pipe COID's system. A threatened frog species lives right where irrigation districts historically siphoned water, destroying its natural habitat. So to avoid lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act, the districts agreed to leave more water in the river over time. Under this arrangement, COID is supposed to transfer its saved water to the neighboring North Unit district, which must reduce its river withdrawals to help restore the frog's habitat. It's a tough situation. North Unit serves a valley known for commercial farming but is historically water-poor, and it holds rights to far less water than COID.

The critical deadline for agriculture

The timeline is incredibly tight. Evan Thomas, a fifth-generation farmer and leader of the North Unit district, highlighted the urgency of the piping initiative during a public meeting in Redmond, and it's clear that downstream growers can't afford delays. But they're pushing forward anyway.

"This pipe has to go in the ground by 2028 or North Unit, all of Jefferson County, basically quits farming."

But critics aren't satisfied. They argue that piping doesn't stop COID from diverting more water than its customers actually need, and it also doesn't prevent that water from being delivered to residential properties for lawns and pastures. Last year, the nonprofit Central Oregon LandWatch pushed for legislative limits on overwatering. Representative Helm and Republican Representative Mark Owens began drafting a bill, but they never introduced it. So Owens, a hay farmer in Eastern Oregon, noted that irrigation districts strongly opposed the proposal, leading him to back down to fight another day.

Sharing programs and the challenge of data

The second strategy focuses on voluntary water sharing. But here's the challenge: the Deschutes River has never had enough water to satisfy all those century-old claims, and leaving water in the river for fish and wildlife wasn't recognized as a legal beneficial use until the 1980s. So the nonprofit Deschutes River Conservancy works with irrigation districts on incentive programs. One program pays landowners to dry up their fields so COID can leave more water in the river, but the district limits participation, and state data shows the program's impact has plateaued for decades. It's stuck.

Last year, state lawmakers established a pilot water bank program. Nobody has signed up. This concept represents a shift in Oregon water law, allowing COID landowners to keep the water they need and temporarily rent out their excess to downstream farmers without losing their permanent rights, but it's been nearly a year since the governor signed the bill and no participants have joined. District manager Craig Horrell explained that the canal system fails to function if it doesn't maintain a high volume of water. And landowners would need to measure their water use precisely to participate in partial renting, a step many are unwilling to take because it's too complex and costly.

The battle over water measurement

Data collection is the third strategy. It's highly controversial, but currently COID doesn't measure or report the volume of water it delivers to individual properties, and this lack of tracking is common across Oregon where the vast majority of water is used on agricultural lands. Policymakers and water experts argue that the state can't resolve water shortages without knowing how much water individual users consume. But legislative efforts to require meters on individual farms and wells have faced intense public backlash.

• Six irrigation districts divert the water to green up the properties of about 7,500 landowners in one of the state's driest regions.
• More than 90% of the land inside COID consists of pasture, grass, or hay.
• The proposed main artery piping project between Bend and Redmond is estimated to cost $360 million.
• Piping the entire district system could take 50 years and exceed $700 million.
• North Unit farmers face a hard deadline of 2028 to get the shared pipe in the ground.

Owens recalled last year's effort. "At one point my office was getting a call a minute," he said, because landowners fear the state will use water use data to revoke their Deschutes River water rights or charge them by the gallon. But he's paused his mandate for statewide metering. Owens tracks water consumption on his own hay farm using satellite data and a weather station instead. COID leadership maintains this satellite data has too many variables to guide district operations, and state managers currently use it only for broad accounting rather than active regulation.