Last month, the Oregon Water Resources Commission voted to change the state’s groundwater rules. The new rules would require new water users to prove the water is available before the state will issue permits for wells.
Ivan Gall was appointed to head the Water Resources Department last spring. He joins us to talk about the new rules and other challenges facing water resources in Oregon.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Last month, the Oregon Water Resources Commission voted to change the state’s groundwater rules. The new rules will require a new water user to prove water is actually available before the state will issue permits for wells. This change comes after record drought and over allocation of both surface water and groundwater at sites around the state. Ivan Gall was appointed to head the Water Resources Department last spring. He joins us to talk about the new rules and other challenges facing water resources in Oregon. Welcome to the show.
Ivan Gall: Hi Dave, great to be here.
Miller: So let’s start with these new rules. What exactly is going to be different?
Gall: Well, we’ve been dealing with older rules that were adopted in the late 1980s. Those rules helped our technical staff, the hydrogeologist here at the department, as they conducted reviews of new applications that came in for new groundwater uses around the state. Those rules were well-intentioned at the time but had a couple of shortcomings. They didn’t consider long-term impacts from the new proposed groundwater uses on the resource, or on nearby hydraulically connected surface water. And they also didn’t really look at cumulative impacts of all of the groundwater rights that we had issued in a particular basin or subbasin there.
We recognize those shortcomings, took us some time, but we’ve been working the last three to four years – broad stakeholder group and support from our Water Resources Commission – got new rules adopted that do a much better job of looking at new applications to make sure that new uses going forward are going to be sustainable, and won’t be injurious to other users out in the system.
Miller: But my understanding is that these new rules don’t affect existing water rights. So what’s the solution for existing levels of overallocations, which is happening at sites all across the state?
Gall: That’s a good question. What the new rules dealt with, I think as you point out, are just new application permits moving forward. For existing uses around the state, we have different tools that we can apply. We can come into a basin or subbasin and require the users to report their water use and measure their water use, so we can get a better understanding of the water budget in a particular system.
Miller: How often do you do that?
Gall: We’ve only done that one time so far. The first one was done up in the Walla Walla Subbasin several years ago, for the basalt aquifer system. We’re working on a similar provision in the Harney Basin right now.
Miller: So only once ever did you require that water users for groundwater actually find out and tell you how much water they were drawing?
Gall: Using this particular tool, yes. But we have a number of provisions in law that require other water users around the state to measure and report their water use. Public entities around the state – municipalities, water districts, irrigation districts – they’ve been required for decades to measure and report water use. So we have those data coming in. Since the 1990s, most of the water rights that we’ve issued have measuring conditions associated with them, and a number of them have reporting conditions associated with them. So those were individual cases on an application-by-application basis there.
When we talk about the work in the Walla Walla Basin or what we’ll be doing in the Harney Basin, that’s more of a blanket approach to look at a group of users, in this case, groundwater users in a particular aquifer system. They will all be required, the ones with water rights, to measure and report.
Miller: Measure and report would be the first step. Do you foresee a situation where people who have been allocated water, perhaps 100 years ago, where they’d be told by the state that they have to reduce the amount of water that they are using?
Gall: Well, we have a separate tool to go into a basin and actually control existing uses. And we’ve done that in a number of aquifer systems around the state. We have created critical groundwater areas. Those are areas where we’ve seen water level declines, where we know we’ve over allocated the resource. In three of those critical groundwater areas, out in the Umatilla Basin, actual existing groundwater users were turned off based on the prior appropriation system. So here in Oregon, depending on your priority date, when your water right was issued, junior users can be turned off in order to favor senior users. And so in that case, junior groundwater users were curtailed off to preserve the remaining water in the aquifer for the senior users.
Miller: Communities in individual basins, under the new rules, can petition the water department to write their own definitions of “reasonably stable.” How much regional variation are you expecting about that definition in the coming years?
Gall: It’s not really known yet how many individual basins would attempt to come in and try and establish their own definition of a “reasonably stable” groundwater level. We know there’s some interest in the Deschutes Basin at this point in time. I don’t believe we’ve heard from any other basins that they’re interested in doing that.
Miller: You were confirmed to your position at a contentious hearing in the spring. Republicans and Democrats expressed concerns that you were too much of an insider to transform an agency that they, on both sides say, want to see fundamentally transformed. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Steiner said the governor’s office is going to watch you like a hawk, that you’re gonna be on a very short leash, and that you’re gonna have to quickly show results. She’s added: “If not, I don’t think Mr. Gall will last very long as director.” She did vote for your confirmation, but strong words.
How much pressure do you feel right now to change this agency quickly?
Gall: Well, I feel a lot of pressure to change the agency in the best way that’s going to serve all Oregonians moving forward. Obviously, doing that sooner rather than later would be great. But I want to do it carefully and methodically to make sure we get it right. That’s really my goal and my intention.
Miller: Ivan Gall, thanks so much for joining us.
Gall: Thank you. It was great.
Miller: Ivan Gall is the director of the Oregon Water Resources Department. He was confirmed in May. Just last month, the Water Resources Commission announced a change in the way it will respond to potential new water users. They will have to prove that water is actually available before the state will issue permits for those new [wells].
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