Each year, about 90 percent of Central Oregon’s Deschutes River disappears into a network of canals and pipes across the high desert. From April to October, what’s left of this great river, one of the largest spring-fed waterways in the United States, looks like a stream flowing out of Bend, Oregon.
Six quasi-public irrigation districts are diverting water to green the properties of about 7,500 landowners in one of the state’s driest regions. Of the six districts, none is stronger than the Central Oregon Irrigation District. It has rights to more than half of the Deschutes district’s volume, or more than all other districts combined. And under state law, when resources are scarce, most other rivers must be cut back to protect the COID river’s share.
During the last drought, state water laws forced downstream commercial farmers to fallow their land, while COID diverted four times as much of landowners’ crop consumption, an analysis of state data by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica found.
Our analysis shows similar ratios in both the wet and dry seasons, broadly consistent with estimates that COID has told states of crop needs. State water managers did not dispute our analysis, but irrigation districts said they did not trust the satellite-based data we used, supported by the Oregon Legislature, to study water availability.
State lawmakers say COID landowners are doing exactly what the law encourages. To maintain water rights, districts must prove to the state that their customers consistently use the water “beneficially.” Our report found that more than 9 out of every 10 acres in the district are pastures, either grass for grazing or landscaping or hay for livestock, and are considered beneficial by law.
Oregon and other Western states have so far rejected laws that would limit what humans can grow and how efficiently they must grow. Water rights are a form of property right, so opposition to changes is strong. Water rights increase property values and also reduce agricultural taxes.
State Rep. Ken Helm, Democratic co-chair of the House Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources and Water Committee, said if lawmakers vote for the Bedrock Water Act, “we could be crushed by the establishment and not be re-elected.”
“What should we do? I think we should leave more water in the river. Legally speaking, we don’t have to do that,” he said. Helm, a land use attorney, grew up in Bend and has seen the area change. “Wealthy people are moving to Central Oregon for reasons that have nothing to do with growing crops,” he says.
The Central Oregon Irrigation District diverts water from the Deschutes River through approximately 30 miles of canals and pipes to irrigate fields and land at the Canyons Development Ranch in Terrebonne, Oregon. The subdivision’s website promises a “peaceful, labor-free rhythm of agricultural life” for those who own multimillion-dollar mansions. Brandon Swanson/OPB
As it stands, COID managing director Craig Horrell said, “We can’t tell people what they can and can’t farm, even if they’re allowed to do so.” The district’s job is to distribute water to customers and “deliver water more efficiently and sustainably in the future,” he said.
The question is how.
Oregon is promoting three main solutions.
1. Pipe
COID supplies most of its water through open canals built 120 years ago. Spouted from porous lava rock, the canal must be completely filled to allow gravity to push water across the district’s more than 42,000 acres. Almost half of the water evaporates or seeps into the ground beneath the canal before reaching its destination. COID’s state water rights take this into account.
Replacing canals with pressurized pipes could potentially save a lot of water. It could take 50 years and cost more than $700 million. The district is in the final planning stages of a $360 million project to pipe a highway between Bend and Redmond, Oregon, serving more than 1,000 landowners. Our report shows that very few people make a living as farmers. COID promised to send water downstream to farmers outside the district in exchange for federal and state funding for the pipeline.
At the end of the canal in the Central Oregon Irrigation District, pipes and valves allow Deschutes River water to reach people outside the district. The more COID uses pipes instead of open canals to transport Deschutes River diversion water, the more water it will have to share with water-scarce farmers downstream, said district officials Water Director Cary Penhollow (left in first image) and Water Rights Deputy Director Jesse Talbot. Emily Cureton Cook/OPB Emily Cureton Cook/OPB At the end of the Central Oregon Irrigation District canal, pipes and valves allow Deschutes River water to reach people outside the district. The more COID uses pipes instead of open canals to transport Deschutes River diversion water, the more water it will have to share with water-scarce farmers downstream, said district officials Water Director Cary Penhollow (left in first image) and Water Rights Deputy Director Jesse Talbot. Emily Cureton Cook/OPB
The plan has widespread support, particularly from Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, who said: “Recurrent and severe droughts have made every drop of irrigation water extremely valuable. The best way to conserve irrigation water is to pipe it,” he told OPB and ProPublica.
He said COID was drawn to an endangered species of frog that lives in the very places where irrigation districts have long siphoned off water and destroyed their habitat. To avoid lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act, the district agreed to leave more water in the river over time.
In switching from canals to pipes, COID will send the saved water to nearby districts that need to draw less water from the river as part of a plan to restore frog habitat. That district, the North Unit, serves a valley known for commercial farms but is already running out of water. It is entitled to much less water from the Deschutes River than COID. Evan Thomas, a fifth-generation farmer and North Unit leader, made his bet clear at a March public meeting in Redmond. “This pipe has to be in the ground by 2028, otherwise the North Unit, all of Jefferson County, will basically stop farming.”
But even those who acknowledge that plumbing is an important solution point out that it doesn’t stop COID from diverting more water than its customers need or sending that water to many residential areas where grass and pasture are grown. Last year, the nonprofit Central Oregon Landwatch pushed for a bill that would place limits on overwatering. Helm and Republican state Rep. Mark Owens began drafting a bill, but never filed it. Owens, a hay farmer in eastern Oregon, said the irrigation district was not happy with the proposal. “I felt weak,” he said. “We weren’t going to walk through the building. We lived to fight another day.”
2. Share
Kate Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy, said the Deschutes River has never had enough water for all the landowners who laid claim to it more than 100 years ago. Reserving river water for fish and wildlife was not considered a legitimate and beneficial use of the resource until the 1980s.
Kathryn Steyer Martinez/OPB In 2024, participants in a Deschutes River fish rescue event use nets to catch and relocate fish trapped in side channels of the Deschutes River upstream from Bend, Oregon. At the end of each growing season, irrigation districts reduce river flows to replenish upstream reservoirs, stranding fish. Kathryn Steyer Martinez/OPB
“That’s what we’re working on,” Fitzpatrick said. “You can’t win the game by blaming who is doing what with the water.”
With more demand than supply, her nonprofit is working with irrigation districts to roll out incentives for landowners to work more efficiently or share voluntarily. In one program, COID pays landowners to reclaim land to leave more water in the river. But school districts have limited participation, and the program’s effectiveness has plateaued for decades, according to state data.
The state Legislature also created a pilot “water bank” program last year. The concept represents a major change in the law, allowing COID landowners to secure the water they need and potentially lease excess water to downstream farmers without losing their rights.
But since Oregon’s governor signed the bill nearly a year ago, neither COID nor any other major companies have signed on. That’s because the canal system needs to have enough water to function, said Horrell, the district’s administrator. Plumbing could allow the district to expand on these other solutions in the future, he said.
There is also another problem. To rent out a portion of a water right without completely depleting the land, landowners must accurately measure their usage, something many people don’t want to do.
3. Data
COID said it does not measure or report the amount of water it supplies. This is typical across Oregon, where most of the water flows to agricultural land. But policymakers and experts have long argued that states can’t address water shortages unless they know how much water their irrigation rights holders are using on their land.
Congressional attempts to require meters on all individual farms and wells are facing fierce public opposition. “At one point, my office was receiving phone calls minute by minute,” said Owens, the state representative, reflecting on last year’s efforts. The concern, he said, is that the state could try to use the data to take away water rights or charge by the gallon.
For now, Owens has given up on trying to force metering across the state, he said.
He started a pilot project on his hay farm in eastern Oregon that uses weather stations and satellite data to track how much water the fields drink. Just by looking at your phone, you can see how many days to water for the next week. He also led Oregon to invest in cutting-edge research to apply this technology to water programs across the state. Scientists from the Oregon Department of Water Resources co-authored the report with researchers from the Nevada-based Desert Research Institute. It provides a nearly 40-year estimate of the amount of water consumed by crops in all irrigated fields in Oregon. The data, which OPB and ProPublica used in their report, was made public last year. Horrell said such data is not ready to show how the district monitors water use because there are too many variables.
Ivan Gall, director of the Oregon Department of Water Resources, said in a recent interview that state managers are not currently using that data to regulate how water is used, but instead to explain where it goes. He said tight state budgets have so far prevented government agencies from sharing information “to the public and decision-makers in an understandable and meaningful way.”
Owens and Helm said they tried unsuccessfully to make it easier to learn important data about Oregon’s water — how much water there is, how clean it is, where it comes from and where it’s going — but the pilot project was canceled last year when state funding dried up.
