SECURE Water Act: hearing before the Subcommittee on Water and Power of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate

Original publisher: Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 2010. LC Number: KF26 .E559 2010a OCLC Number: (OCoLC)680349173 Subject: Water resources development -- Law and legislation -- United States. Excerpt: ...ow that fell in Washington, DC, in February had somehow migrated to our part of the world. I think you are going to enjoy, Madam Chair, Dan Keppen, an Oregonian. He is representing today the Family Farm Alliance. There is probably nobody in the solar system who knows more about water and agriculture issues in our State than Dan. Senator Merkley and I are working together to get assistance for the farmers in the hard-hit Klamath area from the Federal agencies. It brings home the stark fact that every gallon of water is a precious thing. Just very briefly, Madam Chair, in our part of the world, disputes in the West about taking water from a river used to be resolved with a gun. Now they tend to be resolved with steel pipe and water conservation projects, and that is why, as you noted, the WaterSMART program is such an extraordinary breakthrough in terms of water management. In our part of the country, with the help of the bureau, the Central Oregon Irrigation District's Juniper Ridge Project in the Deschutes Basin is going to replace 2.5 miles of irrigation canal with steel pipe and return an additional 12.7 million gallons of water in the river during the 6-month irrigation season. Water conservation efforts in Oregon, though, don't just begin or end with modernizing irrigation canals. The city of Hermiston, where I just had a town meeting, has proposed a new water treatment plant that is going to deliver enough additional water to the local irrigation district to irrigate 600 acres of high-value crops. So what we are going to hear from our witnesses today is new approaches to sustaining the farm economy in the rural West, not just in Hermiston, but in a variety of western areas that certainly face an uncertain future ...