I recently posted about the conflict I feel as an environmentalist who wants local rivers and streams restored but also as a taxpayer who resents subsidizing hobby farmers. This is a common theme on this blog as well as the observation that there is no effective leadership looking at more equitable and lasting solutions to our water crisis. The Bulletin printed my post which generated the typical response: mostly positive email, a few angry ones, and this editorial from an agricultural industry lobbyist who apparently did not actually read my column or simply ignored what it said. Coincidentally, a few recent news reports clearly support my position.

For many years the Oregon Water Resources Department has been a frequent target of my criticism that there is no leadership working to solve the fundamental water issues we are facing. To their credit, however, the current OWRD Commission is attempting to reform the department and is taking positive steps, including replacing OWRD’s Director who left over a year ago to represent some of the state’s largest agricultural water users. Draw your own conclusions from that.

As is made clear in this article from Oregon Public Broadcasting, it now seems clear to everyone that reform and a new type of leadership is needed at OWRD.

“We’re in a bad spot,” said Rep. Mark Owens, a Republican state lawmaker from Harney County who vice-chairs the House Committee On Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources and Water. “We need someone that doesn’t fit the normal mold of what a water resources department director has been in the Western states…The water resources department as a whole agency needs to change,” Owens said Tuesday.

Exactly how OWRD must change is going to be a source of conflict, but in California they are starting to look at real fundamental change, the type we desperately need in Oregon. As I have also argued for years, we need to reexamine current water rights and usage which were established well over a century ago to encourage settlers in covered wagons to travel the Oregon Trail. This NY Times article is about California, but it could be about Oregon as well.