Some of you may remember that about four years ago North Unit Irrigation District floated an idea to move their aging pumping station from the Crooked River to Lake Billy Chinook. I registered my concern with this plan as originally outlined. Thankfully, NUID was open to listening to my concerns. As I mentioned to them in a subsequent conversation, I believe the angling community could either enthusiastically support this plan or be in wild opposition. Yesterday an update on the plan was presented to the Deschutes Basin Water Collaborative and they said all the right things from my perspective.

Over the last four years NUID has been working with the Bureau of Reclamation to study the feasibility of relocating their pumping station. There are a few years left in this process, and then funding of up to $600,000,000+ must be found, but the initial phases of the study process have met the BoR’s metrics to continue.

My primary concern has been the location of the pumping station and the depth of the withdrawal. If deep cold water is withdrawn it will exacerbate the algae issues in LBC as well as raise the temperature of the Lower Deschutes. Clearly, this would be bad. Yesterday NUID confirmed that their plan is to take warm, nutrient rich surface water which would obviously be beneficial to the lake, the lower river, and recreational boaters on LBC.

I raised other concerns during the meeting but was heartened that NUID and BoR said that they are part of the ongoing study. We’re a very long way from this project being approved, funded, and implemented but this could be good news for anglers. If they also released water from Wickiup Reservoir in the summer and let it flow all the way to LBC before withdrawal it would also be fantastic news for the Middle Deschutes. In fact, this is the only proposal I have heard that would provide a reasonable amount of protected water to the Middle Deschutes.

Keeping my fingers crossed.