SALEM — Lawmakers have decided to protect Oregon farmers from risking water rights forfeiture if they abstain from irrigation during droughts.

Irrigators must ordinarily use their water rights at least once every five years to avoid losing them, but drought years would be exempt from the forfeiture rule under legislation recently passed by the House unanimously.

“During times of drought and water scarcity, we want to make sure people are not penalized for choosing not to use water that could go to another higher beneficial use,” said April Snell, executive director of the Oregon Water Resources Congress, which represents irrigation districts.

Senate Bill 718 previously passed the Senate unanimously before a Republican protest brought that chamber to a halt last month, despite initially facing opposition from environmental advocates who worried it’d change state water law too drastically.

The WaterWatch of Oregon and Oregon Land and Water Alliance nonprofits came out against the bill, claiming it unnecessarily favors some water users over others by shielding them from forfeiture even if drought didn’t stop them from irrigating.

“It is not limited to those water right holders that are actually impacted by drought, but rather is a blanket protection” that broadly applies to all water rights in drought-declared counties, said Kimberley Priestley, senior policy analyst for Waterwatch.

Proponents acknowledged that current law does exempt farmers from forfeiture if they’re “regulated off” their irrigation source, but SB 718 expands that protection to those who decide against using scant supplies.

The bill removes an implied incentive for farmers to apply scarce water to fields even if it’s not enough to provide much benefit, simply to avoid the threat of forfeiture, Snell said.

“The system is in essence encouraging people to use the water when the water could be better used elsewhere or if it’s not necessarily enough to grow a whole crop,” she said.

The enrolled bill now awaits Gov. Tina Kotek’s signature.

The version passed by the Legislature was phrased differently than the original proposal after the Senate Natural Resources Committee approved an amendment in response to criticisms of the bill.

Specifically, the state’s Water Resources Department warned that SB 718’s original language could be understood to mean the five-year clock for forfeiture “starts over for all water rights” in drought-declared counties.

“In some counties where drought is a regular occurrence, it could mean that non-use occurs for several decades,” according to the department.

The amendment to SB 718 intends to make clear that’s not the bill’s intent, even if some of the revisions remain “a little bit iffy,” said Sen. Fred Girod, R-Stayton, the bill’s chief sponsor.

The original version caused “some confusion” over whether a drought declaration “would reset the clock at the beginning,” said Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland. “It doesn’t do that.”