Of the three bills proposing to reform Oregon water rights transfers this legislative session, the last to receive a public hearing is certainly not the least.

Senate Bill 1153, which would prohibit transfers that harm aquatic species or water quality, has a powerful backer that lawmakers are unlikely to ignore: Gov. Tina Kotek, whose natural resource office considers the proposal a priority.

Changing water statutes to which irrigators and others have adapted is never an easy conversation but the proposal is a reasonable compromise that improves water management, said Chandra Ferrari, the governor’s natural resources adviser.

“We’re here to say that we really can’t let discomfort continue to stop us from taking a hard look at our water laws and trying to remedy the shortcomings that we’ve identified,” she said during a recent legislative hearing.

Water law in Oregon has historically served the state’s “consumptive needs” but it’s resulted in overallocation of surface water and depletion of groundwater at a time when hydrological functions are being disrupted by climate change, she said.

“The limitations of this system have started to show and in some cases have intensified,” Ferrari said.

The bill would create a “targeted review” of transfer requests to ensure they don’t impair water quality or threatened, endangered or sensitive aquatic species, she said. The proposal would only examine the effects of the change, rather than the underlying water use itself.

“This is not a restoration bill. This is a status quo bill,” Ferrari said.

These provisions would not apply to waterways in which in-stream flows are already protected but the bill would allow Native American tribes to weigh in on the effects of transfer applications in certain areas, which would be considered by the Oregon Water Resources Department, she said.

“We are really trying to focus on where we think there would be an impact,” Ferrari said.

Oregon is an “outlier” among several Western states in its refusal to examine the environmental consequences of transfers, said Caylin Barter, an attorney for the Wild Salmon Center nonprofit who represents the Oregon Water Partnership, a coalition of conservation groups.

Currently, the state only considers whether a transfer will impermissibly infringe on other water rights or enlarge water usage, Barter said.

“For 97% of Oregon’s stream miles that lack in-stream water rights, this means there’s currently no mechanism to safeguard in-stream values from the harmful impacts of certain transfers,” she said.

A coalition of agriculture and natural resource organizations disagree that SB 1153 would only have moderate ramifications for irrigators.

The Oregon Association of Nurseries and Oregon Water Resources Congress, which represents irrigation districts, testified that SB 1153 would be even more damaging than a competing proposal, Senate Bill 427, which would prohibit transfers from diminishing stream flows.

A third transfer bill, House Bill 3501, would take the opposite approach and prohibit water regulators from considering the public interest when reviewing transfer applications.

April Snell, executive director of the Oregon Water Resources Congress, said the explanation of the bill offered by the governor’s office is “facile” and an “oversimplification,” as the implications would be far more complex.

The proposal won’t enhance in-stream flows but will spur more conflict and litigation without taking into consideration the perspective of irrigators, Snell said. “The process for developing this bill has been completely without input from the agricultural community.”

Critics of the bill, who include municipal governments, argue that it would immobilize water rights transfers, which largely remain the only management tool available because most surface and groundwater is no longer available for appropriation.

By creating a new basis for challenging transfers, the bill will also add to the state’s stubborn backlog of contested water rights cases, some of which take decades to resolve, according to critics.

“It erodes trust in the policy-making process and would paralyze water flexibility that is the lifeblood and foundation for all of us, but especially family farmers and ranchers,” said Ryan Krabill, government affairs manager for the Oregon Farm Bureau.