The prospect of adding to Oregon’s water litigation backlog isn’t dissuading Gov. Tina Kotek from promoting stricter environmental oversight of water rights transfers.

Though she’s aware of criticisms that Senate Bill 1153 will spur more legal conflicts, Kotek said protecting aquatic species and water quality from harmful transfers is a prime concern for water law reforms.

“This is my office’s attempt to have a very important conversation about how we modernize and update our water rights transfer policies,” she said during a recent roundtable discussion with reporters. “We know that how we manage our limited resource of water will be very important in the decades ahead.”

Critics say that by introducing new standards for water transfers, SB 1153 will almost certainly spur new challenges to OWRD’s approvals and denials of such requests.

The impact on the state’s persistent backlog of contested cases over water rights should be manageable, Kotek said, because she expects the Oregon Water Resources Department to work through those disputes more efficiently.

“Having some new criteria will definitely put some stress on that, but we’re going to continue to move forward on the bureaucratic improvements while we continue to add some additional criteria. I think we can do both, but I just want to say, I understand the concern,” Kotek said. “But we’re pushing the agency to get through that backlog and get better about how they process.”

In hiring Ivan Gall, the agency’s latest director, last year, Kotek said she emphasized that OWRD needs to “modernize the paperwork stream” and improve customer service.

“Hopefully, by the time it goes fully into effect, we will have gotten through the bulk of that backlog,” she said. “I do think we’re on the right path with what we’re trying to do on the processing.”

Apart from prohibiting transfers that impair water quality or aquatic species in waterways without other in-stream protections, SB 1153 would allow Native American tribes to offer input on certain transfer applications.

“This is the first attempt to make a strategic review of how we do water rights transfer requests, and bring more people into the conversation,” Kotek said.

Critics claim the proposal will “paralyze” many water rights transfers, which remain the only flexible management tool at a time when new permits for irrigation diversions and wells are largely off-limits.

Proponents counter that SB 1153 will close a “loophole” under which transfers are able to evade the environmental reviews required for other water rights transactions.

Another proposal introduced by the co-chairs of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, and Rep. Ken Helm, D-Beaverton, would alter numerous procedures for contested case hearings to cut down on the backlog of water rights disputes.

The chief sponsors argue that fundamental changes are necessary because spending $3 million to boost administrative staffing in recent years hasn’t substantially reduced the backlog of more than 220 cases.

However, both agricultural and environmental organizations have complained that restricting the scope of arguments and other revisions proposed under House Bill 3544 would infringe on the due process rights of irrigators and other stakeholders.

Kotek said she realizes that speeding up the contested case process can give rise to other concerns.

“Sometimes it is a little whack-a-mole,” she said.

However, Kotek said the making the procedures more efficient will ultimately work in the favor of irrigators and water advocates.

“It does not help the users to have this kind of delay in getting answers from the state,” she said.