The Willamette River system of reservoirs appears in solid condition for agricultural irrigators this summer, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said on May 30.

“From today’s perspective, this water year, everything looks good. I don’t see any concerns,” said Salina Hart, Portland district chief of the reservoir regulation and water quality section.

From a long-term perspective, however, water supply and demands need to be looked at in the Willamette basin, Hart said.

The comments came during a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers online presentation where a summer forecast was given for the Willamette Project.

The Bureau of Reclamation had 269 service contracts to use water stored in the Willamette Project reservoirs as of 2023. That represented nearly 83,000 acre-feet.

Favorable conditions

“This year we happen to be in really good shape from a system storage standpoint,” said Dustin Bengtson, operations project manager.

The Willamette Project

Reservoirs and percent above minimum level

Hills Creek — 78.4%

Lookout Point — 92.7%

Fall Creek — 84.1%

Cottage Grove — 100.8%

Dorena — 100.5%

Fern Ridge — 99.2%

Cougar — 36.8%

Blue River — 100.1%

Green Peter — 81.8%

Foster — 95.4%

Detroit — 95.4%

The Willamette basin has 13 reservoirs — 11 that are multiple purpose storage and two that are regulating stream flows below main dams.

The 11 multi-purpose reservoirs averaged 85.6% above minimum level as of May 30 and several were essentially full.

Cougar Reservoir, which had a delayed refill until May, was the main outlier, at 36.8% above minimum. The next lowest was Hills Creek at 78.4%.

Fern Ridge, which Hart said has a lot of irrigation demand downstream, was at 99.2% above minimum level.

Boat ramps appear like they’ll remain available at many Willamette Project reservoirs through Labor Day, according to the presentation.

For precipitation, the Willamette basin was above its median this water year and doing better than last year.

There also aren’t any drought conditions in the area this spring, Hart said.

Reservoir benefits

The main purpose of the dams in the basin is flood risk management and the Willamette Valley, home to two-thirds of Oregon’s population, developed in that safety, Bengtson said.

But the agency also tries to provide benefits that include water supply for communities, water quality, recreation, environmental stewardship and hydropower.

Increasingly, meeting its environmental and legal requirements to improve fish passage has become a driving force for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bengtson said.

Court injunctions led to delayed refills at Cougar and Fall Creek reservoirs and early fall drawdowns at Green Peter and Lookout Point.

Local officials said the reservoir drawdowns left a “path of destruction” that included dead fish choking the Santiam River, murky water that stressed municipal systems, tainted drinking water and lost tourism dollars.

Bengtson said there’s no clarity on what the deep drawdowns will look like this year and agencies are still working that out through the courts.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will hold more informational meetings before deep drawdowns occur.

“There will be a lot of communication coming this fall,” Bengtson said.