TERREBONNE, Ore. — Matt Lisignoli was running out of water.

Nearby Wickiup Reservoir had hit 75-year record lows for June and July, so North Unit Irrigation District cut patrons’ water allocations first in half, then to 32%, of the usual and announced deliveries would end in mid-August.

“I’m in trouble,” Lisignoli said.

His Central Oregon farm, Smith Rock Ranch, grows seed, wheat, hay, squash and has an annual pumpkin patch and corn maze. It’s a popular destination because of its backdrop: towers of rust-colored basalt rising like cathedral spires out of the high desert overlooking the Crooked River.

Without water, Lisignoli would have to cancel his pumpkin patch for the first time in 20 years.

Desperate, he scrambled for a solution.

First, Lisignoli applied through the Oregon Water Resources Department to transfer water from his other property in the neighboring Central Oregon Irrigation District. But that was too complicated.

Then he found a North Unit neighbor who had postponed a planned cover crop and now had a water allotment for 18 acres to spare — water Lisignoli offered to pay for.

“This fell out of the sky and was just perfect,” he said.

The farmers participated in a district-level transaction called a temporary water transfer, sometimes called a lease or trade, a tool to move water to areas of critical need.

Unlike a permanent transfer or sale of water rights, a temporary transfer is, as its name implies, temporary. It typically lasts for one year, allowing the original owner to keep the water right.

According to the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska, Oregon has one of the most complex and bureaucratic water transfer systems in the West, making it difficult for farmers to move water. Experts say temporary transfers are underutilized in Oregon.

A pilot program, called the Irrigation District Temporary Transfers Pilot Project, has shown promise as a way to make transfers easier and cheaper, but the temporary program is in use in only 15 of Oregon’s more than 40 water districts. Advocates say it should be expanded and made permanent.

The pilot program, however, is not a one-stop solution. Water experts say Oregon also needs an irrigation infrastructure overhaul.

Knowing the risks

Wait — not too fast, say critics. Transferring water, though appealing, carries risks.

Farmers in California, where transfer systems are better established, say the process has pros and cons.

Larry Cox, owner of Coastline Family Farms in the Salinas Valley, warned that transfers-gone-wrong can damage the environment, disrupt irrigators and hurt the local ag economy — suppliers and farm stores — if too many farmers in one region lay land fallow.

Cox calls himself a “skeptic,” yet said he believes benefits outweigh costs.

“It’s difficult to put your own personal needs aside to look at the needs of the whole district,” he said. “It’s hard to transfer your water to someone else for a time. But you know the old adage: Either we hang together or we hang separately.”

Seth Fiack, a fifth-generation farmer growing rice and walnuts near Ordbend in Northern California, has allowed neighbors to use his water through district-level temporary transfers.

Fiack said transfers have drawbacks. Over-transferring can create system-wide loss; and transferring can expose a farmer to “social backlash” from other farmers concerned about land being laid fallow.

“But do I appreciate being able to do (water transfers)? Yes, I do,” he said.

Oregon’s traditional method

According to the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, Oregon is the only state requiring a full state-level departmental review and approval of transfers within a district. It is also one of only two states requiring a public notice period.

“Oregon’s water right transfer process is painfully slow and overly bureaucratic,” said April Snell, executive director of the Oregon Water Resources Congress, a nonprofit representing irrigation districts.

Critics say the Oregon Water Resources Department, OWRD, is understaffed, underfunded and must work with other agencies, making the traditional process expensive and time-consuming. The minimum application fee is $950 and can reach thousands of dollars, and the process often takes 6 to 9 months.

“The state is totally bogged down, short-staffed and suffering from budget holes. That needs to be cleaned up, in my opinion,” said one irrigation district manager, who did not wish to be named.

According to Bryn Hudson, water policy analyst and legislative coordinator at OWRD, the department in 2020 approved only 49 temporary transfers. Critics say more could have been approved if the process was simpler and cheaper.

Pilot project

In 2003, the Oregon Legislature authorized a pilot project allowing three irrigation districts to make transfers with oversight at the district rather than the state level. The program has since been expanded to 15 districts and its sunset date extended several times.

Giving management to districts has saved OWRD staffing time, said Hudson of the department. Districts still work with OWRD watermasters, but the bulk of the work is done by districts.

Brian Hampson, district manager for the Rogue River Valley Irrigation District in Oregon, said the program cuts excessive paperwork, is inexpensive and fast. A district-led rather than state-led transfer can be completed in time for growers to make planting decisions.

“I’m in love with the temporary transfer program,” he said. “It’s easy, we can do things in house (within the district) and get things done. I think they should make it permanent. No doubt about it. I think every district should have access.”

Ray Kopacz, district manager of the Stanfield Irrigation District, between Hermiston and Echo in northern Oregon, agreed.

“I think it should be permanent,” he said. “Every district should have the opportunity to use it.”

Randy Cooper, owner of Cooper Farms, whose family has been farming in the Stanfield Irrigation District since 1942, said the pilot program makes temporary transfers “so much easier than the old-school way of doing it.”

Single irrigator transfer

Some Oregon farmers have used the pilot program to transfer water to themselves — from one plot or parcel of land they farm to another, a process sometimes called “pooling.”

This can be done through traditional or pilot channels within a district.

Kevin Richards, 39, who farms carrot and grass seeds, peppermint oil, wheat and hay at Fox Hollow Ranch near Madras, has used the pilot program to transfer water between plots of his family’s hundreds of acres of owned and leased land.

“It’s quite easy to do,” he said.

Farmer-to-farmer transfer

Another type of temporary transfer happens between two water users.

In Oregon’s Willamette Valley, two farmers — one lessor and a lessee — have discovered how powerful this tool can be.

Kathy Bridges, 69, is a sheep rancher in Turner.

Bridges, who grew up in suburban New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was exposed to agriculture at age 12.

“I fell in love with farming and knew that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she said.

Her property, Santiam Valley Ranch, consists of pastures, croplands and wetlands she’s called home since 1980. Bridges and her husband, Ken, have produced vegetable crops and hay on this land, and, at its peak, about 300 head of Suffolk sheep.

For years, the couple struggled with some sections of acreage that “wanted” to be wetlands.

“We finally decided to let wetland be wetland,” said Bridges. “We left the best cropland in agricultural production and stopped fighting the acres that didn’t want to be farmed. You can’t fight land.”

Bridges knew that if she stopped irrigating the wetland portions of her property, she would forfeit her water right on those acres. The state of Oregon has a forfeiture rule — “use it or lose it” — requiring farmers to make beneficial use of their water once every five years to keep the right. Agriculture counts as a beneficial use.

Property without water rights is worth little, so Bridges wanted to keep her right without having to use her water. The solution? She enrolled some acres in the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Wetland Reserve Program and offered other acres for a temporary transfer, knowing that if another farmer used her water, it would count as a beneficial use under state law.

Meanwhile, a farmer about 6 miles north of her had the opposite problem: land with no water right.

Jim McKay, 44, a sixth-generation grower whose family has been farming the Willamette Valley since 1856, had recently invested in a property in southeast Salem, Jim McKay Farms.

The investment, made in 2018, was a risk.

The property was formerly a dairy whose owners had permanently sold the water right once attached to the land. McKay bought the land hoping to find water and knowing he could plant non-irrigated crops if all else failed.

Bridges and McKay didn’t know each other, but Brent Stevenson, the district manager at the Santiam Water Control District, had a bird’s-eye view.

When Stevenson saw the dilemmas — Bridges had too much water and McKay too little — he realized they may be able to solve each other’s problems. Stevenson suggested a pilot program transfer. McKay could irrigate, while Bridges could keep her water right.

The farmers would also be “part of something bigger than themselves,” Stevenson said: keeping land and water in farm use.

In 2018, Bridges made her first transfer, the allotted water for 59.1 acres to McKay. She has applied for the transfer each year since.

McKay said he’s grateful.

“Water is life,” he said.

McKay and Bridges walked along McKay’s ponds, talking of duck hunting, fishing and the valley’s farming history while Bridges’ Australian Shepherd, Tolkien, scampered alongside. The air carried the song of Western Meadowlarks and the smell of midsummer blackberries.

A few hours later, the farmers walked McKay’s property, which today bears the stamp of water: rows of vigorous young hazelnut trees crowning a hillside and pots of blooming nursery stock.

“You can see what (Bridges’) water has allowed us to do,” said Stevenson, the district manager.

Josh Kraemer, irrigation salesman for Clearwater Irrigation — himself from a longtime farming family — said that although McKay could’ve grown non-irrigated hazelnuts, the crop performs better with water.

This summer, McKay and Kraemer are digging ditches for new irrigation pipes and installing drip irrigation systems.

Standing among the trees, Bridges smiled.

“This is the type of ag we need to protect,” she said. “I’m glad my water’s being used this way.”

Instream leasing

Another type of temporary water transfer is called an instream lease, in which a water right holder temporarily transfers water into a local stream. This is considered “beneficial use” and protects the farmer from forfeiting that water through non-use.

Long-term and split season options are available.

Environmental nonprofits and government agencies, believing the instream flow to benefit fish, are the most likely agents to pay a farmer for this kind of transfer.

Complex transfers

A transfer between two river drainage basins is a “big deal,” water experts say, and doesn’t happen often.

Transfers between districts in the same basin are more common, though still complicated.

One of Oregon’s most heated inter-basin transfer debates this summer is between the North Unit Irrigation District, NUID, and the Central Oregon Irrigation District, COID.

Central Oregon users have senior rights and “first dibs” on water, while North Unit users, representing thousands of acres of productive farmland, have junior water rights.

Desperate North Unit farmers this summer have pleaded for water from Central Oregon users, offering to pay.

Although some COID users are willing to transfer water to the North Unit, Shon Rae, deputy managing director of COID, said the volume isn’t enough to push the water through COID’s 100-year-old, slow-moving canal system. It’s a basic physics problem that could only be solved by modern, high-pressure pipes, she said.

Rae said she sees “potential momentum” for inter-district transfers in future years, but a better legal system, like the pilot program, won’t be enough on its own. New, modern infrastructure like piping and improved metering mechanisms are needed, too.

For farmers across the state whose districts have antiquated infrastructure and only the traditional method at their disposal, temporary water transfers may still seem like a futuristic idea.

But for farmers like Lisignoli, Bridges and McKay, the future is now.