By NATHAN WILK/KLCC News
More small farms in Oregon could operate without water rights under a bill moving forward in the Oregon Legislature.
Farmers currently need a water right to irrigate crops they plan to sell. However, House Bill 3372 would exempt gardens that are a half acre or smaller. Those farms could use up to 3,000 gallons of well water daily for irrigation—and 5,000 gallons in total each day, when including other industrial and commercial uses. Cannabis farms would not be offered the exemption.
The proposal comes as Oregon has started more regularly enforcing its current water use requirements. Mike McCord, the Oregon Water Resources Department’s Northwest Region Manager, told KLCC last year that new funding in 2021 allowed the agency to hire more staff for that purpose.
Since then, many small gardens have received notices for the first time that selling their crops is illegal, according to Alice Morrison, the co-executive director of Friends of Family Farmers. Morrison said this has caused confusion, because there are already exemptions in place for “commercial and industrial” uses of water — but those definitions don’t include commercial irrigation.
For small farmers scrambling to get into compliance, Morrison said obtaining a water right can be unaffordable, and could take years—if the request is approved at all.
“We’ve assigned a commodity value to water rights, so they’ve just gotten more valuable as fewer and fewer basins are issuing them,” said Morrison. “The giant backlog and the way we’ve commodified these resources has led to pretty much a zero sum game.”
The new exemptions in this bill would resemble existing ones for small livestock and non-commercial farms. Morrison argued this would create a stepping stone for new farmers—while also codifying limits on water use, in order to encourage conservation.
“It really just makes sense to clear up these discrepancies and give people options,” said Morrison, “so that folks who are growing food in their own garden can sell their excess to the community via small community farmers markets, or a roadside stand.”
Concerns over the bill
To date, more than 250 people have submitted letters of support for HB 3372. Proponents have argued the bill would combat “food deserts,” while making farming more accessible to communities of color that haven’t historically received water rights.
However, at least one prominent conservation group, WaterWatch of Oregon, opposes the proposal. At a public hearing on April 7, its senior policy analyst, Kimberley Priestley, voiced concerns. Priestley told lawmakers the state should be limiting exempt uses, not expanding them. She said they circumvent the permitting process, which helps regulators understand whether there is groundwater available in an area, and if a new well would cause environmental degradation.
“(The lack of an) advanced review puts farmers, cities, tribes, fish and our state’s natural water resources at risk,” said Priestley. “Expanding the exempt statutes is the antithesis of where the state should be going.”
Meanwhile, the Oregon Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farming advocacy group, also opposes the bill.
At the public hearing, the Bureau’s Government Affairs Manager, Ryan Krabill, said parts of Oregon face a “de-facto moratorium” on new water rights, due to new environmental requirements. Krabill said this bill would give small farmers an unfair competitive advantage.
“It tells some farmers they must wait years, invest heavily, and meet high data standards to secure water—while telling others they may proceed without those burdens as long as they remain under a certain threshold,” Krabill wrote in a letter to the legislators. “This is not clarity. It is not consistency. And it is not balance.”
HB 3372 passed the House Committee on Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources, and Water on April 9, after lawmakers adopted the -5 amendment that contains the new exemptions. All of the committee’s Democrats voted for the bill, while three out of four Republicans opposed it.
The bill now heads to the House floor, where it could be voted on as soon as Thursday.
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