Gov. Kotek adds Lincoln and two eastern Oregon counties to growing emergency drought list

By ALEX BAUMHARDT/Oregon Capital Chronicle

SALEM — Twelve of 36 counties, covering half the land in Oregon, are in a state of emergency over drought, with local officials calling for help.

Gov. Tina Kotek Wednesday declared the latest drought emergencies in Lincoln, Gilliam and Douglas counties, the 10th, and 12th such declarations of the year.

The declarations follow requests for drought aid from local commissioners and direct the Oregon Water Resources Department, and other state natural resource and emergency agencies, to assist industrial and municipal water users in those counties. Agencies can help with water rights transfers and drilling emergency wells. The emergency declaration also allows some industrial users to apply for federal aid.

Crook, Deschutes, Grant, Harney, Jackson, Jefferson, Lake, Sherman, Wasco and Douglas counties also received emergency drought declarations this year.

Most of the state is in a moderate to severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, impacting about 3.6 million Oregonians. A lack of precipitation and declining water levels in streams and rivers affect farming, ranching and recreation, according to a news release from the governor’s office, and are likely to lead to shorter growing seasons and wildfire risks.

Droughts are exacerbated by human-caused climate change, and in the West, droughts have become longer, more frequent and more severe, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Lincoln County commissioners on Aug. 2 asked Kotek to declare a drought emergency in the county after three months of almost no rain and the likelihood of little more until October. The last time such a declaration was made was in 2021.

The central coast has had record-low rainfall in May, June and July. The request for the emergency declaration came about via an ad-hoc drought committee convened in June by commissioner Kaety Jacobson. A member of that committee, Alan Fujisin of Gibson Farms in Siletz, wrote a four-page memo to commissioners saying that prolonged dry weather is affecting crops, wells are at September levels, and that irrigators with secondary rights to the heavily-used Siletz River are expected to be cut off this week.

In Gilliam County in north central Oregon, drought conditions have spread since the fall of 2022, according to the news release, and the county has received 75% less precipitation this year than usual.

Douglas County in the southwest corner of the state has experienced its sixth driest summer on record. Streams are flowing at below average or record low levels, and the water level in a key reservoir in the Rogue River Basin is below average.

Last year, the West experienced its driest period in 1,200 years, according to climatologists.