THE DALLES — Precipitated by poor snowpack and later complicated by the Grasshopper Fire, surface water supply dropped low enough that city officials implemented a voluntary water restriction advisory for all users last Tuesday.
About 70-80% of the water consumed annually by residents and businesses in The Dalles comes from Crow Creek Reservoir. Fed by South Fork Mill Creek, Crow Creek and a pipeline that diverts flows from the Dog River, it held 123 million gallons on Sept. 4, roughly seven million gallons less than the same time last year.
While the situation isn’t dire, as Public Works Director Dale McCabe emphasized, it’s not normal. The city issued similar voluntary restrictions last summer after two of its now five groundwater wells went offline; where that was spurred by mechanical failures, however, the current advisory is a product of environmental factors.
“This is fairly new,” McCabe said. “I’m not remembering a period where we went into curtailment for quite some time before this.”
After two atmospheric river events came through the Gorge last December, Crow Creek Reservoir was filled by month’s end. Usually, McCabe explained, that happens later as spring temperatures melt the snowpack on Mount Hood and its foothills, slowly traversing The Dalles’ 22,000-acre municipal watershed.
But come March, the amount of water stored in snow at a site where city employees have been collecting data for over three decades, located near Lookout Mountain and the Dog River headwaters, was 40% of the historical median. A nearby site operated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which has only been active since late 2022, put the snow water equivalent at 15.9 inches, compared to 41.7 inches in March 2025.
Surface water supply has been on the city’s radar ever since, McCabe said. Groundwater wells typically turn on every May to help meet demand when water is more scarce, and then lightning sparked the Grasshopper Fire on July 23 in the Badger Creek Wilderness.
Although the fire initially pushed east, above Pine Hollow and toward Friend, shifting winds caused it to turn west on Aug. 3 and prompted Level 3 evacuation orders in Hood River County, including Mt. Hood Meadows. The city closed its Dog River pipeline soon after and did so again last Wednesday before over an inch of rain fell on the burn scar, hoping to stave off eroded material and excessively turbid water from entering the system.
“I didn’t want high levels of dissolved organics getting into the reservoir, which would cause problems in the future,” said Tyler Mitchell, the city’s water supply and treatment manager. “It was just to protect water quality and to protect our infrastructure.”
McCabe and Mitchell haven’t gotten an answer on how many acres of the watershed unit have been impacted yet, but they estimated that roughly 80% of the Dog River Basin north of its intake got burned by the fire.
As Mitchell described, nutrient-laden water could cause an algal bloom in Crow Creek Reservoir, further degrading water quality. And while Dog River doesn’t provide a significant amount of water during the summer months, it still helps maintain reservoir levels; McCabe and Mitchell aren’t sure how much water firefighters used from a hydrant installed on the pipeline, either.
So now, the city is asking all users to voluntarily conserve water wherever possible, likely until fall precipitation patterns truly set in, hopefully by mid-October. Until then, the city’s announcement highlights several strategies for limiting both indoor and outdoor water use: letting lawns go dormant, only running laundry machines and dishwashers with full loads, avoiding open-hose watering and taking shorter showers.
“Now’s the time to look at your systems,” McCabe said. “If you have a leaky toilet, those use a lot of water. Look at your drippy faucets, look at your irrigation systems that might be leaking.”
On its side, the city will be limiting hydrant and water line flushing, reducing street sweeping and curtailing irrigation of public green spaces, and McCabe doesn’t anticipate the restrictions becoming more severe or mandatory. With the burn severity still unknown, Mitchell is waiting for the United States Forest Service to do its Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) assessment, which will inform future closures of the Dog River pipeline.
The BEAR team is expected to arrive and begin work this week, culminating in a report on damage to soils, sediments and watershed. It will also include recommendations for any emergency stabilization efforts needed, according to Heather Isben, public affairs officer for the Mt. Hood National Forest.
Commented