The city, conservation groups spar over reservoir expansion

THE DALLES — The City of The Dalles wants to double the size of its primary water storage reservoir, Crow Creek, and pull more winter runoff from the Dog River — a project first planned in the 1990s.

Through legislation sponsored by Rep. Cliff Bentz, dubbed the “Dalles Watershed Development Act,” the United States Forest Service (USFS) may hand over 150 acres of land around Crow Creek to make the expansion possible, which Columbia Riverkeeper and 13 other organizations oppose, partly on behalf of endangered fish runs. After passing the House, H.R. 655 is before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, one of Sen. Ron Wyden’s assignments.

About 80% of The Dalles’ water supply comes from surface water sources. Dog River is the largest, and Crow Creek stores all of it about 20 miles southwest of downtown.

Officials say the expansion is needed to navigate variable snowpack and satisfy projected demand in 15 years, when construction would start if the bill is successful. Come 2039, the city expects an average daily demand of 7.6 million gallons of water compared to about 4.2 million gallons in 2024, based on figures from The Dalles Water Master Plan. Google, whose maximum water demand is set but not yet reached, factors into that estimate, alongside unknown future users the city hopes will eventually occupy undeveloped commercial and industrial land owned by The Port of The Dalles. Residential growth accounts for just over 5% of the anticipated need.

“We’re not talking just people. We’re talking new businesses. We’re talking new industries. We’re talking about growth that moves the community forward. And that’s what water supply planning has to consider and anticipate and prepare for,” said former Public Works Director Dave Anderson. The port land may be occupied by one user, or a couple of dozens.

With its sixth data center set to come online this year, Google is the city’s largest water user, buying 1.19 million gallons per day at the regular water rate and accounting for nearly one-third of The Dalles’ total consumption in 2024, according to city records. Since any work on Crow Creek is years out, The Dalles Mayor Rich Mays stressed that it has nothing to do with the company’s already-accounted for demand, nor was the project pursued with Google in mind.

“We have had no conversations with Google about expanding,” The Dalles Mayor Rich Mays said. “We’re certainly not looking forward to it. I don’t think Google is either.”

To pay for the estimated $70 million expansion and other planned upgrades, the city will rely on contributions from Google, grants and an 7.3% annual increase in systemwide water rates from FY 2024-3024, among other sources.

The city already owns two-thirds of the forest around Crow Creek and originally attempted to acquire the rest through a land exchange that began in 1997, ending in failure over a decade later. USFS wrote a letter of support of the legislative fix, and Mays went to Washington, D.C. to testify.

“It seemed like a slam dunk — bipartisan support,” he said. Then 14 environmental organizations came out in opposition, including the Sierra Club, Bird Alliance of Oregon, Thrive Hood River, WaterWatch, and others.

For conservation groups, turning over the land means no federal review, and, therefore, loss of safeguards for salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act, so they believe it should stay public. Dog River feeds the Hood River, a Cold Water Refuge that five threatened or endangered runs depend on for their survival as adults and juveniles — one where temperatures can be 6 degrees in Celsius cooler than the Columbia.

In a 2021 report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designated the Hood River as an “excellent” refuge, but with a need to preserve and increase flows in the over-used river. All 14 organizations signed a letter to Wyden and Sen. Jeff Merkley, urging them to oppose the bill.

“Bedrock environmental laws, like the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, aren’t red tape. Those laws protect the quality of the water we drink, the ability to have fish and rivers and the air we breathe, and we staunchly disagree with how The City of the Dalles is approaching its effort to secure land that belongs to the American public, not to Google,” Lauren Goldberg, director of Columbia Riverkeeper, told Columbia Gorge News.

Anderson emphasized that more water would not be taken from Dog River in summer. Thanks to a right dated 1870, The Dalles can legally draw “all the water in-stream” at an established diversion point — a practice largely gone unchanged until the Dog River Replacement Project wrapped up in 2024. In that project, the pipeline carrying diverted water to South Forth Mill Creek, which then flows to the Crow Creek Reservoir, more than doubled in capacity and the city agreed to leave 0.5 cubic feet per second of water running annually from August through October, as requested by the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs.

Anderson said that USFS stated that the new pipeline is “not likely to adversely affect listed species or critical habitat” in its 2022 final decision notice.

At the same time, however, the Hood River is persistently over-allocated between June and September, anywhere from 144% to 216%, according to the EPA. “Over-allocated” means water rights have been given out for more water than the river contains — up to twice as much, in this case — a bad scenario for migrating fish who survive by hopscotching from mouth to mouth of snowfed streams.

Klebes said the new water will be pulled from freshets (spring high water) and floods, not low summer flows; the nonprofit WaterWatch says salmon use the river over a wide period, including juveniles during the spring freshet, and reduced flows could impact them.

“These water rights were given at a time when we didn’t have endangered species swimming in our rivers,” said John DeVoe, former director and now senior advisor of WaterWatch’s Oregon chapter. “We didn’t have other water demands, and the environment had no seat at the table.

“With the Crow Creek Reservoir being on federal land, that imports a level of federal review on things like the Endangered Species Act, which the state, in its allocation and management of water, simply isn’t going to do.” He continued, “I push back against the notion that there are months of the year where we simply don’t need to worry about these issues because the fish aren’t there.”

If the bill passes, The Dalles City Manager Matthew Klebes said they still expect to need fill and removal permits from the state and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which may require fisheries analyses, environmental work and consultation with tribes. None of the 14 organizations signing the letter reached out to Mays, Klebes or Anderson, they all said on March 6.

Across the West, despite declining demand in maturing cities, local governments are discovering they hold senior water rights that predate everything given to junior users or reserved for ecological health or fish, DeVoe noted.

He’s fighting similar plans to develop water elsewhere and has observed how cities develop these priority water rights for industry or monetize them for buyers, often those who don’t exist yet. On the Clackamas River, for instance, municipal water providers have told DeVoe that six natural gas-fired power plants will soon relocate to the service area without any proof of contract or guarantee.

“These are just things that are made up for the purposes of securing greater entitlements to water,” DeVoe said.

Apart from meeting projected demand, Klebes, Anderson and Mays emphasized that climate change is cutting their summer water supply, so raising the dam would improve municipal water security. The city historically drank snowpack that melted slowly in warmer months, feeding the reservoir; climate scientists say rain will mostly replace snow by century’s end.

“With climate predictions for less snow and more rain in the future, the city must plan for other ways to store winter water,” Anderson said. Historically, snowpack reached over 7 feet, but in 2026, it’s just 3.5 feet, he said.

The new reservoir would stop industry from drying out when snowpack falls short. But it looks like the opposition isn’t going anywhere, and if the bill fails, it’s back to a land exchange to get the project done.

“We don’t take a reservoir off public lands and thereby eliminate the federal review for federal interests like the Endangered Species Act. We don’t eliminate public opportunities to comment and have input to people’s plans to develop things on federal lands,” DeVoe said.