In the high, dry desert of Central Oregon, nearly every drop of free-flowing water has been claimed by someone.

But behind the Bowman Dam at the Prineville Reservoir, about 82,500 acre feet of water – nearly the amount to fill Ochoco Reservoir twice over – remains there for the taking.

Federal officials have spent about six years and $500,000 on a study to analyze options and decide how best to divvy it up.

After all those years and the half-million, they still don’t know.

In fact, they barely have a process anymore. To restart and complete the process would take several more years and about $500,000 more, said Ellen Berggren, Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) activity manager for the Pacific Northwest region. That would bring the total cost of a combined environmental impact statement and economic analysis to about $1 million, she said.

The BOR owns the dam. The unclaimed water in the reservoir makes up nearly 54 percent of Prineville Reservoir’s 153,000-acre-feet of water.

An acre foot of water is the amount of water it takes to cover one acre of land with one foot of water. That would be about 326,700 gallons.

Bowman Dam, authorized by Congress in 1956 for irrigation and flood control, creates the 12-mile-long Prineville Reservoir, just southeast of Prineville.

The earliest officials might resume work on the study of what to do with all the unclaimed water is likely to be 2005. Completion would take about three years, Berggren said.

In April 2001, BOR officials stopped holding meetings in the Prineville Reservoir Reallocation Study. The meetings, with government officials and irrigation representatives, aimed to develop alternatives for doling out the water.

Coming up with alternatives for the stored water was complicated because so many people would like it, Berggren said. The complexity and differing interests required many meetings to air all views. Also, officials developed a computer model of the reservoir to show how different uses of the water would affect lake levels, she said. That, too, took a long time, she said.

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Berggren said officials stopped holding meetings, because they ran out of money. Blaming the federal budgeting process, she said there was never enough money budgeted to do the job well.

”To work collaboratively takes a lot of meetings with a lot of people,” she said. ”That takes money. It may not be the most efficient way, but it is probably the best way to meet as many needs as possible.”

Officials put the project on hold after April 2001 and focused regional efforts on ramping up security at dams, she said.

”September 11 had a big impact on how we budgeted our money,” she said. ”National security is a very big priority.”

But they didn’t tell the people involved that the study had stopped. Some of the representatives participating in the study said the process simply died without explanation.

Dee Sehgal, a water and soil resource manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, said the process just fizzled.

”It seemed like things were going along real well, and then it died, we just quit meeting,” he said. ”A lot of these public projects get like that. There really is no major champion, no one pushing the issue, so it just kind of disappears.”

Dick Brown, director of planning and community development for Prineville, described the study as a ”huge team effort that just died off.”

”A lot of people spent a lot of time of time on it,” he said. ”I thought we had a deadline, and it came and went.”

Still, the time spent was not wasted because officials laid a good foundation for dealing with the unclaimed water, he said.

”All of the information is still on record,” he said.

Berggren said she intended to notify the study’s participants that the project had been put on hold but had not yet sent out a letter.

”I have to take responsibility for not notifying people,” she said. ”I let the ball drop on that.”

The $500,000 already spent covered travel costs, employee time and the cost of developing the computer model, Berggren said. Many of the BOR staffers working on the project live in Boise or Denver, which meant the agency spent money to fly them to Oregon for meetings, lodge and feed them.

BOR officials decided it would be more efficient to put the study on hold until they had adequate funding. Without more funding, the project could be on hold indefinitely.

Failing to complete the study means the water stays in the reservoir. That means water does not go toward irrigation, municipal needs, fish habitat restoration or other uses, said Michelle McSwain, a hydrologist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

”We continue to have water in the reservoir that could be put toward a better use,” she said. ”There are a lot of beneficial uses the water could be allocated for, and it is not being allocated.”

Tribal hydrologist Sehgal said some of that water could be released from the dam to improve the flows of the Crooked River. In the summer, most of the river’s water is diverted for irrigation, which can degrade the fish habitat, increase erosion and turbidity, the amount of sediment in the water, he said.

Crooked River flows from the dam into Lake Billy Chinook and passes through much tribal land.

”(To release some of the unclaimed water into the Crooked River) could provide a fairly substantial increase,” he said. ”You could probably double the flow of the river in the summer time.”

The Ochoco Irrigation District controls the amount of water that flows out of the dam. In the winter, officials carefully monitor the amount of water that flows out of the dam because they want to fill the reservoir, said Steve Marx, biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Officials from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Service recommend that the flows downstream of the dam run at least 75 cubic feet per second (cfs).

Sometimes the winter flows downstream of the dam can reach 30 cfs. Legally, the irrigation district is required to keep flows from dipping below 10 cfs.

If some of the unclaimed water in the reservoir was used to increase flows downstream of the dam, officials could improve the fish populations, Marx said.

Right now the water simply helps fill the reservoir and provides a base for boating, water-skiing and other popular recreational activities. Putting some of that unclaimed water to a different use could have grave impacts on irrigators, said Bob Main, retired watermaster for the Oregon Department of Water Resources. Main participated in the 1997 Prineville Reservoir Reallocation Study.

Unless officials could promise the irrigators that their rights to the water in the reservoir would take priority over all other uses, irrigation districts still feel like they could have access to less, Main said.

Berggren said that current water uses would not be affected by allocating the unclaimed water in the reservoir. A drop in lake levels could also change the types of recreation at Prineville Reservoir, Main said.

”That (unallocated) water is being used for many things right now,” he said. ”The question is should we recognize those uses and protect them with a water right? Or should we ignore those uses and introduce new ones? It isn’t like there is a great big pot of water available for everyone’s consuming.”

Kimberley Priestley of the environmental group WaterWatch said when officials resume the study, they should include her group at the table.

”We would like to see enough of that water put in stream so the needs of the downstream fish populations are met,” she said.

Bob Crawford, park manager for Oregon State Parks at Prineville, said the state parks would like to purchase 50,000 acre feet of the unclaimed water to ensure it remains in the reservoir for recreation use.

If the water went to non-recreational uses, officials would have to revamp their boat launch system because some ramps may not reach the water if levels dropped, he said.

Crawford is not disappointed the study has been put on hold and the water just sits there.

”The status quo works for us,” he said.

Rachel Odell can be reached at 541-617-7811 or rodell@bendbulletin.com.