The effects of piping on Central Oregon’s drinking water may not be known immediately, but one fact is clear. Our water table is affected by drought and will be further depleted by piping open canals. Ironically, an important benefit of canals is the very leakage irrigation districts and fish enthusiasts are working to eradicate.

Quoting the U.S. Geological Survey hydrology study, “East of the Cascades there is little or no groundwater recharge from precipitation, but leaking irrigation canals are a significant source of artificial recharge. Groundwater and surface water are directly linked, and removal of groundwater will ultimately diminish stream flows.” Hydrologists from different agencies have opposing opinions on the delicate balance between canals and rivers. Without doing case-by-case studies, there is worry about potential harmful effects.

The real driving force behind piping are irrigation districts and commercial farming, whose goals are not rivers or wildlife, but stabilizing water delivery to farms and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in free electricity and pressurized water. Piping is all the more appealing with recent stimulus money paying farmers’ wages, the very beneficiaries of the project who had originally agreed to volunteer their labor to meet the district’s matching-funds obligation.

In recent years, agencies like Deschutes River Conservancy have worked with irrigation districts and dramatically improved the health of rivers without piping. According to DRC, piping is supposed to be a collaborative effort requiring community and landowner support. Yet they continue to grant tens of millions in tax dollars but readily admit they do not oversee those projects. DRC doesn’t confirm the accuracy of proposals drafted by irrigation districts or ensure delivery of information to the public. Nor do they monitor compliance or the quality of the installations.

DRC has done great things for our rivers, but their focus is shoveling out grant money, not follow-up. Water can be bought for a fraction of the cost of piping, but irrigation districts write the proposals, receive our tax money and call all the shots. Instead of putting stimulus-funded jobs out for professional bid, farmers are paying themselves to make a mess, smashing up trees, and damaging roads on private and public lands. The lack of competent construction management on projects like Three Sisters Irrigation’s (TSID) highly pressurized McKenzie pipeline is downright frightening.

No wonder lawsuits are being fought across the country. Irrigation districts are disinterested in the lengthy research needed to verify historic easements. Every suit fought against piping has a different set of circumstances, often based on the turn-of-the-century homestead acts governing water rights and canals.

Past lawsuits won by landowners against TSID in Sisters, and lost by landowners against Swalley in Bend, have little bearing on the recent suit I’ve filed against TSID. Affected farmers have been up in arms with irrigation season so close, yet weeks passed with no communication from TSID’s attorney, and no production of documents verifying easement rights like those recorded in other Central Oregon districts. Instead, TSID, assisted by the sheriff, took the law into its own hands, bulldozing through my 40 acres before the courts could rule.

For eight years, property owners in McKenzie Canyon tried to work with TSID in an effort to exchange easements to place the pipe in their private roadbed rather than destroy the canyon’s watershed. In 2004, TSID arranged a canyon tour for community members, landowners, biologists and news editors. Drip systems and ponds were offered, and the EPA ultimately required wildlife ponds. Years later, DRC assumed these conditions had been met, but after they doled out the money, TSID bulldozed down the canyon rather than the roadbed, without legal easements or ponds, finally achieving the dream of pressurized water for five commercial farms at the end of the pipeline. Another case of corporate greed using tax dollars to trash citizens’ rights.

Supporters of piping claim wildlife habitat and canal riparian areas have no value because they are not natural, yet nothing is natural about irrigating 100,000 acres of desert land. Indiscriminate elimination of open canals that contribute to drinking water, wildlife habitat, property values and delicate stream flows is hard to justify when it financially benefits so few at the expense of many.

Proponents have worked hard to make us feel guilty about fighting to save canals, yet our historic canals have changed the face of Central Oregon as surely as green fields and farming. We need to strike a balance between preserving natural resources and constitutional rights. Look a little deeper before deciding that farming and sport fishing trump everything else. Remember, the damming of our nation’s rivers in the 1960s seemed like a good, “green” idea, yet proved fatal to native fish runs. Likewise, piping all open canals is sure to have unforeseen consequences without studies and better oversight.