Integrated Water Resources Planning In Lower John Day Basin
If you are a rafting enthusiast like me, the John Day River between Clarno and Cottonwood has many splendid features that make this river one of Oregon’s great floating opportunities. The John Day Basin is one of the most important undammed river systems in the West and home to native aquatic fish species, small rural communities, and exceptional historical and cultural riches.
The 8,000-square-mile John Day Basin is an extraordinary landscape boasting the third longest free-flowing river in the contiguous United States, vast tracts of wilderness and forested watersheds, and rain-fed wheat and rangelands. The John Day hosts one of the few remaining wild fish runs in the Pacific Northwest: summer steelhead and spring Chinook salmon. Steelhead and Chinook John Day River spawning contribute to the largest entirely wild run in the mid and upper Columbia River Basin. In addition to anadromous fisheries, this river contains rainbow and cutthroat trout, Pacific lamprey, bridgelip sucker, and speckled and longnose dace. The basin is home to the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indians and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indians, who both hold treaty rights for fishing, hunting, and gathering.
I began to work professionally in the John Day when I joined Sustainable Northwest and the Lower John Day Working Group. The Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) funded the Lower John Day Working Group as one of four pilots to help communities undertake a place-based approach to integrated water planning and carry forward the recommendations from the Integrated Water Resources Strategy (IWRS) 2017 report. Through this work I became aware of the many real challenges the Basin is facing like irrigation demands, reduced snowpack, higher summer air and stream temperatures, and historic channel alteration from mining and other industrial and agricultural uses.
The planning area extends across a drainage area of 3,149 square miles and encompasses all of the John Day River Basin downstream of the confluence of the Upper and North Fork John Day Rivers near Kimberly. The lower basin is divided into 33 smaller catchments called Water Availability Basins (WAB).
In order to address these and many of issues, the place-based integrated water resources planning ("PBP") uses a voluntary, locally initiated and led effort in which a balanced representation of water interests in a basin, watershed, or groundwater area work in partnership with the state can come together to help address and mitigate pressing basin issues. The Place-based effort follows the following guidance:
Step 1 - Build a collaborative and inclusive process;
Step 2 - Gather information to understand current water resources (looking at quantity, quality, ecosystem health) and identify knowledge gaps;
Step 3 - Examine current and future in-stream and out-of-stream water needs (water for people, the economy, and the environment);
Step 4 - Identify and prioritize strategic, integrated solutions to meet current and future water needs; and
Step 5 - Develop a place-based integrated water resources plan that serves as a roadmap for meeting water needs and informs future updates to the statewide IWRS
Sustainable Northwest, in partnership with the Gilliam Soil and Water Conservation District and Mid John Day-Bridget Creek Watershed Council, has been supporting the collaborative process since 2016. We both facilitate the Lower John Day Place-Based Planning group and provide technical and scientific assistance for the Lower John Day Placed Based Plan.
This multi-year effort has culminated in peer-reviewed reports highlighting the state of the water resources in the basin, current and future water demands, and data gaps. For example, the workgroup found that only a fraction of in-stream needs for fish is known for the lower basin WABs. The mainstem river and many tributary streams have water quality impairments, including high temperature, sedimentation, flow modification, biological criteria, pH, and low oxygen concentrations. While the basin has no major dams, numerous smaller obstructions (dams, weirs, culverts, etc.) present barriers to fish passage. Several OWRD and United States Geological Survey (USGS) stream gages (more than 70) have been discontinued due to a lack of funding for maintenance and analysis.
The most significant changes in peak streamflow magnitudes are projected to occur at intermediate elevations in the Cascade Range and the Blue Mountains (Safeeq et al., 2015). This represents a fundamental shift in hydrology, and declining snowpack will likely result in changes in the timing of water resources and greater water scarcity at times for multiple water uses, particularly for irrigation and in-stream flows for fish.
The Lower John Day Working Group has recently completed the Step 4 process and published the Integrated Water Strategies report, which has ranked 46 recommended strategies across 19 critical water issues in the planning area. The group is now putting all the pieces together to develop an implementation plan for the Basin. It has been a long and rewarding process to support the work to identify critical water issues and develop recommended strategies for a plan to meet current and future in and out of stream water basin demands.
I hope efforts like Oregon's "Place-based Integrated Water Resources Planning" will be replicated in other data-sparse basins in Oregon in order to draw attention to scientific-based efforts and to leverage state and private funding for near and long-term efforts to manage Oregon’s water demands. Moving forward our vision is to work with local partners and implement exciting conservation and restoration projects in the basin. We see John Day poised to unlock several significant economic opportunities in the near term and enjoys strong social license and a committed multi-stakeholder collaborative partnership to oversee implementation of this work for years to come.
We would like to thank the Oregon Water Resources Department, members of the Lower John Day Working Group, Gilliam Soil Water Conservation District, and our funders Bella Vista Foundation and the Oregon Community Foundation for supporting our efforts to help finalize an integrated plan to meet in and out of stream water demands.
Dr. Shreejita Basu
Water Scientist
