Boeing May Farm Out Water Rights -- Prized Columbia Share Has Thirsty Area Battling

Boeing arrived in the arid sagebrush country of Eastern Oregon 34 years ago with grand designs for a rocket-testing center. "Cape Canaveral West," as some called it, never made it off the launching pad.

But that failure has left the aerospace giant with a legacy of extraordinary value in this thirsty land: what are believed to be the largest remaining unused irrigation rights on the Columbia River.

At a time when there is a virtual ban on drawing new water out of the Columbia and taxpayers are spending millions to keep more water in the river for salmon protection, Boeing has leased 34,000 acres, just west of the town of Boardman, to a group of local farmers who plan to turn the scrub land into potato fields.

Those plans are contingent on Boeing retaining its water rights.

For more than three decades, the Oregon Water Resources Board routinely has extended Boeing's permits - even though the company has left the vast majority of its Eastern Oregon holdings undeveloped.

But those water rights now are under challenge in a fight that pits farmers vs. environmentalists, Idaho vs. Oregon and agency vs. agency.

Opponents argue that the project not only undermines costly salmon-preservation efforts elsewhere on the Columbia but is a case study in how water-rights laws compound troubles on the overtaxed river.

"Do I know this will harm the salmon?" asked Jim Yost, natural resources director for Idaho Gov. Phil Batt, a critic of the project. "I do know that while we're being asked to buy up irrigation rights from Idaho farmers upstream to save salmon, those farmers have to swallow hard to watch downstream agriculture interests in Oregon divert that water for their own use."

`Tiny, unmeasurable damage'

On the Columbia, determining how much water is too much water is a muddy question, dependent on everything from season to location.

The project, as envisioned by its developers, Inland Land, would use about 50,000 acre-feet of Columbia River water annually. An acre-foot is the volume of water one foot deep across an acre.

Foes repeatedly point out that would be enough to serve Portland's commercial and residential water needs for eight months. Most of the water would be drawn during warm-weather months, when salmon are most stressed by low flows and high water temperature.

Yet, it is still only a tiny fraction - an estimated 0.0025 percent - of the flow along this stretch between McNary and John Day dams.

"This project might change the arrival of fish by six hours. They miss their breakfast and get down there for lunch," said Jim Anderson, a University of Washington fisheries expert who conducted studies for Inland Land. "It's tiny, unmeasurable damage for fish."

`The fish don't have a right'

But environmental groups, led by Water Watch and Oregon Trout, the federal Bureau of Reclamation and Idaho officials, say water withdrawals these days must be judged on their cumulative effect.

Both Washington and Oregon have slapped de facto moratoriums on new water rights, freezing hundreds of applications. In Olympia, frustrated farm interests are pushing legislation to lift that ban on the Washington side of the river.

The Bureau of Reclamation spent nearly $10 million last year buying rights from farmers in Idaho to ensure more water - water that ultimately ends up in the Columbia - was available in the Snake River.

The Northwest Power Planning Council last year recommended diverting more water past the two dams on both sides of the Boeing property and lowering the water level in the reservoirs behind them. That would make more water flow past the dams to aid salmon and potentially make less water available for irrigators.

"There's a confusing morass of interagency politics and jurisdictional difference on the Columbia, so the right hand seems to always undermine the left," said Rick George, head of environmental planning for Eastern Oregon's Umatilla tribe. "At the same time, it's a very simple picture to us: The fish don't have a water right. And without adequate water - all of this adds up - there won't be fish."

Opponents are fighting the Inland Land project in court, claiming it will damage salmon runs and jeopardize rare desert wildlife habitat. The case, after being dismissed by a lower state court last year, is now on appeal.

The next key decision will come in a few weeks, when the Water Resources Board decides whether to grant Boeing another one-year extension. Opponents claim that continually granting extensions for undeveloped rights violates the basic tenet of water law: Use the water or lose it.

How Boeing got the site

Boeing was wooed to Boardman in 1963 by then-Oregon Gov. Mark Hatfield. In its eagerness to attract space-age industry to this sparsely populated area, the state gave Boeing a generous 77-year lease on nearly 100,000 acres. The planned jet- and rocket-engine testing facility was short-lived after NASA put its big money, instead, into facilities throughout the South.

Thus came Boeing's curious entrance into agriculture. For a while, the company actually ran a farming operation that pioneered the use of center-pivot irrigation.

Now it leases out about 25,000 acres for irrigated farming, bringing in about $800,000 a year, said Milt Furness, spokesman for the Boeing Space and Defense Group.

The deal with Inland Land would be a lucrative one for Boeing. The company leases the land from Oregon for $2 an acre - $200,000 a year. Local farmers say those parcels, as virgin potato land, can be subleased for $350 or more per acre.

The water will be free, though Boeing or Inland Land must build the pumps and canals to divert it.

"As long as this thing is in litigation, we won't discuss it, other than to say we've been the good neighbor there for 20 years," Furness said.

Hermiston farmer John Hale, a partner in Inland Land, contends the Boeing project is crucial precisely because expansion alternatives for growers, and for local processors who play a key role in the local economy, are rapidly drying up. The problem for Hale, of course, is that similar claims for Columbia water remain endless.

But he notes that Oregon takes far less water for irrigation than Washington or Idaho.

"We're saying we deserve a fair share of that water in Eastern Oregon for our growth," Hale said.