In April, a bipartisan group of Oregon lawmakers praised a bill which set aside $8.2 million from the general fund to speed up and expand the state's ability to study its underground water supply.

Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, said at the time that House Bill 2707 was "something that should have been done years ago." It passed out of the House Energy and Environment Committee and on to budget writers in Salem.

But as the legislature races to a close, that bill and two others designed to further Oregon's understanding of its underground reservoirs – one that requires farmers and ranchers to measure their water use, and another that charges those users an annual fee to raise revenue for the state agency tasked with overseeing water issues -- are unlikely to pass.

"There's not a lot of air left in the room to talk about natural resources budget," said Rep. Ken Helm, D-Beaverton, who introduced the three measures.

None of the three bills offered a new idea. In 2013, then-Gov. John Kitzhaber proposed a $100 fee for water rights holders, but he backed away after irrigators raised concerns.

Helm in December said the Legislature could rightly be accused of "dodging the issue" if it didn't discuss water issues in 2017.

The timing was good.

The revived bills came on the heels of a state audit of the Water Resources Department released in December that showed the state has "no clear understanding" of its underground water supply. The audit painted a picture of an agency with too much work, not enough resources and no plan for the future. Months earlier, a multi-part series in The Oregonian/OregonLive also documented the extent of Oregon's water woes.

Oregon has 110,000 miles of rivers and streams, 1,400 named lakes and an underground network of aquifers that provide water to millions of Oregonians. Water needs will only continue to grow.

Legislative budget writers approved a Water Resources Department budget Wednesday that has no additional money for groundwater studies, despite Gov. Kate Brown's wishes and Helm's bipartisan-backed bill calling for studies of five additional water basins.

Brown's budget included an additional $1.8 million for groundwater studies, which would have allowed the state to double the number of studies. It takes five years to study a water basin. Brown's budget would have paid for a second team of researchers.

So far, Oregon has studied just one-third of its water basins. The long ongoing active study, an analysis of the Harney County basin performed in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey, won't finish until 2020.

Helm's bill would have added 20 employees and allowed the state to study five additional basins.

Fifteenmile Creek was one of the basins scheduled for analysis. The Oregonian/OregonLive found that irrigators in that basin and surrounding areas are permitted to draw 15 billion gallons of water annually, 5 billion gallons more than is estimated to return to the water table through rainfall. In that basin, and others, the state often relies on a 1968 federal government survey of underground supplies.

Helm said in an interview that he's disappointed but plans to keep raising the issue.

"The pace of which we're doing groundwater studies is so slow that we won't get a meaningful amount [completed] until the middle of this century," Helm said.

The work isn't expected to be finished until 2096, if Oregon stays at current funding levels.

Despite hitting a legislative roadblock, Helm, agricultural interest groups and environmental groups say the session was not a failure.

He also said he could have moved forward with a bill this session but that would leave "no window to work on the bigger problems in the future."

"I accept the criticism of being ambitious," he said.

The Beaverton lawmaker said he plans to reconvene a water working group after Labor Day to continue discussions and potentially revive the bills in the next short legislative session in 2018.

Helm and Rep. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford, brought together those disparate interest groups for months of meetings to debate and fine-tune the more contentious bills that would charge a fee to water rights holders and require they measure their water usage.

Jeff Stone, executive director of the Oregon Association of Nursery, said those meetings were "a useful exercise."

"Not everybody started in the same place," he said, "but I thought over time they understood better why certain groups have thoughts and perspectives."

Stone said everybody understands the need to have more information about the availability of groundwater.

While he said the proposal to charge water users an annual fee has "the farthest to go", Stone said the agricultural industry was moving toward agreement that measuring water use is important, though some questions about the enforcement remain.

Lawmakers do appear to support one water-funding bill. That bill is projected to bring in $838,000 in the next biennium through increased fees on water rights applications and transfers. Stone said his industry supports that fee increase.

Kimberley Priestley, senior policy director with the nonprofit WaterWatch of Oregon, said before the session the water advocacy group knew it would take multiple legislative sessions to pass any legislation.

Oregon is falling behind Washington and California, she said, by not requiring water rights users measure their usage. "these issues aren't going away. we're going to have to find a way to move forward with a solution if we want a sustainable water future. the need is clear, the need to get this done is clear. We look forward to further discussions in the future on this."

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen