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Posts published in “Day: March 18, 2011”

OR remap: Pleas from John Day

A woman, named Smith, who farms near John Day describes the isolation of the John Day and Canyon City area - which is to say most of the people of Grant County - in terms of mountain passes. You have to climb through two or three of them, she said, "to get anywhere that is somewhere."

This came up at the second redistricting committee road hearing today, a later-afternoon and light-attended session based at Burns but with video feeds at John Day and Ontario. Tomorrow's hearing is at Bend.

She said she testified a decade ago when reapportionment was last done, with the idea that Grant County should be kept intact. By the time the map was drawn (by the secretary of state, not the legislature), the county was split down the middle between two state House districts. They do share state Senate and a U.S. House district.

What counties should be united with Grant (which is far too small to form a legislative district by itself) into a House district? Mrs. Smith suggested that similar resource counties be fitted, like Harney and Malheur, more than "anything up along the Gorge."

No one in Ontario testified.

Of all the eastern Oregon counties, Grant may be the one that has the most - and logically so - interest in reapportionment.

Cliff Bentz, the House member who represents much of this vast area, was ironically in Salem but participated by video feed. He noted that "the need to add 8,300 people [to his current district] is a sad commentary on my corner of Oregon," another indicator of the need for economic development there.

He added that he wanted "to make sure that the committee does not carve Ontario off into Idaho. That would be an unfortunate event."

Senior rights upheld over juniors

Unanimously, the Idaho Supreme Court yestrday upheld a judgment of District Judge (and former SRBA judge) John Melanson, protecting senior decreed water rights in the Thousand Springs region and dealing a blow to groundwater pumpers to the north and east.

The ruling, authored by Chief Justice Daniel Eismann, put the onus directly on the groundwater pumpers. It followed directly on the age-old appropriation principle of "first in time, first in right."

The case, Clear Springs Foods Inc. and Blue Lakes Trout Farm Inc. v. Idaho Department of Water Resources, is available on line.

The decision, about 40 pages long, was a thorough rundown of the conjunctive management situation and legal changes in recent decades.

Adapted from opinion and related documents:

Clear Springs Foods, Inc., and Blue Lakes Trout Farm, Inc. have decreed water rights in certain springs in the Thousand Springs region of the Snake River Plain. Appellants Idaho Ground Water Appropriators, Inc., North Snake Ground Water District, and Magic Valley Ground Water District are users of the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer ground water across southern Idaho. Groundwater Users pump groundwater from the Aquifer, primarily for irrigation purposes. The decreed ground water rights of Groundwater Users are junior to the surface water rights of Spring Users.

In the spring of 2005, Spring Users sent letters to the Director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources requesting that the Director administer water rights. The director treated these letters as calls for delivery under the Department’s Rules for Conjunctive Management of Ground and Surface Water Resources. The Director found that the Groundwater Users’ diversions were materially injuring Spring Users’ senior surface water rights and issued curtailment orders. An administrative hearing was held in November 2007 and the hearing officer approved the curtailment orders. The Director thereafter entered a final order, based on the hearing officer’s recommendations but substantially affirming the original curtailment orders. On judicial review of the orders, district court affirmed the Director’s findings. The Groundwater Users appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court, arguing that the Spring Users should be denied their requests for water based on the economic impact that would result from curtailment. (more…)

OR remap: From LaGrande

On the four-way split screen (accessible through the Oregon Legislature's Hearing Room C cam), Lake County Commissioner Ken Kestner was responding to a reapportionment-pertinent question: Does Lake County look more to, and communicate, trade and deal more with, and have more in common with, the larger communities to the west (Klamath Falls, Medford) or to the north (around Bend)?

His answer was logical, doubtless accurate, and also confounding.

Lake County, which has just 8,000 or so people but a immense land area, has two more-or-less population centers of comparable size. One, in the south near the California border, is Lakeview, and its people look mainly to Klamath Falls and Medford. The other, more spread out, is in a group of communities in the north of the county, and it looks toward Bend.

Combine the community-of-interest priority together with another, to keep counties intact where practical, and you have a conflict. And no one in the eastern counties where the legislative redistricting committees are focused today - in a hearing at LaGrande this morning and a later one today at Burns (with video participation from other eastern counties) - wanted counties split. No one wanted to be like the John Day area - a small community split between two legislative districts (50 and 60).

The legislative redistricting committees, separate Senate and House panels holding hearings together around the state, have the job of squaring the circle. In this first road hearing (after the tsumani-forced cancellation at Tillamook last week) the questions and answers were a little general, befitting a process still trying to find its way. One witness noted that it'll be easier to comment, in some ways, once plans are actually drawn, than it is now.

Testimony was light, under a half-dozen people in LaGrande (where the mayor and university president were on hand for greetings), and fewer than that in Pendleton, Baker and Lakeview (the county commissioner was alone there).

Still, some educational points were made.

Several speakers made the emphatic point that, in the northern part of eastern Oregon, Interstate 84 is the critical conduit and connecting link. They generally made a point of setting themselves off from the Bend area; that, they said, is central Oregon, not eastern Oregon (as many Portland-centric people would have it). And they do not feel much of a commonality of interest with it. From La Grande, speakers said, people heading out of town for goods or services might hit the Tri-Cities or Boise (both out of state), but not Bend. But the eastern area sounds internally knit together. People in LaGrande said they felt comparably connected to Pendleton and Baker, and those in Baker said the same about LaGrade and Ontario. The I-84 corridor seems to tie tightly.

This is an area that will change in its legislative districting. Several eastern Oregon counties lost population, and the current House District 57 (which includes Union County) is short about 6,100 people of the new required state average for House districts - it will have to add territory from somewhere. In fact, the east overall probably will have to, which may make some meetup with Bend inevitable, even if not especially wanted.