With the latest lawsuit pending by the Center for Biological Diversity against irrigation water use destroying critical habitat for the spotted frog, the center is challenging how the canal piping is guaranteed with funding it and its ability to save the frog.

Currently the funding mostly has been grants, because its not feasible with agricultural profits to finance the cost of piping the canals. I am lucky if I am profiting $200 an acre, and the canal piping is costing $5 million a mile, based on what the Central Oregon LandWatch and the center said in the lawsuit.

So that makes the cost figure out to around $1,600 an acre a year for 30 years, based on 450 miles of canals on 45,000 irrigated acres — if the patrons and permittees are to be the guarantee for funding the piping of the canals, as the lawsuit seeks.

Even the higher-profiting areas like Madras will struggle to cover these costs because the amount of high value crops like carrots and grass seed are limited contract acreages, so they will have to continue with forage-type crops. At best, those might gross $2,000 an acre.

It’s time to start having a serious conversation about how the spotted frog gets saved — and before we go to court and the districts tie up water rights to pipe canals.

Maybe not all the canals should be piped? Maybe we only pipe canals that supply water to areas that are the highest-producing areas and the people that own the lesser-producing lands sell their water rights to those areas? These lower-producing areas could be allowed to rezone their lands for other uses, like community developments.

And there are other threats to the vitality of the spotted frog that needs to be addressed, too.

First off: You want me to believe that the spotted frog has a chance to survive and breed at a critical time period when 4.5 million people are tromping all over spotted frog habitat? It’s laughable to even call the area a critical habitat. And this is ridiculous: BTI Mosquito sprays in the immediate location of spotted frog habitat.

We need to amend the HCP and add some stronger penalties to deter the litter in the river and restrict human impact of the breeding areas on the river, at least during the March to the end of May months when spotted frog are breeding and spawning. 

And throughout the year, the Upper Deschutes River habitat of the spotted frog needs to be limited to human encroachment in the same manner that the Grand Canyon has lotteries for how many people can access the river and canyon in order to lower the impact on the environment.

After all, this is about the vitality of the spotted frog, isn’t it?

Tony Newbill

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