PAST MAJOR PROJECTS
WILLOW CREEK
The Willow Creek drainage is an area of intensive agricultural production in far eastern Oregon. It covers an area of about 500,000 acres.
In the 1990’s, the Malheur Watershed Council and the Malheur SWCD began a program of water quality monitoring that encompassed Willow Creek. The results consistently indicated problems, primarily with bacteria, and a focus group was formed to address the issues. Most of the agricultural activity occurs in the 30,000 acres adjacent to Willow Creek from below Brogan Canyon to the confluence with the Malheur River. This area is where the majority of water quality concerns are.
In response to these issues, the Lower Willow Creek Working Group formed in 2000 under the umbrella of the Malheur Watershed Council. This group consists of local landowners dedicated to promoting practical solutions to water quality and other environmental problems. Since its formation, the working group has sponsored grants for more monitoring, feedlot improvements, irrigation system upgrades, and much more. To solicit landowner involvement, the group conducts town hall meetings, sends out flyers, knocks on doors, and uses word of mouth.
In 2002, the Department of Environmental Quality placed Willow Creek on the 303(d) list for not meeting chlorophyll a (algae) and bacteria standards.
Willow Creek has several water quality and social problems. One is the large number of livestock on feedlots near Willow Creek. The concentration of livestock in the Willow Creek drainage is one of the highest in the state. A consequence of concentrating large numbers of animals in one relatively small area is that animal waste is bound to get into streams. Large feedlots and dairies have already made the improvements needed to protect water quality as a condition of their permit with the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
Current bacteria sources under human control are tail water from flood-irrigated pastures and small lots where contaminated runoff can reach surface waters. An experiment conducted by Dr. Clint Shock and others showed that tail water from irrigated pastures could contain up to 230,000 E. coli colonies per 100 mL of sample. The state’s bacteria standard allows only 406 colonies per 100 mL.
A second problem is irrigation-induced erosion. The most common method of irrigating is called furrow irrigation. This method consists of delivering water to a field via a ditch or pipe. Water is then sent by gravity down a furrow (also called corrugates), a narrow trench made by a plow. Crops are grown on raised beds between the furrows. Massive amounts of soil are carried off the fields by the irrigation water. When water reaches the end of each furrow it is collected in a receiving ditch. These tailwater ditches eventually lead to Willow Creek.
Experiments and computer modeling have shown that soil losses from furrow irrigation can be as high as 15 to 20 tons per acre per year. About 30,000 acres in Willow Creek are furrow irrigated. If every field eroded at 15 to 20 tons per acre per year that would mean 600,000 tons or about 50,000 dump truck loads of dirt potentially enters Willow Creek each year.
A third issue is that a federally listed fish species, bull trout, resides in the North Fork of the Malheur River. Willow Creek irrigators use water from Beulah Reservoir, a dam on the North Fork. Radio tag studies show some bull trout adults leave the reservoir in April-May and reside in upper basin spawning areas throughout the summer where optimum water temperatures for adult bull trout are present. They return to the reservoir in late October after spawning. During drought years, the reservoir levels become too low to provide quality winter habitat for the fish. The water savings from improved irrigation efficiency will potentially help maintain a pool in Beulah Reservoir. This will benefit winter habitat for bull trout populations.
A fourth problem all producers face is the cost of making the necessary improvements to protect water quality. Upgrading from furrow irrigation is particularly expensive. While it is true that producers benefit from irrigation improvements by increased yields and conserving water, the benefits are not great enough for most landowners to convert all on their own. Estimates show it could take as long as 15 to 20 years to recoup a farmer’s investment in a center pivot. This rate of return is not high enough for most bankers to loan, and in a county that ranks the lowest in Oregon for per capita income, the average landowner is not able to make these improvements without help.
The Bureau of Reclamation developed the irrigation system for Willow Creek in the 1930’s and 40’s. It consists of a main canal that the Vale Oregon Irrigation District diverts water from the Malheur River using a low dam constructed about a mile above Namorf Siding on the Oregon Short Line Railroad. Water travels 50 miles from Beulah Reservoir to Namorf, and another 40 miles from Namorf to Vale. From this point of diversion, the water flows down 73 miles of main canal to Jamieson on the west side of Willow Creek. This main canal is designed to carry 1 cubic foot of water per second for each 50 acres of irrigated land. Lateral canals intersect the main canal at irregular intervals to deliver water to individual farms in the Willow Creek and Vale area.
The District has three storage facilities. They are the Warm Springs Reservoir on the Middle Fork of the Malheur River, Bully Creek Reservoir on Bully Creek a tributary of the Malheur River, and Beulah Reservoir on the North Fork of the Malheur River. The total storage capacity available to the District is 185,000 acre-feet. Warm Springs holds 190,000 acre-feet, but half of this capacity is used by other irrigation districts. Thus, only 95,000 acre-feet is available. The Beulah holds 60,000 acre-feet, and 30,000 acre-feet are stored in Bully Creek Reservoir.
ALDER CREEK
A natural wetland in southeast Oregon was likely saved from extinction thanks to four years of collaboration and some human-made beaver dams. In the Oregon high desert, about seven miles northeast of the town of Crane, Alder Creek bubbles to the surface surrounded by sagebrush and juniper trees. The creek and wetland create an actual oasis in one of the driest and most remote sections of the state, said Ken Diebel with the Malheur Watershed Council, a chief BLM partner on the project. “It’s really the only source of water out in a long way,” he said.
The Alder Creek headwaters, at about 5,000 feet elevation, is also almost at the top of the Malheur River watershed, making it a logical spot to focus on restoration work, said Diebel.“The things we do up there will benefit the entire watershed,” he said.
Back in 2015, when the restoration work began, the oasis was on the brink of disappearing.Historic farming practices at the wetland changed the fundamental makeup of the landscape. Instead of a deep meadow with soil that absorbed water and released it in the hot months, the wetland was shallow and water cascaded too quickly over numerous headcuts, or small waterfalls. The approximately 40-acre meadow was potentially going to shrink to just a few acres, with encroaching Western juniper trees replacing elk, Columbia spotted frog, redband trout, and of course, beavers, among other native wildlife reliant on the spring.
“Really it was 99 percent about preventing the loss of the wetland,” said Lindsay Davies, the BLM fisheries biologist who helped manage the project. It took hours to maneuver a small excavator into the area so larger scale repairs could be made to correct the grade of the waterway. After that, structures made of wood and rock—including nine of those human-made beaver dams—were placed to trap sediment and slow the erosion that was taking place.
About a mile of willow trees were planted in the corridor, too, replacing juniper that were cut down.
Finally, the result this summer was a transformed wetland corridor drastically lush and green compared to the surrounding desert. “It’s amazing how green everything is and how much wetland – it’s a bigger wetland than we had originally anticipated,” said Davies. Holistic watershed restoration on this scale takes a big team, said Davies, citing vital BLM partners like the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and many others on the local, state and federal level.
And potentially the best part about the Alder Creek restoration: The work is designed to last 100 years, giving wildlife plenty of time to reestablish. BLM wildlife biologist Travis Miller thinks beavers will have a better chance of escaping predation in the deeper water and have the potential for long-term habitat.“It would be really good to see those populations rebound and establish in these systems,” said Miller.
Full list of project partners: Malheur County Watershed Council; Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board; Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation; Grant County Soil & Water Conservation District; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Headquarters; Burns Paiute Tribe; The Nature Conservancy; Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; adjacent private landowners; and grazing allotment permittees.
This project recently was selected for the 2020 Western Division of the American Fisheries Society (WDAFS) Riparian Challenge Award, a prestigious honor! To learn more, view our Press Release.
Summit Creek Monitoring Plan
This document provides an overview of the various types of monitoring that have been and will continue to be conducted within the Summit Creek valley bottom in conjunction with floodplain restoration.
2021 Quality Assurance Plan
USBR-CPN Regional Water and Soil Laboratory, Boise, Idaho