>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

Union and Wallowa counties are taking steps to explore ways of utilizing some of the high water the area experiences in the late winter and spring at a time when it isn’t so plentiful — like late summer.

The Grande Ronde Model Watershed, which works on stream restoration and water issues in both counties, coordinated with Anderson Perry & Associates and Groundwater Services, Inc., to apply for funding from the Oregon Water Resources Department to conduct a feasibility study on groundwater storage possibilities in regional drainages.

Earlier this year, the state Legislature passed the Agriculture and Community Water Act of 2008, which applies $1.75 million to investigations of water storage, reuse and conservation.

The dollars may only be used for planning studies, not for actual implementation.

Applications for the funding were due Sept. 2.

Jeff Oveson, GRMW’s executive director, said that four basins were mentioned in the application: Bear Creek and the Lostine River in Wallowa County, and the upper Grande Ronde River and Catherine Creek in Union County. But he said these weren’t necessarily set in stone.

The Union County Board of Commissioners came to the GRMW board after it signed onto the Northeast Oregon Regional Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan, a document required as a condition for funding by the Federal Emergency Management Association.

The commissioners recognized both flooding and drought as frequent natural hazards of Northeast Oregon — sometimes both occurring in a single year.

The region, after all, lies along the winter path of the jet stream, which funnels Pacific Ocean storms up the Columbia River and into the Blue and Wallowa mountains.

But the jet stream migrates north in the summer, dramatically reducing the frequency and intensity of precipitation. Creeks and rivers gorged with snowmelt in the early spring are often low or even dry by late summer.

While dams and reservoirs are one approach to storing water, some people are looking a little deeper — literally — for an answer.

Artificial recharge (AR) and aquifer storage/recovery (ASR) are methods of putting water into aquifers, which are the spaces within or between subterranean rock and sediment that contain groundwater, or through which it moves.

In AR, water seeps into an aquifer from the surface or is actively injected via a well, shaft or pit.

Under Oregon law, ASR, which always involves injection down a well, has more stringent qualifications: Water stored must meet drinking water standards.

Oveson said both AR and ASR would be under consideration, should the feasibility study advance.

At the August meeting of the GRMW board, Oveson said a planning study would need to take into account underlying geology.

“There are almost no foregone conclusions,” he said. “You have to have a real consideration of what’s going on underground before you know if ASR (or AR) is something you can seriously consider.”

In Northeast Oregon, most aquifers are comprised either of unconsolidated sediment — such as that laid down by river runoff or lakebed sand — or basalt, that widespread volcanic rock that can hold groundwater in its many fissures or the spaces between layered flows.

In addition to hydrogeology, a feasibility study would examine the availability of surface water, water quality and rights, and other issues.

Oveson said Anderson Perry estimated that such a study, which would probably take two years, might cost about $50,000 per drainage basin. Matching dollars would need to be identified to coordinate with the state assistance.

He said GRMW may hear back about potential funding as early as November.

Union County Commissioner Steve McClure, a member of the GRMW board, said, “This type of work is being done in a lot of different places. ... I think it’s about time we looked at it out here.”

In Umatilla and Morrow counties, AR has been utilized since the 1970s, according to the Oregon Water Resources Department. Up to 60 cubic feet per second — about 450 gallons — of recharged groundwater goes toward supplemental irrigation of 5,300 acres. The water seeps through gravels along a leaky recharge canal after being diverted from the Umatilla River in the winter and spring.

For more information about AR/ASR, check out http://water.oregonstate.edu/asr .