Umatilla River Basin, Oregon »

This Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) NEXUS project is located in the Umatilla River Basin region within the larger Mid-Columbia Basin, in Northeast Oregon along the Columbia River. This region includes a wide diversity of FEW systems, including, municipalities, producers with and without water rights, dairy farms, food processors, data centers, energy cooperatives, wind and solar farms, hydropower dams. Though the Columbia River is an abundant supply of water, surface water allocation is severely restricted due to prior appropriation and to protect critical fish habitat. Even when water is available, the community faces another obstacle: high energy costs of pumping water. This “no benefit” line, limits the spatial extent of agricultural production and other land uses require extensive water inputs. Furthermore, this region lies in a critical groundwater area, where severely declined groundwater levels in the deep basaltic aquifers limit the availability and use of groundwater. Under these constraints, food producers, processors and other FEW stakeholders have adopted management practices that are extremely water and energy efficient. However, these adaptation practices are not enough, and many farms and other businesses operate on a thin margin. This project is investigating how InterACTWEL can be used to assist the FEW sectors in becoming more resilient to current and future environmental, regulatory, and economic changes, via co-management of stressed water, energy, and land resources.