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Controversial dam debate resurfaces in the Legislature By PETER WONG SALEM -- Some of the faces were different, but a legislative committee heard the same old dispute Friday as it took up bills affecting Savage Rapids Dam. The Grants Pass Irrigation District supports two bills that would allow it outright to draw supplemental Rogue River water despite a state cancellation of that right last November. It owns the 78-year-old dam on the Jackson-Josephine county line. The state Water Resources Commission took away that water right because it was tied to a promise by the district to work toward removing the dam and installing pumps. Backed by fishing and environmental groups, the state Department of Water Resources said the bills would set a bad precedent. The House Water and Environment Committee took no action. Four years ago, Gov. John Kitzhaber vetoed a similar bill. Under threat of a second veto, the Legislature transformed another bill into the formation of a task force to study the dam. Its chairman was Dennis Becklin, who became GPID's board chairman in 1998. Becklin said the Legislature should follow through on the 1996 recommendation of the task force by approving House Bill 3065 or 3075. Both would give the district a supplemental water right from the Rogue of 71.79 cubic feet per second, dropping to 52.32 cfs on Oct. 15. Neither would be tied to the dam's removal. Becklin and a majority of the new board that took office in January 1998 defend the dam. They say improvements in fish passage have made its retention less costly than its removal. "It would be unconscionable for the State of Oregon to be directly responsible for causing ecological devastation on a large Southern Oregon population simply to satisfy a politically driven quest to forcibly remove an irrigation diversion dam," Becklin said. "The bill would reverse the pattern of persistent, obsessive and expensive coercion by the State of Oregon against the interests of a large population of Oregonians in the southern part of the state." But Martha Pagel, the state water resources director, disputed Becklin's description of "coercion." The Water Resources Commission acted last November after a hearings officer recommended that the state cancel the district's supplemental water right. The district appealed the order, which now is before the Oregon Court of Appeals. "The bill would establish a policy precedent of creating water rights by legislation and give special treatment to one irrigation district," Pagel said. Bob Hunter, a Medford lawyer who spoke for WaterWatch of Oregon, said the district's problems are largely of its own making. "I think the new group in charge is more concerned about saving a dam that is not needed than in the win-win solution we arrived at cooperatively," he said. "I hope that the Legislature will not reward people for breaking their commitments and instead have them face the consequences they have brought on themselves." Pagel also said the task force recommendation to keep the dam preceded the 1997 listing by the federal government of south coast runs of coho salmon as a threatened species. The National Marine Fisheries Service has since initiated enforcement action against GPID. "Grants Pass needs irrigation water, and I do not question that at all," said Henry Rogers of Ashland, who spoke for Rogue Flyfishers. "But I do question the dam. Let's face it -- dams kill fish. We do not want to lose the Rogue's fish. We think the dam needs to go." John MacDiarmid of Central Point said he has been a lifelong Republican, but he has had second thoughts. "My own party is not fish-friendly, and the bills before you today say so," he said. "I will not be part of a process that is reducing the fish population. Fish are too few and they are too precious." The bills were introduced by Rep. Carl Wilson, R-Grants Pass, who said he has friends on both sides of the controversy. "As a representative in a small community, it would have been easy to dodge such a contentious issue," he said. "But sometimes, some things are so important that you take the political heat in your own community to do what is right." Senate Bill 987, which the Senate Water and Land Use Committee took up earlier this week, would require legislative approval before any dam can be removed. It was introduced at the request of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association. A similar bill was shelved in 1995 after Kitzhaber threatened to veto it. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA