Newsletter - 1/8/21
We continue to appreciate your support and your donations!
Your support has allowed us to afford postage for informational flyers and postcards to our community, hire corporate and water Attorneys, pay filing fees, and host this informational website. These are huge steps forward and we are making great progress so far. Thank you!
Legal counsel is quite costly and can be hundreds of dollars per hour, so we absolutely continue to need support in order to cover the cost of protecting you/our homes and businesses. We have volunteered thousands of hours of our time to this cause (since Fall 2019), and will continue to do so, but we also need your help. Throughout this process, monetary support is incredibly important for our fight. Checks mailed to our PO Box are preferred as 100% of the funds are kept for our fight. You may also make a donation via our website home page (not preferred as about 6% is taken out in processing fees from our online donation service, but is highly convenient). We are also looking forward to organizing volunteer efforts, so please stay tuned for those opportunities COMING SOON within the next couple weeks!
Application G-18843 OWRD Update:
While it did not show in the weekly Tuesday Report, the Administrative Hold on Application G-18843 that expired 12/23/20 has been extended another 6 months until 7/5/21. What this means for all of us is that we have time to prepare a strong case for the sustainable use of resources, and time to get the word out and get your neighbors involved! This is great news! We have been working with our Water Attorney and are making progress towards these goals.
We do not know what or how WAG Holdings LLC submitted to be granted the extension. Remember, the INITIAL REVIEW required them to:
· Provide “justification” they would not use water during Jul, Aug, Sept, if a ground water right for a well was approved.
· “Demonstrate” an alternate source for water during July, Aug, Sept
Both of the above were required by 7/26/20 (we have no documentation of these being satisfied as WAG may have provided the information directly to the OWRD)
· Be subject to a Div 33 review for Sensitive/Threatened/Endangered fish.
· Prove to OWRD Director that they have permanent source for water within 2 years of approval.
Recently, WAG & their Hydrologist/Geologist Agent, Pacific Hydro-Geo, moved the proposed well location to a new proposed location 1,170’ north and 140’ east. Such a move in a geologically challenged location must require another public interest review by OWRD Engineering followed by a new initial review and appropriate time for a new PUBLIC COMMENTS PERIOD. This allows us to write more letters of PROTEST!
Our position on these updates:
· If WAG wishes to delay the approval and is able to convince OWRD the delay meets their evaluation and statutory approval requirements, any delay works in our favor.
· It is best that OWRD does not grant an Extension PROPOSED FINAL ORDER permit with conditions for proving “beneficial use of water”. This would give them 5 years to drill the well and prove beneficial use.
Upon reading the following information, you will understand this would lie between difficult to impossible for OWRD to control with current resources:
Attached below is an interview with the current OWRD Director admitting the challenges they are facing.
water-director-interviewDownload
For further reading, the following link leads to a grim article on “Draining Oregon”
Originally Posted on January 8, 2021 by savecm
