By SUE RYAN
News staff writer

How and what should Hood River County do to map out the future for water use?

A discussion at Tuesday night’s Hood River Watershed Group meeting pinpointed the fact that the first step must involve measuring use.

Hood River County Commissioner Les Perkins brought the topic to the group as part of a concerted effort by the county to begin the discussion. He, County Planning Director Mike Benedict and County Administrator Dave Meriwether were the main presenters at the meeting.

Perkins said the objective would be to get an idea of current uses and systems with the idea of assembling the inventory into a living document for the county. They chose the Watershed Group to start with because its membership includes many who deal with water needs and inventories already, including irrigation districts, water districts and fish and wildlife concerns.

The county plans to begin a central committee in August that would work on determining current use and capacity. From there, the committee would break out into subcommittees that would look at multiple issues.

Some of those include potential build-out limits for future water demand, current infrastructure and needs, water quality, mitigation and management and possibly best management practices to utilize water resources effectively.

“A build-out analysis applies zoning and makes some assumptions, comparisons of how many districts have how much water and how many households will need it,” Benedict said.

One tool the county is considering is creating a zone of contribution maps, which show where water comes from and flows through.

“The cost to do this correctly is high,” Perkins said. “It’s compiling a lot of information and what impacts there would be.”

So far the only entity in the county to have done a zoning map for water is Crystal Springs Water District, which did it independently of the county.

Some of the other issues that may come up are the potential of storage and re-use of water through such mediums as reservoirs.

Hood River County Soil and Water Conservation District director Anne Saxby pointed out that locally the main use is surface water but the water committee will also need to look at the availability and use of ground water.

The county will advertise for committee volunteers in August.