Speech: Welcome, Crooked River Water Summit

Welcome remarks
Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Crooked River Water Summit
April 27, 2007, Brothers Restaurant, Prineville

I have a challenge for you this morning.

All of you are relatively savvy people with computers, right?

My challenge to you is this: Following this summit today, when you are all charged up on water, and you have a fuller understanding of just how important water is to this region, I want you to go home and sit down in front of the internet.

Next, I want you to go to Google or MSN or one of those other search engines, and type in a few phrases, like “water” and “Oregon”. Some choices will appear. The Oregon Water Resources Dept. is a good place to start, and so it is the USGS Water Resources of Oregon site.

Click on either site, and start looking around. There is a lot of interesting information there about streamflows and hydrographs and surface water and groundwater and water quality and water quantity. A person can really learn a lot—as long as that person isn’t looking for information about Central Oregon.

What is noticeably absent from both sites is significant data about the water situation in Crook or Deschutes Counties. While there are occasional reference to the waters of the two counties and good data on the state of the reservoirs, there is almost nothing about the changing dynamics of the water situation in our communities.

In fact, if you pull up a map of water testing sites or a map of water quality monitoring locations, Crook and Deschutes really jump out at you: because the map is simply blank.

Now this absence of data doesn’t suggest that there isn’t any water in our area. We all know that’s not true. Nor does it mean that the water situation in Central Oregon isn’t relevant or important to the state or federal government. They simly don’t have the resources to study and keep track of everything they might like.

What it does suggest to me is that if we are going to use and manage water wisely for ourselves and for future generations in this part of the world, we are pretty much on our own.

That’s why today’s summit is so important. It is a chance for all of us to get on the same page about the water situation. It’s a chance for all of us to hear from the experts at the same time. It’s a chance for us to hear each other ask questions, and to hear the answers to those questions. It’s a chance to think about water means to our region and to the quality of our lives and the lives of our children.

I want to take a minute and thank the people that put this together:

First, I want to thank the Crook County Natural Resources Planning Committee which has been relentless about keeping this issue at the forefront of local conversations about how we are going to grow and develop as a community. There is so much on the plates of all local governments in these busy times that without a champion, these issues could easily get pushed aside. As long as the Natural Resource Planning Committee is around, I am confident that won’t happen.

Secondly, I would like to thank the water subcommittee of the Natural Resources Planning Committee. Those people are the ones who have organized the venue, planned the speakers, sent out the invitations and otherwise donated their time to make this come together today.

Lastly, I would like to thank a very special person: Sarah Thomas. Without Sarah, none of us would be here today at this event. It was Sarah who pushed—relentlessly and often annoyingly—for the creation of this committee. It has been Sarah who has kept pounding on the desks of the policymakers in our community that water matters. It is Sarah who carries the torch for the environment in my world, mainly because she does so in a way that is positive, humourous and still passionate.

Make no mistake: in the government we have today, passion is still a major currency. The French philosopher La Rouchefocauld observed as far back as 1665, “The simplest person who has passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent person who has none.” In this era of 24-7 news and instant information via the internet, many of us are beginning to feel fatigued by excess information and lot’s of theory which occupies our time and consumers lots of paper but never seems to move us toward real solutions. What is lacking is the passion that La Rouchefocauld so admired.

What brings you here today is your passion: passion for the land, passion for the water and passion for the people who rely on the land and the water. People like Sarah are making a difference, not because they have PhDs or remarkable and intricate and elegant conservation schemes but simply because they combine the knowledge they have with a passion for results.

I hope when you walk out of here today, you will feel that your time has been well spent. I hope you will see a way to convert passion into progress. Most of all, I hope you will feel a little closer to this great place we call home, and understand what you and we collectively can do to save it for the next generation.

Thanks for coming,and have a good summit.