FEATURED ARTICLE

2025 Annual Newsletter

Greetings to all our OID Patrons and Happy New Year.  The OID Board of Directors and Staff would like to invite you to attend our Annual Meeting, scheduled for Monday January 20^th at 12 noon at the OID Office. This year’s meeting will include updates on district finances, current reservoir storage, water year outlook, continued operations and maintenance work as well as an update on current and future infrastructure modernization projects.

The presence of Ochoco and Bowman Dams provide multiple benefits to the Prineville community. One of the most impactful is their role in reducing floods that would occur in town if they weren’t there. As I’m writing this letter we are in active flood control on both Ochoco and Prineville Reservoirs. In light of recent drought years, this is a welcome change. We’ll present a more detailed water year projection at the Annual Meeting but here are a few bullet points for context:

• Our current snowpack is over 200% of average for January at all our monitoring sites (some are over 300%)
• We have already exceeded our peak average. We usually don’t peak until late March.
• Even if Spring was abnormally dry, the projections show we will still be able to fill both reservoirs.

In coordination with the Bureau of Reclamation and the US Army Corp of Engineers, we will continue to monitor conditions in the basin and respond accordingly. Please exercise caution and be aware that rivers and streams in our area will likely be abnormally high off and on for the next few months.

In addition to our daily flood control activities, OID is working on a number of repair, maintenance, and infrastructure improvement projects throughout the District. Most of you are aware of our piping project currently being installed through the IronHorse/Barnes Butte area in coordination with the City of Prineville’s Combs Flat Road Extension work. This piping work will be completed prior to the start of the irrigation season. We are also preparing for work to begin in construction of our second major pump station replacement. Work on the Relift Pump Plant will begin later this year and be operational for the 2026 season. We are also finalizing details for the McKay Switch. (A new pump station and pipeline to serve new patrons located on McKay Creek) The plan is to begin this work in 2025 as well.

There’s quite a lot going on here at OID and there’s more to share but I’ll save some for the Annual Meeting. I hope to see you all there.

Sincerely,

Bruce Scanlon

Ochoco Irrigation District