WORKING PAPER NO. 41
COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN PROJECT
FOR WATER SUPPLY AND WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT
TRENDS IN LAND USE IN THE
WILLAMETTE VALLEY, OREGON
DATE; January 23, 1963 DISTRIBUTION;
Prepared by: WEB Project Staff
Reviewed by: Coop. Agencies
Approved by; General
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE
Public Health Service
Region IX
Division of Water Supply and Pollution Control
Room 570 Pittock Block
Portland 5, Oregon
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This working paper contains preliminary data and information
primarily intended for internal use by the Columbia River
Basin Project staff and cooperating agencies. The material
presented in this paper has not been fully evaluated and
should not be considered as final.
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TRENDS IN LAND USE IN THE
WILLAMETTE VALLEY, OREGON
INTRODUCTION
The Willamette River Basin drains an area of 12,000 square miles between
the Cascade and Coast Ranges in northwestern Oregon, and flows north to the
Columbia River near Portland. The Basin includes Washington, Yamhill, Polk,
Marion, Benton, and Linn Counties, and major parts of Clackamas, Multnomah,
and Lane Counties. The valley is broad and flat, though broken by a couple of
ranges of hills and extensions of foothill ridges. Summers are warm and dry,
winters cool and wet. Most of the water supply comes from snow stored in the
forests of the Cascade Range.
LAND CLASSIFICATION
The U. S. Department of Agriculture Columbia River Basin Agricultural
Program Report gives the following information as of 1951:
Ownership
Federal
Local Gov't
Private
TOTAL
Forest
2,797,700
143,600
2,508,500
5,449,800
Range
80,300
24,300
445,500
550,100
Cropland Other .
Irrig. Non-Irrig.
Area in Acres
37,400
2,800
76,000 1,340,700 240,700
76,000 1,340,700 280,900
Total
2,915,400
170,700
4,611,400
7,697,500
These may be assumed to be fairly firm figures that - except for irrigated
cropland - have not changed much. The statistics for irrigated land are, to say
the least, interesting. The following table taps three different sources of
information in three recent years:
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County
Beaton
Clackamas
Lane
Linn
Marion
Multnomah
Polk
Washington
Yamhill
TOTAL
Soil and Water
Conservation Needs
Inventory, 1958
9,500
10,100
24,900
22,000
70,100
9,000
10,100
23,600
20,000
189,300
Census of
Agriculture
1959
Area in Acres
9,716
11,064
22,469
23,478
44,861
10,212
9,485
15,169
13,497
159,951
County Agents
Estimates
1962
10,700
-
-
24,970
_-'.
3,330
10,000
26,000
-
-
',, The variation is in both directions, and is due primarily to differences
in definitions which cannot be correlated. Some irrigated land is that which
has at one time been irrigated, but not necessarily in the year of record. The
distinction is made in some classifications, but not in others. The USDA Report
on Agricultural Program, Willamette Basin, May 1954, noted that there were (as
of 1951) 76,000 acres of irrigated cropland in the Basin; that there were
650,000 acres in the main valley floor physically suited to irrigation; and
that there was sufficient water for irrigation of 715,000 acres. The publica-
tion "An Estimate of Oregon's Irrigable Land in the Next Half Century", Oregon
Agriculture 22, May 1955, sets the total irrigable land in the Willamette Valley
at 783,000 acres which will require two feet of water per acre. Some of this
irrigable land may be "range" in some classifications. In any case, irrigation
has been expanding regularly. It doubled within an eight-year period; but
probably will increase only about three percent per year in the future.
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THE SITUATION ON FOREST LAND
The range land in the Willamette Basin is not like the juniper-sagebrush
range of the more arid country east of the Cascades. Much of the range is un-
developed pasture on formerly forest land, or on recently cutover forest land
that is only temporarily used for forage production. Therefore the range may
be lumped with forest so far as considering effects on water use and water
quality are concerned.
Federal forest land comprises the largest single block in one ownership.
This land is included in the Mt. Hood, Siuslaw, Umpqua and Willamette National
Forests of the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture; and in 0 & C
lands of the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of Interior. Timber
harvest on these lands is at the allowable cut on a sustained yield basis, with
some year-to-year variations depending on market conditions and the need for
emergency salvage following our recent big windstorm. The allowable cut will
increase slightly in the future despite somewhat decreased acreage (from losses
to highways, power line rights-of-way, recreation area developments), because
of better future access for salvage, shorter period for regeneration, shorter
rotation age, better disease and pest control, fertilization, thinnings, better
utilization etc.
There will be more cable logging and less tractor logging, which should
decrease soil disturbance and erosion and sedimentation of streams. There re-
mains a considerable mileage of timber access road yet to be built; and its
construction will temporarily increase soil disturbance and sedimentation.
Chippers will be used in the woods to reduce waste and the amount of slash; and
chemical spray may come into widespread use rather than burning for slash dis-
posal. Weedicide sprays will be more widely used for brush control in
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plantations on cutovers, to reduce brush-encroachment and fire hazard along
roads, and to remove noxious weeds such as tansy ragwort.
In a few favorable locations the Wyssen or Skagit Skyline logging systems
may be used; these will reduce the amount of spur road needed and the amount
of soil disturbance. The highlead cable system will also have longer reach
and require less road. As helicopters are improved, they may come into use in
logging; they would certainly reduce the amount of soil disturbance.
Spraying epidemics of forest insect pests will continue as need arises;
which is not often; and will use more specific target chemicals. This will
always constitute a hazard*in the area treated; but care in doing the work,
timing, intensity of dosage, etc. minimize the danger. Antibiotic sprays will
be used as fungicides as needed; but the need is generally very limited and
no hazard is anticipated from their use. Slowdown in the October 1962 wind-
storm may lead to insect epidemics that will require a widespread spray pro-
gram in the next year or two. ' J
Plantations are now being fertilized with an N:P:K formulation in a half-
ounce pill that is planted with each tree. The pill has a resin binder that
breaks down very slowly, and takes three years to dissolve completely. Such
fertilization involves only about 20 pounds per acre, very light dosage, and
would not be expected to significantly increase nutrient loads in runoff from
treated areas, lowever, efficacy of this type of fertilization has not been
proven to everyone's satisfaction, and the method may not become widely used.
Fertilization will be done, but it may be by dusting at higher rates, with
greater hazard of adding nutrients to streams.
Recreation use of forest lands has been, and will continue to expand
rapidly. The number of visits to national forest lands in the Willamette
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Basin is estimated* for 1961 to total 3,100,000 nan-day visits; an increase of
18 percent over 1960, This large increase is attributed to the Gentry 21
Exposition in Seattle; average rate of increase in recent years has been about
12 percent. Even at 12 percent, use will be doubled every six years; and by
1973 we may expect use to be quadrupled and to amount to 12,500,000 man-day
visits annually. There is already a considerable use of other Federal, State,
and private forest lands for outdoor recreation of the same kind; and the
pressures on then in the future will be as great or greater than on the national
forests. One factor vlIVbe an increase in combination air travel from other
/
parts of the country, and car rental locally.
With this increasingly heavy recreation use of mountain forest areas, the
urban sanitation problems are being moved upstream onto the watersheds.
Pollution from recreational use is becoming serious even in wilderness areas.
Intensively used recreation areas demand urban-type solutions to these problems;
including hauling and burning of refuse, and installation of sewage treatment
facilities to dispose of human wastes. This is the more serious because of
both the varying intensity of loading and the time lag between the appearance
of the need and the appropriation of funds by the Congress to the land-managing
agency responsible for doing the job.
Industry generally will not move into the woods. Improved roads and ve-
hicles give sufficiently rapid transport to working areas from valley towns and
the Forest Service does not plan to issue permits for mills in the national
forests. Portable chippers have helped lower transportation and handling costs,
and have made greater utilization possible.
*Assuming 60 percent of Mt. lood Rational Forest, 100 percent of Willamette
Rational Forest, 10 percent of Dmpqua Rational Forest, and 5 percent, of
Siuslaw Rational Forest recreation visits, are within the Willamette Basin.
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Some forest ownerships are being consolidated, or being lost to urban
expansion. Taxation is a factor forcing out the small owner. Some will be
developed for public recreation; some will be made part of "senior citizen re-
tirement" developments. Management will intensify and present methods of road-
building and logging will improve, largely as a result of increased public in-
terest in land and water. There will be little or no increase in forest
rehabilitation work without a subsidy; but since only two or three percent of
present ACP money goes into forestry, such a subsidy is likely. The Soil Bank
tree program will result in reconversion to forest of former forest that had
been made into marginal crop and pasture.
On public forest lands the quality of road construction is improving and
will continue to improve. Grass seed and straw mulch are now being applied.to
all areas of disturbed soil on new construction projects, and this is a step in
the right direction toward stabilizing the soil and reducing erosion and sedi-
mentation. Widespread slash-burning is being reduced both by better utiliza-
tion and by changes in logging systems; this will benefit both water and air
pollution by cutting down amounts of ash and smoke. Some control will be made
on timber-cutting patterns to increase winter snow storage and spring and
summer streamflow in the high mountain forests.
TBE SITUATION IN FOBEST PRODUCTS
Forest industry can use more remanufacturing (fibreboard, sash and door,
and other specialties) plants, a sulphite pulp mill that will handle a wide
variety of woods, and a diversified market for Christmas trees, fenceposts,"
and chipper material. These things will come. The remanufacturing plants will
be small operations scattered around the.valley in the vicinity of existing
mills. Wastes and waste problems will be similar to those already there.
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Pulp mills are already located in the lower, central,and upper parts of the
main valley; any new mill will likely be located in the center or upper valley.
Research in forest products is bringing many new things to the market, and
finding new ways of developing the older things. Fir bark wax, reinforcing
material for plastics, lignin, phenol derivatives, sugars, alcohols, dispersants
and binders, dyes and preservatives, even vitamins are now being produced from
what was formerly waste. In the future, not only the shavings and sawdust and
bark will go to produce such commodities, but more and more of the major wood
supply itself. Wood chemistry plants may be expected wherever there is a
supply of raw material when the demand develops; it is just getting started
now.
By working on the wastes of other industries - sawmills and pulp mills -
as the raw materials, these new operations may very well help reduce over-all
pollution loads. But they in turn more than likely will develop specific prob-
lems of their own. We may expect a change in type of pollution as a problem,
together with any reduction in existing pollution.
Two sources of turpentine exist in the area. One is the stumps left in
the woods. The other is the exhaust gas from cooking pulp. One company is
now reclaiming turpentine from the latter source, no doubt thus aiding in re-
ducing air pollution. Others have investigated salvage of stumps. Eventually
turpentine will become a significant product of the Willamette Basin.
Wood chemistry plants will be associated with other forest industries,
and so may be expected throughout the valley. However, the first and the
largest concentration will probably develop in the Eugene-Springfield area.
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8
THE SITUATION ON CROP LAND
According to our table on Page 2, irrigation three or four years ago
amounted to somewhere between 160,000 and 190,000 acres in the Willamette Basin.
The midrange figure would be 175,000 acres; recent increases appear to have
been about three percent per year, which would bring present irrigated area to
196,000 acres. In 1959, eight-five percent of irrigation was by sprinkler;
the use of sprinklers has been increasing and probably is now ninety percent
at least. Sprinkler irrigation is the most efficient method, both to conserve
water and to get an even, controlled application. There is no waste and no
leaching of nutrient elements out of the soil to enrich the streams when irri-
gation is properly applied as it readily can be with sprinklers.
Most of the farmers that need to use pesticides do use them. Many formu-
lations are used, and the use generally is according to Oregon State University
recommendations which tell the amounts and kinds and time of application to
kill particular pests, but which are no guarantee of safe practices. There
is now, and will continue to be, regular addition of toxic materials to the
soil, some of them available for leaching by fall and winter rains and repre-
senting an ever-present hazard to groundwater and streamflow. Most of this
toxic loading will occur in the valley areas along the lower reaches of the
tributary streams.
Most of the farmers that need to use fertilizers do use them; but the
rate varies according to the crop grown. Vegetable crops may take 800 pounds
per acre of 15:10:10 N-K-P fertilizer; potatoes 600 pounds; berries 400
pounds. Legumes and pasture get a K-P 16:20 mixture. There is assumed to
be little fertilizer loss by erosion or leaching, as the fertilization is
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done in late spring and summer and is used by the plants before the next wet
season. However, since less than 1 ppm of phosphate may trigger algal blooms,
the "little loss" may still significantly increase stream nutrient loads.
Acreage of groups of crops as reported by the 1959 Census of Agriculture are
shown below:
County
Corn
Grain
CROP TYPE
Hay Seed
Field Veget. Berry Orchard
Area in Acres
Benton
Clackamas
Lane
Linn
Marion
Multnomah
Polk
Washington
Yamhill
TOTAL
1
4
2
3
9
2
1
25
,246
,090
,213
,294
,657
176
705
,349
,334
,064
20,
34,
24,
44,
66,
3,
55,
56,
59,
366,
839
327
784
778
655
612
724
099
567
385
10
28
26
21
22
13
11
22
15
171
,198
,529
,317
,677
,135
,238
,314
,216
,697
,321
24,497
12,158
22,114
122,813
49,904
497
30,576
8,507
20,313
291,379
277
927
861
4,535
8,378
1,233
1,541
401
1,191
19,344
1,489
2,732
5,622
4,391
10,753
4,663
2,426
2,601
4,625
39,302
153
6,246
265
1,344
7,329
2,688
713
3,761
1,629
24,128
1,152
4,344
7,483
2,079
8,278
678
8,442
11,736
14,328
58,520
Each crop type takes different amounts of different fertilizers, pesticides,
or wcedj.cidcs. Grain, pasture, and berries need on the average of 40 Ibs. of
nitrogen per acre, 60 Ibs. of phosphate, 80 Ibs of potash, and 20 Ibs. of sulfur;
plus some minor elements such as boron and magnesium in very small quantities.
Orchards require mainly nitrogen, at about 100 Ibs. per acre, plus some boron.
Corn takes about 90 Ibs. of nitrogen, 80 Ibs. of phosphate, 100 Ibs. of potash,
and 20 Ibs. of sulfur per acre. Vegetable crops need 120 Ibs. of nitrogen,
120 Ibs. of phosphate, 120 Ibs. of potash, and 20 Ibs. of sulfur per acre.
There is wide variation about these averages, but they serve to indicate the
hazard of nutrient loading in the lower watershed areas. Rainy season move-
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10
ments of nutrients, plus losses through tile drains in the growing season, are
very likely highly significant even with the best irrigation practices.
According to the Soil and Water Conservation Needs Inventory, there are
730,000 acres in the Willamette Valley suffering from excess water; including
40,000 acres of pasture and 100,000 acres of irrigation land. If we assume
that provision of drainage Is the major curative treatment to apply, there is
a good deal to be done. Something over 6,200 acres of tile drainage were in-
stalled in 1961, most of it downstream from the center of the valley. It will
be a long time before all the drainage needs are met; but each additional acre
drained affords just that much more opportunity for rapid removal of nutrients
from the soil to the streams.
Competition for water will increase. Under state law irrigation is a high
priority water use; but the industrial plants and the growing population will
have still higher priority demands to be met. Water storage capacity is still
available in small projects on the smaller tributaries, and there is plenty of
opportunity for such developments. However, some of the existing storage
capacity in the larger projects may not always be available; - recreation
pressure may require maintenance of reservoir levels through the warm summer
season. If, for example, this were to happen at Fern Ridge Reservoir, which is
practically within the city limits of Eugene, It would cut off irrigation supplies
for Benton County downstream.
All these conflicting pressures should show a benefit in terms of greater
efficiency of water use and less waste of water. Recent irrigation studies
have shown that maintenance of soil moisture levels by frequent small additions
of water gives the greatest crop yield at about half the usual traditional irri-
gation amounts. Thus, more land may be irrigated with the same amount of
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11
available water, or irrigation may, without damage, yield some of its supply to
other demands. Small water storage projects can be more readily justified when
the irrigation benefits are doubled.
Two major changes - one technological and the other genetic - will acceler-
ate the shift in crops and farming methods. Mechanical pickers for beans, hops,
cane berries, etc. are helping meet the increasing costs of labor. Genetic
improvement of crops like brussels sprouts to get a strain where all the buds
ripen on the stalk at the same time will make mechanical harvesting feasible.
Genetics also plays a major part in pesticide application by development of
disease-resistant strains, or of varieties less attractive to insect pests.
It may well prove to be significant with regard to irrigation demand, by de-
veloping strains (such as dwarf corn) that mature earlier or that require less
moisture. Considerable progress is being made in research along both these
avenues, genetics and mechanization.
Both competition and tax structure are pressures toward more efficient and
more intensified farming. Agricultural land taxes will increase and force the
land into higher use. Livestock raising on dryland pasture is changing to irri-
gated pasture; rich wetlands are being drained to permit growing of cannery
crops which will need some irrigation; older irrigation systems are being re-
vamped. The trend is toward larger farm units, fewer family farms. Livestock
enterprises, both dairy and beef feeding, tend to be fewer but larger, with
numbers of animals fairly constant. The same is true for poultry.
Where fertilizer use now varies from 65 percent to 100 percent of need,
in the future it will be much higher. Most soils could use more potassium.
Adequate amounts of fertilizer are applied to pasture and to beans, for ex-
ample; but as more farmers take advantage of soil test information and as crops
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12
shift, there will be at least 20 percent increase in fertilizer use. New strains
of wheat demand more nitrogen; and as the soil gets "older" from continued ex-
tractive use, it needs more of all elements.
Orchards are going out in the Tualatin area, a process speeded by the
Columbus Day, 1962 windstorm, as is the grass seed crop. In the southern end
of the valley turf is second only to wheat as a crop; it is important because
of increasing urbanization in the area. Some other crops, such as peppermint,
are going to go or stay, depending upon the success of disease and pest control.
In the central part of the valley, orchards are coming back in, but the species
have changed; prunes and nuts and pears instead of peaches and apples^, with
beans and berries while waiting for the orchards to come into production.
THE SITUATION IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS
As crops change from grain-hay to more valuable truck and cannery crops,
weedicides will be used less and fungicides and insecticides will be used more.
There will also be more acres fertilized. The change in crops will be made
possible by irrigation water; and the demand for more of the high value crops
will increase the demand for irrigation water. At a maximum we might expect an
eightto ten percent annual increase in irrigated area, but a three percent in-
crease seems more likely. Food-packing and food-processing industries and the
growing urban centers in the basin have made the demand for the newer crops
that are replacing grain-hay; and this growth and demand will continue. More
food processing industry capacity will mean more waste disposal problems; we
may expect the load from this source to increase at the same rate as will the
irrigated area.
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13
Acid soils at the south end of the Willamette Valley are being put into
blueberries; this will very likely bring a freezing plant to that area in the
near future. Increases in strawberry and caneberry production in other parts
of the basin will also lead to increased freezing plant capacity which is al-
i
ready building up in the north central part of the basin. Pelleting corn and
alfalfa for stock feed may bring a cooperative plant in the southern part of
the valley. Altogether, we may expect three or four times as much food-process-
ing capacity to be installed either new, or as expansion of existing facilities.
Marion County in the central part of the basin is already the second largest
fruit and vegetable processing center in the country, and its capacity will
increase.
PROBT.KMS
Water supply is the big problem. Many of the tributary streams are already
over-appropriated. In many areas, particularly on the west side of the basin,
veils bring up in quantity only saline waters, unfit for most uses. Storage of
water lost in winter runoff, improved snow storage in mountain forests, more
efficient water use; - all will help, but the demand for water for every use is
increasing.
Nutrients are added to groundwater and streamflow by activities on the
land in amounts now unknown but assumed to be significant. How can they be
reduced when their sources are expected to increase? More intensive agri-
culture is going to mean - in addition to more irrigation and more cultivation
and more fertilization - more drainage. What is the drainage, for example,
going to do in terms of movement of nutrients out of the soil? It is certainly
going to speed up movement of water through the top eighteen incip*s of soil;
and the lands needing drainage are usually those closest to the watercourses.
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14
Speculative buying of farm properties forces up the tax load and forces
out the farmer• How much agricultural land will be prematurely forced into
urban and suburban development before zoning brings order to the process? The
change is apt to continue until there is a considerably greater need for food-
producing land than at present.
Control of land use through zoning will be used in rural, as it is now
in urban areas. This will tend to stabilize a situation where at present we
see land lost from agriculture to suburban development, to highways, and to
forest. Though we will have less agricultural land, with more intensified
farming, we will have"much greater crop'yields. Right now the ten-mile stretch
between Albany and Corvallis is rapidly being urbanized; and eventually there
will be a metropolitan strip right down the heart of the valley from north to
south, Portland to Eugene. The extent of the developing metropolitan strip
will mean not only a chang* in land/nuse, but also a change in the runoff pattern
and in stream waste loading. In addition to sewage, urban areas provide a
greatly enriched surface runoff to watercourses.
The Oregon! Soil and Water Conservation Needs Inventory, September 1962,
notes that erosion will still be serious enough in 1975 to warrant special
attention on 94,400 acres of crop and pasture land, on 372,500 acres of forest
land, and on 22,300 acres of other land in the Willamette Basin. Erosion prob-
lems exist on a much greater area, but from the crop and forage and timber pro-
duction viewpoint are not considered serious. However, it is all; serious from
the sedimentation standpoint; and the pictures-will, t|at change much. Each
generation is willing to let time and nature heal its mistakes; few gains are
made without subsidy, and not too many with it.
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15
Possibly the most troublesome problem is coping with the recreation pressure
that is intensifying everywhere, and threatening to overwhelm both facilities and
management, in many areas. Boat use is constantly increasing, accompanied by in-
creasing oil and exhaust pollution that is becoming increasingly significant in
lakes and rivers. The presence of throngs of people at popular spots on week-
ends provides sanitation and refuse disposal difficulties that are far from
solved. They will get worse before they get better.
SUMMARY OF FORECASTS
Cultivated lands will decrease in total area, but use will be intensified
and crop production will increase. Necessary to the increased production are
shifts in crops, more irrigation, more fertilization, more pesticides. By 1985
we may expect two to two and a half times as much land under irrigation as at
present, and two and a half times as much water demanded for irrigation. There
will be more soil nutrients available to leaching from the heavier fertilizer
applications; but efficient sprinkler irrigation will reduce summer wastage
that would otherwise raise stream nutrient levels. There will also be a greater
hazard from pesticides on and in the soil; but principal movement to streams
of these, as well as nutrients, will be restricted to winter rainy seasons when
streamflow is high, despite Increases in drainage programs. Conservation farm-
ing will cut down soil losses and reduce sedimentation.
Food processing industries will increase about as irrigated acreage in-
creases. At least twice the present water demand and present waste loads to
dispose of may be expected by 1985.
Suburban development and the growth of a metropolitan strip down the
center of the Valley will encroach on agricultural land and produce different
water' demands and problems.
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16
Forest land will shrink somewhat, losing to agriculture, to highways, and
to suburban developments; but, as with cropland, production will increase.
This willIncrease forest-based industry with its water demands and waste load
problems, but not greatly. Improved road construction and logging should
greatly reduce erosion and sedimentation.
There will be less slash-burning and less ash and smoke to pollute water
and air. Pesticide application will continue, but should be less hazardous
as specific target formulations are developed. Use of forest fertilization
will greatly increase, and may provide some small hazard of increased nutrients
leached into watercourses.
Recreation use of forest and Mountain watershed areas will continue to
rise for some time yet on an exponential curve. At a minimum, we may anticipate
quadrupled use by 1975, with its attendant intensification of sanitation and
waste disposal problems. But recreation has its own water needs; and these
will compete strongly with other uses. Since most outdoor recreation is water-
based, there will be an increase in water pollution from increased public contact
with water.
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13
Acid soils at the south end of the Willamette Valley are being put into
blueberries; this will very likely bring a freezing plant to that area in the
near future. Increases in strawberry and caneberry production in other parts
of the basin will also lead to increased freezing plant capacity which is al-
ready building up in the north central part of the basin. Pelleting corn and
alfalfa for stock feed may bring a cooperative plant in the southern part of
the valley. Altogether, we may expect three or four times as much food-process-
ing capacity to be installed either new, or as expansion of existing facilities.
Marion County in the central part of the basin is already the second largest
fruit and vegetable processing center in the country, and its capacity will
increase.
PROBLEMS
Water supply is the big problem. Many of the tributary streams are already
over-appropriated. In many areas, particularly on the west side of the basin,
wells bring up in quantity only saline waters, unfit for most uses. Storage of
water lost in winter runoff, improved snow storage in mountain forests, more
efficient water use; <• all will help, but the demand for water for every use is
increasing.
Nutrients are added to groundwater and streamflow by activities on the
land in amounts now unknown but assumed to be significant. How can they be
reduced when their sources are expected to increase? More intensive agri-
culture is going to mean - in addition to more irrigation and more cultivation
and more fertilization - more drainage. What is the drainage, for example,
going to do in terms of movement of nutrients out of the soil? It is certainly
going to speed up movement of water through the top eighteen inches of soil;
and the lands needing drainage are usually those closest to the watercourses.
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14
Speculative buying of farm properties forces up the tax. load and forces
out the fanner. How much agricultural land will be prematurely forced into
urban and suburban development before zoning brings order to the process? The
change is apt to continue until there is a considerably greater need for food-
producing land than at present.
Control of land use through zoning will be used in rural, as it is now
in urban areas; This will tend to stabilize a situation where at present we
see land lost from agriculture to suburban development, to highways, and to
forest. Though we will have less agricultural land, with more intensified
farming, we will have much greater crop yields. Right now the ten-mile stretch
between Albany and Corvallis is rapidly being urbanized; and eventually there
will be a metropolitan strip right down the heart of the valley from north to
south, Portland to Eugene. The extent off the developing metropolitan strip
will mean not only a change-is latt&tuse, but also a change in the runoff pattern
and in stream waste loading. In addition to sewage, urban areas provide a
greatly enriched surface runoff to watercourses.
The Oregon Soil and Water Conservation Needs Inventory, September 1962,
notes that erosion will still be serious enough in 1975 to warrant special
attention on 94,400 acres of crop and pasture land, on 372,500 acres of forest
land, and on 22,300 acres of other land in the Willamette Basin. Erosion prob-
lems exist on a much greater area, but from the crop and forage and timber pro-
duction viewpoint are not considered serious. However, it is all serious from
.;>.- -,-
the sedimentation standpoint; and the picture-will n^t change much. Each
generation is willing to let time and nature heal its mistakes; few gains are
made without subsidy, and not too many with it.
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Possibly the most troublesome problem is coping with the recreation pressure
that is intensifying everywhere, and threatening to overwhelm both facilities and
management, in many areas. Boat use is constantly increasing, accompanied by in-
creasing oil and exhaust pollution that is becoming increasingly significant in
lakes and rivers. The presence of throngs of people at popular spots on week-
ends provides sanitation and refuse disposal difficulties that are far from
solved. They will get worse before they get better.
SUMMARY OF FORECASTS
Cultivated lands will decrease in total area, but use will be intensified
and crop production wilt increase. Necessary to the increased production are
shifts in crops, more irrigation, more fertilization, more pesticides. By 1985
we may expect two to two and a half times as much land under irrigation as at
present, and two and a half times as much water demanded for irrigation. There
will be more soil nutrients available to leaching from the heavier fertilizer
applications; but efficient sprinkler irrigation will reduce summer wastage
that would otherwise raise stream nutrient levels. There will also be a greater
hazard from pesticides on and in the soil; but principal movement to streams
of these, as well as nutrients, will be restricted to winter rainy seasons when
streamflow is high, despite increases in drainage programs. Conservation farm-
ing will cut down soil losses and reduce sedimentation.
Food processing industries will increase about as irrigated acreage in-
creases. At least twice the present water demand and present waste loads to
dispose of may be expected by 1985.
Suburban development and the growth of a metropolitan strip down the
center of the Valley will encroach on agricultural land and produce different
water demands and problems.
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Forest land will shrink somewhat, losing to agriculture, to highways, and
to suburban developments; but, as with cropland, production will increase.
This will increase forest-based industry with its water demands and waste load
problems, but not greatly. Improved road construction and logging should
greatly reduce erosion and sedimentation.
There will be less slash-burning and less ash and smoke to pollute water
and air. Pesticide application will continue, but should be less hazardous
as specific target formulations are developed. Use of forest fertilization
will greatly increase, and may provide some small hazard of increased nutrients
leached into watercourses.
Recreation use of forest and mountain watershed areas will continue to
rise for some time yet on an exponential curve. At a minimum, we may anticipate
quadrupled use by 1975, with its attendant intensification of sanitation and
waste disposal problems. But recreation has its own water needs; and these
will compete strongly with other uses. Since most outdoor recreation is water-
based, there will be an Increase in water pollution from increased public contact
with water.
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