Protecting Oregon’s Drinking Water Sources: A Guide for Using Land Conservation to Secure Clean and Reliable Drinking Water

This guide intends to provide an Oregon land trust with the information necessary to allow it to address

water rights as part of conservation transactions. First, the guide provides an overview of Oregon water law.

Next, the guide outlines the due diligence process for water rights.

Land and water are inextricably connected, and protecting one often necessitates protecting the other. This book offers practical tools and resources to help land trusts address water-related conservation values in their private land conservation work.

How much of a watershed must remain forested to produce clean water? What information does water utilities, government agencies and other funders need to support further investment in land protection as a strategy to maintain water quality?

This guide provides land trust staff and other land acquisition practitioners with information about key aspects of water rights.

Land and water are inextricably connected, and protecting one often necessitates protecting the other. This book offers practical tools and resources to help land trusts address water-related conservation values in their private land conservation work.

This guidebook contains information about water resources and water rights, conservation tools, best practices and practical guidance. Section 1 presents an overview of water resources and water rights in Arizona.

The authors have directed this guide primarily to the land conservation community in Colorado – land trusts, local government open space programs, and the appraisers, attorneys, and other experts who frequently work on private land conservation.

This resource guide is intended to serve as a starting point for land trust staff unfamiliar with the Clean Water Act and EPA programs, but whose organizations are interested in integrating water quality protection in their efforts to conserve and steward lands and conduct community outreach.

Can the promise of conservation compete against the paycheck from selling a property or water right? And can land and water trusts protect Colorado’s valuable water rights and vast ag lands before they’re lost?