As a resident of Baker City, do you know where your water comes from? When you turn on the tap or faucet do you think about how cool and clean the water is, how many miles it traveled to get to you, or the origins of it? Most people take it all for granted.

Located high in the Elkhorn Mountains, the Baker City Watershed was given its official designation in 1912 from an agreement between Baker City and the federal Secretary of Agriculture. City residents receive high quality, municipal water from 12 diversions that collect snowmelt runoff and spring water that gets transported through water transmission pipelines to the city’s storage reservoirs. Large pipelines and laterals take the water to individual meters, and ultimately, ends up in your home or business.

The watershed has been well-protected since its origin in 1862. Many projects have helped to manage the forest and reduced the fuel load that leads to wildfire. The Baker City Watershed Fuels Management Project continues the care.

Currently, there is need in the watershed to protect and enhance the beneficial uses. The project effects everyone that uses municipal water and landowners that are adjacent to the Watershed.

Critical to the needs of the residents, the project will:

• limit fire spread within the municipal watershed and the transmission of fire across ownership boundaries by managing for a more resilient forest.

• minimize water supply disruptions and cost increases to Baker City residents from wildfire related effects.

• create conditions that are more favorable for firefighters being able to safely and successfully protect the watershed without opening new roads or closing existing ones.

• enhance and restore the characteristics of ecosystem function within riparian and upland systems.

• promote wildfire strategies across all landownerships.

Right now, the water users of Baker City have the opportunity to provide feedback to the U.S. Forest Service on the Baker City Watershed Fuels Management Project. Complete scoping documents and maps are available on the Baker City Watershed Fuels Management Project webpage — www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=58480.

Please! As a member of the community, submit your support and comments to the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, 1550 Dewey Ave., Suite A, Baker City, OR 97814, or drop them off in person, no later than Aug. 31, 2022.

Doni Bruland is Baker County’s natural resources coordinator.