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Oregon Leaders Are Trying to Save the Deschutes River. Here’s Why That’s So Hard.

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A dam across the Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon, diverts water to irrigation district canals in July 2025. Brandon Swanson/OPB Every year, about 90% of Central Oregon’s Deschutes River disappears into networks of canals and pipes traversing high desert. Between April and October, what’s left in this major river — one of the largest spring-fed waterways in the U.S. — looks more like a creek trickling out of Bend, Oregon. Six irrigation districts — quasi-public corporations — divert the water to green up the properties of about 7,500 landowners in one of the state’s driest regions. Of the six, none is as powerful as the Central Oregon Irrigation District. It has rights to use more than half of the Deschutes’ volume — more than all the other districts combined. And under state law, in times of scarcity, most of the others must cut back to protect COID’s share of the river.  During the last drought, state water law forced commercial farmers downstream to fallow their la...
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Beyond Denial: How Oil Execs Shaped a Landmark Climate Study

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Photo illustration by Tonje Thilesen for ProPublica Carbon Captured How the fossil fuel industry influenced climate research An investigative series by ProPublica and Drilled It is rare that a single scientific paper shapes how people think about a challenge as daunting as climate change. But one, known as “ Wedges ,” published 22 years ago by researchers at Princeton University, told an irresistible story.  It made solving climate change seem possible, even simple. It claimed that the world didn’t have to wait for innovation because it had the tools to start work immediately. The trick was to do a little of everything and let the effects add up. Renewable energy, nuclear power and conservation were certainly pieces of the solution puzzle. But so were a slew of steps that involved using oil, gas and coal despite the car...
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