SALEM — Though depleted aquifers are a mounting worry in Oregon, they may offer the chance to store irrigation water without building costly and controversial new dams.

Before groundwater can be replenished with abundant seasonal streamflows, however, the concept must be proven in practice — a hurdle that’s often too steep for irrigators and other water users.

“The problem is there is no funding to complete that testing,” said J.R. Cook, director of the Northeast Oregon Water Association, which represents Umatilla Basin irrigators.

Treating and pumping water into an aquifer to test the strategy can be prohibitively expensive for irrigation districts, especially if they don’t know whether they’ll ever be able to withdraw it to grow crops.

“Recharge can take us a long way but not without help from the state,” said Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, chief sponsor of a bill to finance such preliminary steps.

Senate Bill 455 aims to overcome that obstacle with a funding mechanism to pay for the crucial testing phase of aquifer storage and recovery projects.

Under the bill, irrigation districts, local governments and other public entities could borrow money from the state government to pay for the required five years of testing.

If the idea works and the irrigation district can withdraw water from the aquifer, the loan would be repaid with interest. If not, the loan would be forgiven.

Water users shouldn’t have to shoulder burdensome testing costs alone, particularly since they’re trying to replenish over-appropriated state-owned groundwater, Hansell said.

Even if an aquifer recharge proposal doesn’t proceed, SB 455 would contribute to state waters during the testing period, he said. “Either way, the state is going to benefit.”

Projects that do provide irrigation water, meanwhile, would let farmers grow higher-value crops and keep processing facilities busy, spurring economic activity in Oregon, Cook said.

On average, such aquifer recharge testing costs about $250,000 to $300,000 per year, he said.

Lawmakers could allocate a “nice round number” to SB 455, such as $10 million, but it’d be relatively simple to tailor the amount more precisely to basins that qualify for such funding, Cook said.

The forgivable loan program for testing costs would be limited to areas with severe groundwater shortages that have studied the problem extensively, Hansell said.

The bill also would create a grant program to pay for the “due diligence” that’s needed for aquifer testing to begin.

Oregon has a grant program for water supply projects, which could cover the capital construction costs involved in aquifer recharge and recovery.

However, those grants can’t pay for the operations and maintenance needed during testing, Cook said.

“This shores up that gap,” he said.

Business Oregon, the state’s business development department, would oversee the program.

Applicants still would need to comply with the aquifer modeling and water quality sampling the state’s Water Resources Department and Department of Environmental Quality each require.

By assisting with the preliminary costs, the state would reduce a major barrier to aquifer storage and recovery projects, said April Snell, executive director of the Oregon Water Resources Congress, which represents irrigation districts.

“We have not seen more of these move forward because of the upfront financing that’s involved,” she said.