Next month, Deschutes County officials expect a packed house at a public hearing about plans for the Thornburgh resort near Redmond.

But when it comes to two of the most controversial issues on that meeting’s agenda, county leaders have already decided:

They’ve heard enough.

The resort project has been contested for decades, often over plans to supply groundwater for 950 single-family homes, golf courses, private lakes and a luxury hotel in an area where many home wells have gone dry, and state regulators have warned the aquifer is in trouble.

Lately, Thornburgh has also become a flashpoint in a broader fight over how local governments consider treaty rights violations and Indigenous expertise.

The resort site is located in a huge chunk of Oregon that first became part of the U.S. after leaders from the Wasco and Warm Springs Tribes signed a treaty in 1855.

The treaty reserved tribal rights to keep hunting, gathering and fishing at the “usual and accustomed” places. Numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases have since affirmed that this protection means treaty tribes not only have the right to fish, but also for there to be fish to catch. And that’s where Thornburgh’s proposed water use came into play.

The developer wants to build wells to tap groundwater flowing deep under the semi-arid, sagebrush surface of the resort site. That water source also eventually feeds the Deschutes River and its tributaries.

In 2023, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs appealed county approval for Thornburgh’s plan to neutralize its impacts on water, fish and wildlife. The tribe also wants proof the resort’s water use will not harm fish populations.

After a lengthy legal process, a state board handed these issues back to the county, which has a mandate to reconsider its past approach to Thornburgh, or else face more costly appeals.

But in a split vote Wednesday, the commission said that when it comes to treaty rights, it will not accept any more input.

“I have seven binders on Thornburgh, at least seven,” said County Commissioner Patti Adair. “I don’t think any project in this county has ever been so scrutinized.”

Commissioner Tony DeBone said he views treaty rights as “more of a state level issue.”

Warm Springs leaders clapped back in a press release stating this is just latest incident in the county’s “pattern of dismissing Warm Springs Treaty-reserved rights,” and that the “decision demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the Tribes’ constitutionally recognized role as a sovereign co-manager of the Deschutes Basin’s resources.”

“We have lived and fished on these waters since time immemorial,” Tribal Council Chair Jonathan Smith, Sr. said in the release. “The County simply cannot understand the full picture of this project’s impact without our perspective.”

The Tribe’s fight over Thornburgh began in 2022, after the resort developer decided to eliminate one golf course from the three the county originally approved. This step to cut back water use also triggered a re-review of local permits.

“For 20 years I’ve heard that we should build less golf and use less water,” resort developer Kameron DeLashmutt said in an email.

He called the decades-long appeals stalling his project “an appalling stain on Oregon.”

“Our opponents have an ideological objection and are grossly abusing the system to carry out their ideological agenda,” DeLashmutt said.

County Commissioners are now tasked with reexamining how the resort plans to mitigate its impacts on fish, whether that plan violates the treaty rights of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and what the resort’s economic impacts will be. But at DeLashmutt’s request, the county will only accept new information about economic impacts before making decisions.

Commissioner Phil Chang opposed that unusual prohibition. He said the county “ignored” treaty rights altogether the first time around.

When the next public hearing about Thornburgh rolls around May 7, “the mics will be open, the blue forms will be standing by the door and people can come and speak,” said Planning Manager Will Groves.

But if anyone brings up treaty rights, he advised, “the correct response is that the record is not reopened on that topic, unless it in some way impacts the economic analysis.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/04/17/deschutes-county-snubs-warm-springs-tribes-in-thornburgh-resort-appeal/