Mike McClanahan
TVW
This article was first published by TVW.
An unprecedented ban on surface water usage in the Yakima Basin shut off irrigation early and disrupted city water services this month.
It was the first time the Washington State Department of Ecology has restricted river diversions for the entire river basin for all but the most senior water rights holders in the region.
The Wapato Irrigation Project on the Yakama Reservation holds multiple water rights, including an 1855 irrigation right which is outside the scope of the curtailment order, but Yakama Nation Department of Natural Resources Superintendent Phil Rigdon said the WIP and the Bureau of Indian Affairs reduced irrigation throughout the summer.
State regulators say the curtailment order — which is in place through the end of October —was triggered by extended dry conditions and reservoir depletion.
“We saw historical conditions where the reservoirs in Yakima ran dry. We haven’t seen that before at this scale,” Ria Burns, the water resources program manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology, said during an interview on TVW’s The Impact. “The last time we saw this was about 30 years ago.”
Yakima was the center of a landmark compromise between tribes and farmers connected to a water rights adjudication that spanned four decades. Adjudication is the legal sorting and ranking of all water claims in a specified area.
A couple of hundred miles away, a new water rights adjudication is just getting underway in the Nooksack River watershed, which covers most of Whatcom County and parts of northern Skagit County.
Ecology filed the Nooksack Adjudication in Whatcom County Superior Court last year.
Some environmental groups are backing the decision to sort out Nooksack water rights in court, which will impose binding conditions for all current and future water users in the watershed.
According to Berns, the Nooksack Indian Tribe and the Lummi Nation petitioned Ecology to file the adjudication to ensure there is enough water available for salmon.
Both tribes issued a joint statement in support of adjudication in 2021 after lawmakers allocated funding for the process. In the statement, the tribes note that voluntary discussions have seen little success.
They argue adjudication is “the only tool available to Washington State to sort through competing water claims” and a process that will provide “much-needed certainty for fishing, farming businesses, and people.”
An in-stream flow rule for the Nooksack River has been in place for forty years. It’s a legal standard meant to ensure there’s enough water in the river for salmon and other species.
Stream levels routinely drop below that threshold in the summer, which is also when crops need water the most. Many farmers in Whatcom County are worried about what the Nooksack litigation will mean for their livelihoods. Some lack documented water rights and others foresee curtailments in the future.
“In water law it is the senior right who gets all their water first,” said Fred Likkel, head of the Whatcom Family Farmers organization.
Whatcom County lacks the water storage infrastructure that exists in the dry Yakima Basin.
“We don’t have reservoirs, so there’s no way of meeting these flows,” said Marty Maberry of Maberry Packing.
Berns views adjudication as a necessary starting point to find out who has water rights and how much water is actually available.
“Without having a sense of the scale of the problem, we can’t work together in the community to identify infrastructure projects or other kinds of projects that will help lessen the gap between supply and demand,” said Berns.