Water-Right Lease Request Still Up in the Air

WALLA WALLA – The Department of Ecology has made no official decision yet regarding a request that the Walla Walla Watershed Management Partnership be allowed to lease water from the Touchet Eastside-Westside Irrigation District temporarily. This request has been opposed by several groups locally.

“There are some inherent problems with what they’re asking Ecology to do,” said Eric Hartwig, regional water master for the Washington State Department of Ecology. “We received 14 official letters of protest to the application. We’re waiting to hear back from the irrigation district to see if they want us to proceed with what we have right now on the application.”

Chris Hyland, executive director of the Walla Walla Watershed Management Partnership, has stated that the intent was not to harm junior water-rights holders, who many believe stand to lose the most with this proposed deal. “I will try to work with everybody, every junior water user,” he said. “We’re still in discussion with Ecology in terms of what will work.”

The partnership is currently working with Dayton farmer Bill Warren, one of the application opponents, to “improve the reliability of his water source” – in other words, to secure a water right so Warren can drill a well to draw water during periods of the year when his junior rights to water in the Touchet River are cut.

“There are all kinds of options when working with individual landowners,” Hyland said. “We’re trying to make this deal work the best we can.”

Columbia County Commissioners joined a group of local and Walla Walla County stakeholders in opposing the request in April, claiming such an arrangement would jeopardize junior water-rights holders – primarily irrigation-dependent farmers – in the Touchet Valley. All parties are still negotiating.

“With the drought, I’m not doing anything right now except drought stuff,” Hartwig said last week. “Even if they came back with what they want to do, I won’t be looking at it until we’re through this.”

Hartwig, state water master for Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, stated that 40 junior water-rights users upstream from the town of Touchet have historically been shut off during low-water periods to satisfy the water rights of senior users such as that held by the Touchet Eastside-Westside Irrigation District.

The Walla Walla Watershed Management Partnership piped the Touchet Eastside-Westside Irrigation District’s system with the idea of saving water and benefiting fish in 2008; everyone was surprised at the amount of water saved – so much so that junior water-rights holders haven’t been shut off from tapping the river nearly as often as they had been in the past.

“The Eastside-Westside Irrigation District has a very senior water right and is the major user of water on the Touchet,” Hyland said. “In drought years, they would turn almost the entire river off. What people need to know is that this, to some degree, only puts things back to the way they were in 2008 and prior to that for over 100 years.”