In the face of a crippling state focus on their water resources, farmers in Whatcom County are questioning the Washington State Department of Ecology’s ability to manage those resources, after newly-revealed documents show the agency failed to protect Yakima Basin stream flows in a timely fashion.
In the official letters recently obtained by Whatcom Family Farmers, tribal and public utility officials in the Yakima River Basin say Ecology was unprepared to regulate water use in the basin even as reservoir levels and stream flows dipped to record lows, placing fish and senior water rights holders at risk.
“Ecology is entirely unprepared to fulfill its legal responsibilities in times of crisis,” Gerald Lewis, Chairman of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation wrote in a Sept. 30 letter to Ecology Director Casey Sixkiller.
A similar joint letter to Sixkiller from the farmer-led Kittitas Reclamation District and Roza Irrigation District exposes more detail about Ecology’s unpreparedness, citing the agency staff’s comments in a Sept. 26 Yakima Basin Joint Board meeting.
“When asked specifically about regulation of water users, staff indicated they did not have addresses for all the water users and regulating all these water users was ‘too big of a job,’” the heads of the two central-Washington water districts wrote in their letter, also on Sept. 30.
Ecology has routinely heralded its efforts to regulate water in the Yakima Basin, claiming its over 40 years of litigation there as a success to protect the environment and tribal treaty rights. But in reality it was a collaborative negotiation process between tribal, farming and other interests that deserves credit for the resulting successful Yakima Basin Integrated Plan (YBIP).
Ecology’s response to the current drought now casts significant doubt on its ability to enforce that landmark settlement, even as Ecology pushes more clumsy litigation in the state’s Nooksack River Basin.
According to Ecology’s website, the Yakima litigation tackled just 2,300 surface water rights, and was resolved only after over 40 years and extensive community collaboration following decades of court acrimony.
The agency’s Nooksack court case, just filed in 2024, now encompasses at least 37,000 water users of both surface water and groundwater, with no effort by Ecology to support a collaborative negotiated settlement process.
“If Ecology finds regulating surface water in the Yakima Basin to be ‘too big of a job,’ even after over four decades of litigation and a comprehensive negotiated settlement supported by the community, how does it ever expect to manage both surface and groundwater in the Nooksack Basin?” said Fred Likkel, Executive Director of Whatcom Family Farmers.
“We have the potential for as many as 15 times the number of individual water rights here, and no Ecology support here for the kind of collaborative model that produced the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan,” Likkel said. “If Ecology’s mismanagement is causing a problem in Yakima, it will spell disaster here in Whatcom County.”
Dillon Honcoop is the communications director of Whatcom Family Farmers, an advocacy organization that aims to preserve the future of family farming in Whatcom County.
