Conservationists and small eastern Washington farmers have been dealt a blow by the state's high court over the increasingly touchy issue of water rights. Spokane Public Radio's Paige Browning reports.
Livestock operations in Washington -- even those involving large feedlots or dairies with thousands of animals -- have unlimited access to groundwater, and are not bound by permits or the rights of senior users. So said the Washington Supreme Court Thursday in a ruling involving small farmers arrayed against a 30,000-head feedlot in Eltopia, a hamlet near the Tri-Cities.
The closely watched case put the Franklin County farmers and conservationists in a blue funk. Spokane water lawyer Rachael Paschal Osborn was mystified and angered by the ruling:
"When you have one type of water user who is already being told that they have to shut off their water use during a drought year how could you possibly have a stock water operation come in and begin to use water in that system? All of the water is allocated, it's all accounted for," Osborn says.
By a six to three majority, the high court ruled that the state legislature exempted livestock operations from the state well permitting process.
The three dissenters scoffed at the idea that huge cattle feeding operations should be allowed to pump enormous amounts of water, even when senior rights holders can't get all they need.
Those justices blamed lawmakers for writing a sloppily constructed law. And Osborn agreed, saying lawmakers must not let the livestock exemption stand.
"Of course the legislature can now take action to amend that section of the groundwater code that allows this exemption," Osborn says. "And we hope they will do so because this is completely unworkable to have a loophole in our groundwater code that allows a special interest type of use to effectively use unlimited amounts of water."
Farmers in Franklin County who sued to stop the feedlot operation from pumping upwards of a million gallons of water a day are dismayed, watching their water table drop rapidly.
Osborn adds, "The water resource itself is finite and water levels are dropping in the Franklin County area and the Odessa sub-area and this court opinion does nothing to solve that problem. It completely fails to recognize that we are dealing with a finite and diminishing resource."
Osborn said the ruling fails to recognize that there's a water supply crisis now, in the dry eastern part of the state.
Managers of the Easterbrook feedlot operation were not available for comment on the issue today.
Copyright 2011 Spokane Public Radio
Court Rules Washington Livestock Operations Have No Water Use Limits
Comments