Thurston County Water Conservancy Board

By John Dodge, The Olympian, 8/23/99

THURSTON COUNTY Olympia builder Duke Jackson has a 112-home development in East Olympia that's going nowhere fast.

For 15 months, he's been waiting for the state Department of Ecology to approve a water rights transfer so he can drill two wells and start building houses.

"It's holding up the project," Jackson said.

His is one of 51 applications in Thurston County pending before Ecology to transfer or make other changes to existing water rights.

Water companies, cities and developers need water rights from Ecology before they can drill new wells.

And Ecology lacks the money and manpower to keep up with the demand for both new and transferred water rights. The statewide backlog of applications is 6,800.

Here in South Sound, it takes Ecology four years or longer to process a water rights request, said Mike Harris, Ecology's regional water resources supervisor.

Transfer of water rights from one owner or site to another has grown increasingly popular in recent years because new water rights are hard, if not impossible, to obtain.

The reason: In many areas of the state, including the Deschutes River watershed in South Sound, there are more water rights on the books than there is water to dole out, according to an Ecology report.

Because of the backlog in water rights transfers, the Thurston County Commission may create an independent Water Conservancy Board in a bid to speed up transfer of water rights.

The three-member board would deal with the transfer of existing water rights - not the issuance of new water rights.

A conservancy board may be able to process a request in less than a year, Harris said.

it It's a good way to work around the backlog," said Doug DeForest, executive director of the Olympia Master Builders.

The proposed program has its critics, including the Squaxin Island Indian tribe.

"T here's very little record of actual water use," tribal biologist Jeff Dickison said. "We could have increased consumption of water.'

The Deschutes River, a mainstay of the tribal fisheries program, already is experiencing low flows in the summer, in part because of groundwater that is pulled out of the system, he said.

Only water rights that are already in use can be transferred, Harris said. So, he said, it shouldn't lead to an increase in water consumption.

Some question whether a citizen's board with a few days training is up to the task of evaluating water rights transfers.

"Water rights are difficult to grasp for lay people," said Rob Caldwell, a water rights lawyer with the Center for Environmental Law and Policy in Seattle. "They'll need professional staff to make competent decisions."

Everyone would be better served if Ecology had more staff and funding to review water rights requests, Caldwell suggested.

Jerry Petersen, manager of South Sound Utility Co. said his company has several water rights they would like to transfer to new sites to meet customer demand.

The company serves 2,400 customers in rural Thurston County.

Over the years, the city of Lacey has transferred water rights but remains neutral on whether the Water Conservancy Board is a good idea or not, city water resources manager Mitch Dion said.

"We hope it would make efficient and streamlined decisions for people, but there's a concern it could just be another hurdle," Dion said.

The board would serve as a separate government, independent of the county. Its decisions would be reviewed - and could be changed or rejected - by Ecology.

A pilot project in Lewis County has resulted in one decision by a water board - and it was rejected by Ecology.

Revenues to run the program would come from application fees - not county revenues, said Tom Clingman, a county utility planner.

John Dodge covers the environment for The Olympian. He can be reached at 754-5444.

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