When it comes to water rights in Washington state, it seems to me that the Legislature is trying to sell survival suits on a sinking ship.
Because of budget problems, the Legislature last year slashed 25 percent of the Department of Ecology’s staff in the program that studies water resources and issues water rights. As you can see from Ecology’s map at right (click to enlarge), more than 7,000 water rights are pending, and the backlog is growing.
The latest move is to expedite applications where groups of people are willing to pay for studies to determine if water is available. Reporter Chris Henry wrote about the approved Senate Bill 6267 in yesterday’s Kitsap Sun.
The new law allows a group of water-rights applicants to get
together and pay for the studies needed to process water rights for
a given area. Anyone not willing to contribute to the study must
wait in line for Ecology to get around to processing their water
rights. So the new law works well for water utilities, which have
enough money to pay for the studies. It may or may not work well
for farmers and others who have limited dollars, depending on their
share of the costs.
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