Kittitas County to Prepare Documents to Accept $150,000 Ecology Grant for Municipal water-rights assessment

Kittitas County commissioners directed staff to prepare enabling documents to accept a $150,000 Department of Ecology grant to study domestic and municipal water-rights needs across the Yakima Basin.

The grant would fund a focused assessment of smaller municipal water suppliers in Kittitas, Yakima and Benton counties to inventory water-right assets, identify reliability risks tied to junior or interruptible rights, and explore options such as water banking to secure supplies for growing communities. Arden Thomas, water resources manager, told commissioners that “water rights is not the most riveting topic,” but said the work is needed because some local providers are poorly positioned to advocate for their needs in regional planning forums.

Thomas said the Department of Ecology told Kittitas County it would like to award “a $150,000” grant to support the county contracting consultants to conduct in-depth reviews of a subset of systems. He said there is no matching-fund requirement for the grant and that allowable grant costs include county staff time to manage consultants and the project. Thomas said the study would be broader than Kittitas County alone and would cover the three Yakima Basin counties.

The need for the assessment stems in part from a gap between water-rights review and public-health review of water systems. Thomas said state Department of Health approvals of water system plans have not always flagged water-rights reliability problems, but Ecology’s reviews are now doing more thorough checks and notifying providers when junior rights may pose a reliability risk. He cited the City of Kittitas as an example where a prior water rate change application was denied because mitigation was required, which Thomas said is “a huge flag” illustrating the problem.

Commissioners asked whether small group-based systems were ignoring warnings or reacting only to emergencies such as curtailment or shut-off notices; Thomas said the goal of the proposed work is to get ahead of emergencies and provide a bridge so smaller providers can be better represented in Yakima Basin Integrated Plan processes. The plan — the Yakima Basin Water Resources Integrated Plan — includes elements ranging from new storage and operational changes to water marketing and conservation; Thomas said the municipal component needs stronger advocacy and clearer messaging.

No formal roll-call vote was recorded. A commissioner present voiced support, saying, “I support this,” and later the commission signaled general agreement to move forward with preparing the grant-enabling documents. The action recorded in the meeting was direction to staff to prepare the documents that would allow the county to enter into a grant agreement if the award is made; detailed timelines, consultant selection procedures and next steps were not specified during the session.

If executed, the grant-funded work would inventory rights and vulnerabilities for a subset of municipal suppliers, clarify where mitigation or water-right purchases may be needed, and explore water-banking or county-led acquisition strategies to preserve local municipal supplies. The study’s scope, consultant procurement, schedule and final deliverables will be set out in the enabling documents the county will prepare for a possible grant agreement with Ecology.