Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Water Management Transfers topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Researchers and water managers point to transfers, banks and conservation as tools to manage scarcity
Summary
Jonathan Yoder (State Water Research Center) and municipal representatives described how irrigation accounts for most withdrawals, exempt wells are a small but legally significant category, and water banks, transfers and conservation can help reallocate supply during shortages — but legal and modeling constraints complicate transfers.
Jonathan Yoder, director of the State of Washington Water Research Center, and Carl Schroeder of the Association of Washington Cities briefed the committee on water use patterns, transfer tools, and the practical barriers to reallocating water.
Yoder summarized statewide withdrawals and uses: irrigation accounts for roughly 60% of withdrawals, public water supply about 20%, with the remainder in other uses. He noted geographic concentration — municipal withdrawals where people live and irrigation concentrated in the Columbia Basin, Yakima and other irrigation projects. Yoder emphasized that exempt wells provide rural domestic supply in many places but represent a relatively small portion of total consumptive use; nonetheless the legal status of exempt wells has outsized policy effects (the Hirst decision era).
Yoder described existing market and institutional tools: about 40 water banks exist in Washington, and options contracts and market platforms have begun to emerge as ways to reallocate water in shortage years; he noted a recent options contract exercised between two irrigation districts. He also described retiming flows through storage, groundwater recharge and other infrastructure, and said efficiency gains in municipal and agricultural use can reduce economic harm from scarcity.
Carl Schroeder described municipal concerns: the 2003 Municipal Water Law created protections for municipal water rights from relinquishment and allowed municipal water planning to account for service area growth. But the 2015 Foster decision and subsequent Ecology interpretations (Policy 2030 internal guidance) and a series of court rulings create practical barriers to transfers and approvals. Schroeder said roughly 70 municipal suppliers report they may need additional water within 10 years; he gave the Port Orchard Foster pilot as an example where a mitigation plan to support new housing was initially rejected because the mitigation relied on treated (rather than raw) water augmentation.
Both speakers stressed transfers, water banks, municipal conservation and storage as options — but they warned that the current legal standard for impairment and modeling requirements make many transfers technically or economically infeasible without legislative or regulatory clarification.
