Water management a tough issue to address, legislators say

QUINCY — Washington legislators are working on ways to address some of the issues around water use and water management, but it’s a long process. State Sen. Judy Warnick and state Reps. Tom Dent and Alex Ybarra, all representing the 13th District, talked about the condition of water legislation during a town hall meeting in Quincy Wednesday.

“Water is the hardest law to change, because it’s so different all over the state,” Warnick said.

Dent quoted an old line attributed to Mark Twain.

“‘Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting,’” Dent said. “That’s reality; that’s the way it is in Olympia. I think it’s been that way for well over 100 years.”

Warnick and Dent said legislators are working on water issues, when the legislature is in session and when it’s not. But progress is slow.

“It’s a complicated subject, and like Judy says, it’s the hardest bill to ever push through. They always come up at the very end of the session, and most of them die,” Dent said.

State officials appointed a working group to make some recommendations about water use and water management, Warnick said. Its members met for about four years, she said, and did come up with some recommendations on municipal water management. They looked at projected use by industries in the future, the current supplies for municipalities and how they’re monitored, among other things.

Some of their recommendations were put into a bill submitted during the 2023 legislative session co-sponsored by Warnick. It was the subject of some hearings, she said.

“But we could just see the bill wasn’t ready,” she said, and she plans to keep working on it.

Dent said the 13th District legislators meet monthly with the agencies working on a long-term project to switch farms now using wells to surface irrigation, known as the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Project.

“Once a month we bring everybody to the table and we talk about where we’re at and where we’re going, because we want everybody on the same page,” he said.

“One of the reasons we’re working so hard on the Odessa situation is that we want to get those guys off those deep wells and onto surface water,” he said. “So we can preserve and protect the aquifer we have left.”

Dent said he thinks that’s a good model, and he may suggest a similar meeting for 13th District municipalities.

“But the other thing we need to talk about, that nobody wants to, we need to talk about some conservation,” he said. “We live in a desert, and we need to accept that fact – it’s a desert.”

Dent cited a project underway in Othello to use surface water to help recharge the aquifer.

“It shows some promise. I’d like to see us do more of that,” he said. “We have to sell those things, but we’re in a good position to do that. For one thing, we represent the biggest desert in the state.”

“We do have a lot of education to do with our colleagues,” Warnick said. “And then we have to build relationships.”

Communities throughout the 13th District are working on solutions to water issues, she said, and that helps.

“You have to show that (communities) are doing this on their own, they’re trying to make a difference by cutting back on water usage,” she said.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.