Water supply tightening in Washington despite wet winter

OLYMPIA — Water, water everywhere… or maybe not. The irrigation situation in Eastern Washington has made a rather sudden turnaround.

“We are not in a drought, officially,” said Emily Tasaka, communications manager with the Washington State Department of Ecology. “We’ve issued a statewide drought advisory. That’s not the same thing as a drought emergency. It’s not that we won’t call one later, but at this time we haven’t issued a formal statewide drought emergency.”

As of July 20, the U.S. Drought Monitor showed some of Central Washington as being under “abnormally dry” conditions, and most of Eastern Washington as in a state of “moderate drought.” The exception is central Douglas and Okanogan counties as well as the western part of Grant County and the eastern corner of Kittitas County, which were not under any particular water strain according to the map.

Nevertheless, things do change and summers seldom get less severe in August, so the Ecology announced curtailment notices earlier this month to rights holders on 10 bodies of water in Washington: Asotin Creek, Cow Creek, Entiat River, Little Spokane River, Marshall Creek, Methow River, Okanogan-Similkameen River, Walla Walla River mainstem, Wenatchee River and Yakima River. The Teanaway River will probably be subject to curtailment later in the season, Ecology announced.

Curtailment, according to Ecology’s website, is when junior, or more recently-acquired, water right holders’ water use is cut back to prevent them from impairing water availability for senior water right holders.

“Curtailments are a pretty normal part of water management,” Tasaka said. “So these aren’t necessarily alarming, because this is just something that happens every year. It doesn’t necessarily signify that there’s an emergency.”

The rain and snow in the early part of 2023 appeared to augur a nice, water-plentiful summer, but according to Tasaka, that was reversed as spring turned to summer.

“Right now, we are dealing with some dry conditions that happened earlier in May,” Tasaka said. “We had the warmest May on record – I think it had some record-setting hot days – so that has led to a lot of early snow melt, which has led to this initial surge in all the stream flows. And then that surge has been spent down and now stream flows in the state are below normal. For example, in the Yakima Basin we are at 72% of normal at the most recent projections. So all of that early runoff is affecting a lot of the watersheds in the state, and it means that while we are not yet in an official statewide drought emergency, we do have less water than anticipated.”

A graph supplied by Ecology shows that reservoir storage in the Yakima Basin for July 2023 is at 798,042.1 acre-feet, well below the average figure of 936,658.23 and even further below last year’s storage, 1,063,161.13 acre-feet.

“With a hot, dry summer ahead of us, we’re keeping a close eye on water supplies and are preparing to act if conditions further deteriorate,” Ecology wrote in a statement. “Until things change, be smart with your water usage.”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.