SEQUIM — State ecologists soon will try to execute a feat akin to coaxing water to flow uphill.
The water in question is that of the Dungeness Valley, both what runs in the channel and what flows in aquifers under the ground.
The uphill element is the state Department of Ecology’s task of telling newcomers that they can’t have as much water as established residents enjoy.
Not just future arrivals in Clallam County’s East End will be affected. The developers who will build their homes and the companies that will drill their wells also face great changes.
Ecology officials currently are mulling when to put the rules into effect — probably in November 2009.
The rule from which most others will ensue is called instream flow.
Simply put, it’s how much water the Dungeness needs to support spawning, maturing and migrating salmon and other wildlife.
To grasp its importance, it’s necessary to understand the state’s water rights law.
Simply put, first in time is first in right.
The scheme encouraged settlers to move west and begin farming, said Shirley Waters Nixon, an attorney who specializes in environmental law and water issues.
The very first in time — from “time immemorial,” courts have ruled — are the treaty tribes whose usual and accustomed fishing grounds include the Dungeness outflow.
Next in line are all the homesteaders, farmers, irrigators, homeowners and business people who’ve moved into the Dungeness watershed ever since.
The water rights are so numerous that they exceed the total water that flows down the river each year.
No more diversions from the Dungeness will be allowed, Ecology says.
Meanwhile, residents, farms and businesses with senior rights can push latecomers out of line, Nixon said.
She and three Clallam County government employees — a hydrologist, a biologist, and a public health environmentalist — addressed a League of Women Voters forum on water issues last month.
Their united message:
Water can’t be taken for granted anymore.
One tried-and-true strategy will be conservation, including xeriscaping that requires much less irrigation than the typical lush, green lawn.
For instance, a half-acre lawn in a 153-day watering season uses 4,800 cubic feet of water, according to the Dungeness River Management Team that has studied the river for decades.
“It appears that we can really make a huge difference in water by thinking about how we landscape,” said Cathy Lear, habitat biologist with the Clallam County Department of Community Development.
Another technique is to drill deeper wells. Carlsborg, for instance, sits above a level of rock that runs from the village to the river.
Below it are two more underground lakes.
“If you’re pumping out of the first two aquifers, you’re probably affecting the river,” said Andy Brastad, referring to the “hydrologic continuity” that connects the surface Dungeness with what lies below it.
Another approach to maintaining instream flow will be to gather wet-winter rainfall and pump it underground, returning it to the surface during the slow-flow summer and fall.
A winter storm produces thousands of cubic feet per second roaring down the Dungeness mainstem. Fall drought cuts it to less than 100 cfs, said Ann Soule, hydrologist with Clallam County Environmental Health Services.
Also, decades-old irrigation districts have enclosed many of their ditches in pipes that prevent leakage and evaporation, thus delivering more water to crops.
But hydrologists and others already are studying and talking about mitigation — how a new user can repay the river for what he or she withdraws.
Developers will need to have water-replacement plans in hand when they apply for building permits. Each applicant must provide evidence of an adequate water supply for the building’s intended use.
In the case of a house, that means 5,000 gallons per person per month, or 60,000 gallons per year, Nixon said.
If people can’t envision that quantity, she said, it 60,000 gallons equals roughly three overseas shipping containers full of water.
Whereas the state Department of Health won’t allow curtailment of drinking water, outdoor irrigation is likely to require remediation.
Furthermore, Ecology’s rule may require users to return more than they consume in irrigation so as to begin undoing past damage to the watershed.
That kind of mitigation probably is beyond the ability of most people to comprehend paying in gallons.
Therefore, consultants from the Washington Water Trust are performing groundwork on a water exchange similar to the one they set up in Walla Walla County.
There, people with rights to more water than they use can make “deposits,” and parties who need more water than they can mitigate can make “withdrawals.”
In Walla Walla, the exchanges are done in cash, not gallons, that buys and sells mitigation credits.
Potential buyers could include cities, the Clallam County Public Utility District — which is looking to build water and wastewater systems for Carlsborg — and small users of groundwater, according to the water trust, a statewide nonprofit conservation organization.
Potential sellers include larger groundwater users and irrigators who have improved their consumption efficiency.
The year that Ecology and local planners have left before establishing an instream flow rule and other regulations will be crammed with questions desperately seeking answers.
For instance, Lear asked, “How much water does a fish this big (spreading her fingers need, and how much water does a fish his big (spreading her arms) need?”
Ecology and Clallam County officials have held public meetings at the John Wayne Marina to preview the problem of managing the Dungeness.
The agencies plan more sessions to discuss solutions.
“We have to use water in the best ways we can,” said Lear.
“We’re trying to explore ways to use well the water that we have.”
For more information, check Ecology’s Web site on the Dungeness watershed at www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/WR/instream-flows/dungeness.html.
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Reporter Jim Casey can be reached at 360-417-3538 or at jim.casey@peninsuladailynews.com
