NorthwestJuly 13, 2008

Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric
Drowning in rhetoric

This is the second installment in a three-part Tribune series on water.

Today

Water remains a political issue on the Palouse

UI pilot study considers issues surrounding water in the Palouse Basin

Where's the water? Professor says science will never know for sure

Sunday A.M.: Rural Moscow family keeping it green

Monday

Drillers: Water's available, it's a question of where

Water witchers claim success

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MOSCOW - The politics of water on the Palouse can be distilled down to a debate over the size of the proverbial half-full or half-empty glass.

"That has always been the question," says Bill French of the Palouse Water Conservation Network. "How much water do we have?"

Steve Robischon, executive manager of the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee, suggests the size of the glass is relatively academic. "I look more at the level in the glass, and it's going down."

Most everyone agrees the groundwater level in the Palouse Basin has been dropping about 1.5 feet per year. What that means for the future of water on the Palouse is frequently debated and accounts for why water is such a politically charged issue.

"It's a little scary," says Mark Solomon, a longtime water watchdog and current hydrology doctoral student at the University of Idaho. "There is a looming water crisis."

Larry Kirkland, former PBAC executive secretary, counters that there is no shortage. "The water is here. It's just a question of how we can get it."

Enough precipitation, for example, falls on the Palouse to make the shortage debate moot, say Kirkland and other experts. They contend capturing runoff in reservoirs or injecting treated surface water into underground aquifers, while costly, would meet future demands.

The potential for alternative water sources aside, French says there's something "obscene" about the current situation. "I just think it's ethically wrong to take a 20,000-year-old resource like pristine groundwater that got into the ground during the last ice age and dump it on lawns or flush it down toilets."

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Two aquifers, the upper Wanapum and the lower Grand Ronde, are under the Palouse Basin. In addition to rural residences and smaller communities in Latah and Whitman counties, water is pumped from the aquifers by major users, including the cities of Moscow and Pullman, the University of Idaho and Washington State University.

"We have a diverse group of stakeholders, each of which may have a different take on what's going on," Robischon says of the politics that surround the water supply issue. "The role of PBAC is to encourage the pumping entities to implement the groundwater management plan, which they came up with in 1992."

But PBAC, which consists of representatives from Moscow, Pullman, Colfax, UI, WSU and the two counties, has little or no authority.

"There's no enforcement, in terms of what PBAC can or cannot do," Robischon says.

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Not that PBAC would curb pumping if it could, suggests French, who likens the pumping entities to foxes guarding the henhouse. "I think the whole concept of PBAC is flawed. I think PBAC was mostly formed to have the appearance of doing something. And it kind of fooled the state of Idaho into not stepping in to regulate water."

Possible state regulation of groundwater in the Palouse Basin reached a political zenith five years ago when Naylor Farms, about three miles north of Moscow, applied for water rights to pump an amount rivaling all other entities together. The cities of Moscow and Pullman eventually entered into a protocol agreement with the farm to ensure against mining of the aquifers.

But one year later, rural residents living around the 600-acre Naylor Farms called on the Latah County commissioners to offer protection against their private wells going dry. So the commissioners, after lengthy hearings, passed an ordinance prohibiting various land uses above the aquifers, only to have the law thrown out by a District Court judge. The state of Idaho, the judge ruled, has sole jurisdiction over groundwater.

"The state of Idaho has a couple of designations they can put on a groundwater basin," explains French. His and other groups, in fact, waded in amid the Naylor flap to petition the Idaho Department of Water Resources to intercede and regulate pumping from both the Wanapum and Grand Ronde.

After another round of hearings, the state backed away in favor of a local solution. That solution, suggested by the IDWR, was to form an 11-member citizens group to offer advice to the 19 representatives of PBAC. The group, says French, had the potential to be a watchdog over PBAC. "But in practice, it (the citizens group) has just become a mirror image of PBAC. It's a group of people who get together once a month and talk about stuff but they never do anything."

Michael Echanove, chairman of the citizens group as well as mayor of Palouse, disagrees with French's assessment of PBAC.

"PBAC does have authority," says Echanove, to do something as drastic as tell WSU that it can't supply water to its new golf course. "But PBAC chooses not to."

The Tribune talked with several other experts - all agreed that PBAC is strictly an advisory group and lacks the authority to dictate water use.

More regulatory authority, however, isn't needed, Echanove says. What's needed is more scientific data about just how big and how full or empty the aquifers really are. "Until we get that data, it's just a bunch of people with opinions. And you've got universities that have their own projects. You've got counties that have their projects. I mean, I could make a career just thinking about it."

The politics of Palouse water, Echanove says, are perhaps best illustrated by the differing opinions of his mayoral counterparts in Pullman and Moscow.

"Remember, you've got to get elected. And you've got to be able to lead and you've got to be able to look at the big picture, as such, and you can't come in with one opinion and run with it, because you're not going to get anywhere."

Kirkland, after leaving PBAC and being able to observe the big picture, warns that fears about lack of water can be used as both political and legal levers. "Water can become sort of a spotted owl to establish what you want as far as social engineering."

The spotted owl became the focus of national attention decades ago when conservation groups used the bird's endangered species status to block logging of old-growth forests.

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Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney was accused of social engineering when she leaped across the state line into Washington to legally challenge water rights for development of the proposed Hawkins Companies shopping center.

She defends her actions as an attempt to ensure water "sustainability."

"I come from a scientific background," says Chaney, who holds a master's degree in environmental science. "I get the scientific principle. I understand objectivity. But having entered the realm of politics, I've sort of straddled that line."

Ultimately, newly elected members of the Moscow City Council usurped Chaney's political power by agreeing to not just abandon the legal appeals, but to actually supply water to Hawkins.

Eight miles away in Pullman, Mayor Glenn Johnson declines comment on Chaney's tactics. "To be honest with you, I'm leaving that one alone."

As for the politics of water on the Washington side of the border, Johnson suggests they're quite different than in Idaho, and especially Moscow. "What we're trying to do is, we're not going to discourage growth over here. We're telling everybody that 'Yes, we know we have adequate water supplies, we've had plenty of research on that. But at the same time, we want you to conserve. We want to make sure you watch your use of water.' So that's the message."

Chaney laments that while the politics of water continue to vacillate, the groundwater supply will continue to drop. "It's certainly political. I think we should be informed by science, but there are competing interests. So we're sort of waiting out a cost-benefit analysis. We're looking at long-term and short-term values and things we can afford to gamble with and things we cannot afford. Unfortunately, political cycles don't coincide with natural resource needs."

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Johnson may be contacted at deveryone@potlatch.com or (208) 883-0564.

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