WSU fights to keep water rights

The latest battle over Washington State University’s water use and the region’s dwindling aquifer will get a public airing this week in Pullman, when opponents try to overturn a state decision allowing WSU to consolidate its water rights.

The university said the state decision addresses only where it can pump water – consolidation allows it to pump its total allotment from any combination of wells, rather than a certain amount per well. But the total amount of water it can use won’t change, WSU says, and the decision won’t affect watering its new golf course.

Opponents say the hearing is part of a longer-term strategy to prevent an expansion of water use stemming from the new 18-hole golf course. Rachael Pascal Osborn, an attorney representing opponents of the course, said the next step is a court challenge of a 2003 law that allows WSU to hold onto water rights indefinitely.

The golf course has been a lightning rod for the issue, with critics arguing that it doesn’t make sense to pump millions of gallons of water a year for the course while the Grande Ronde aquifer, which supplies the region’s water, declines.

Environmental groups cite reports showing the aquifer is dropping by a foot and a half a year, and they argue that the state failed to consider the “public impairment” caused by the increased water usage at the course when granting WSU the consolidation.

The appeals hearing before the Pollution Control Hearings Board is expected to last two days. It begins Tuesday at 9 a.m. at Lighty Student Services Building, room 405.

Construction on the $12 million golf course is well under way, with the driving range open and a full public opening set for this year, and critics have not fared well so far in efforts to block it. The Palouse Conservation Network, the Center for Environmental Law and Policies and others challenged the consolidation on several points and lost on most of them in a written judgment issued by the appeals board in December. However, the board ordered a hearing on the issue of public impairment and a few other questions.

Osborn said whatever happens next week, she plans to pursue a court challenge of a new law that allows “municipal water suppliers” such as WSU to keep their unused water rights forever rather than losing them if they go unused.

That law was the basis for most of the losses opponents suffered in the appeals board decision, she said.

“We never believed, win or lose, that we’d be stopping at the Pollution Control Hearings Board,” she said.

She said WSU has actually only used about a third of its historic water rights, and the golf course watering is “radically expanding” the actual amount of water used.

The university has argued that it has cut overall water use by more than 100 million gallons a year in the past decade and is continuing to focus on ways of being efficient with its water. The golf course is expected to use about 55 million gallons a year, WSU says.

Osborn said that even if WSU has made gains in water efficiency, the situation with the region’s aquifer calls for urgent action. She plans to call a pair of hydrogeologists to testify during the hearing about the aquifer.

“There should be an extraordinary amount of belt-tightening in that area, and it’s not happening,” she said. “When water levels are dropping a foot and a half a year, you’ve got a problem.”