Legislative Committee Memo    3/08/03           

Contact: Craig Engelking 360-789-8404

To: House Appropriations Committee Members

From: Craig Engelking, Legislative Coordinator

Re: HB 1338—Municipal Water Rights

Members of the Committee:

I’d hoped to testify on this bill today, but thought it would be heard towards the end of the hearing. Please consider these written remarks as my testimony on behalf of the Sierra Club.

While we strongly support the goal of providing clean water for people, we believe this bill as drafted would cause severe, unnecessary and irreparable damage to our state’s rivers, streams, and aquifers.

In particular, we are extremely distressed with the provision in HB 1338 that “perfects” municipalities’ “unperfected” water rights. In plain English, this provision would allow municipalities to withdraw unknown amounts of water that currently flows in rivers and streams. We know of no data that indicates what the impacts will be to rivers and streams, but we believe it will cause significant harm, further imperiling many wild salmon runs already on the brink of extinction.

When salmon return to spawn, particularly in late summer, they need water in the riverbeds. In most years–not just drought years–many streams and rivers run so low that there isn’t enough water to meet their basic needs.

Furthermore, in many cases, the state doesn’t have the hard data to know how much water it needs to leave in the rivers and streams (setting flows). But we do know that many watersheds are already in trouble and cannot sustain additional withdrawals without terrible environmental consequences. We believe it’s unwise to allow these additional water withdrawals before the state knows how much it needs to keep flowing in rivers and streams and before the state has a clear idea of how it will achieve those flows.

Seattle met twenty years of growth with water it conserved. A recent report by the Center for Environmental Law and Policy (Washington’s Wasted Water) identified twelve steps the state can take to replicate this ethic across the state. While this bill contains some good first steps towards effective conservation,  it could be much stronger.

In addition, the state’s salmon recovery strategy recognizes that illegal water use greatly affects our ability to meet stream flows. In “Dereliction of Duty: Washington’s failure to protect our shared waters,” CELP and the Washington Environmental Council identified eleven steps the state can take to dramatically improve enforcement of existing water law, thereby putting more water back into the natural environment.

We believe the Legislature can help meet the future water needs of people and the environment by fully pursuing these avenues now. In light of the intense budget deficit we face, this bill’s fiscal note, and the serious environmental implications, we urge you to not pass this bill as drafted. We’d be happy to work with any interested parties to see if we can find any mutually accommodating language.

Respectfully yours,

Craig Engelking