Dry Northwest Gets a Taste of Water Rules, Fire Concerns

You can welcome the Pacific Northwest to the drought. And how!

The sky over Seattle turned blue this year, and the city is drenched and soggy no longer. The white-capped Cascade Mountains and north Rockies are white no more.

Spreading all over is, why . . . it’s the color brown. Dry, crackle-under-your-feet and dust-in-your-face brown.

This is the driest season in 90 years of record-keeping in the Seattle area. Unexpected fact: As of Tuesday, Seattle (with 16.74 inches) had received about half an inch less rainfall this year than Los Angeles (17.19 inches).

Pity the tourist vendors with a year’s supply of the T-shirts that say, “People in Seattle Don’t Tan, They Rust.”

Already the region is under mandatory water restrictions. There is widespread fear of destructive wildfires, and the drought has sent an unsettling skewer piercing the heart of the Northwest’s image of itself.

And, much as it may pain the civic pride here, Seattle is looking south to California for ways to respond.

After spending a year trying to “figure out how you guys down there have been doing it,” said Marianne Picha, spokeswoman for Seattle’s Water Department, “we’ve learned that we’ve got a long way to go. We’re still at the stage where all we can do is ask people, ‘please don’t turn on the water so much any more.’ ”

Among the adjustments Northwesterners are making is a ban on lawn watering for the 600,000 Seattle Municipal water customers and for most of the 600,000 other customers in 27 other communities served by the local districts. Surcharges, from 25% to 200%, have been imposed on all summer water bills. Police cars are losing their shine as the car wash at the municipal motor pool cuts its hours in half. Street washing on thoroughfares, except in the heaviest industrialized areas, has been canceled. Only the tees and greens on city golf courses are being watered. Residents by the scores call a hot line every day to report neighbors hosing off patios or sprinkling yards.

How bad is it? Normally, the early summer snowpack in the Cascades is 40 to 90 inches deep. This year the mountains are mostly dry. Reservoirs that should be filling with snow melt are almost half empty and levels are dropping.

Although a drought like this one causes much self-examination in the Northwest, such an occurrence actually is not unusual.

The region is best known for its rainy climate and periodic floods--13 notable flood years in this century. But the National Water Summary, prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey, shows seven major droughts since 1900, including two drought periods in the 1980s.

Officials at the Boise Interagency Fire Center in Idaho have warned nine Western states to prepare for critical conditions. In Montana and northern Idaho, conditions have been described as similar to those in 1988, year of the great Yellowstone National Park fires.

Also of concern are populated areas of Washington and eastern Oregon. Snowfall in Oregon was 23% of normal this year. These areas have seen more than a decade of suburban development into wooded and fire-prone areas.

“It’s an inescapable fact. . . . Every fire we face today involves threats to houses and life,” said Washington Public Lands Commissioner Brian Boyle. “Most firefighters believe a major fire in a populated area is inevitable here.”