Irrigation Nurtures Fish-or-Farm Debate

As a boy, Vaughn Jolley worked summers at his uncle’s ranch on a hillside overlooking the upper Methow Valley.

Today Jolley owns the ranch, with its spectacular view of the Pasayten Wilderness, where he keeps mules to indulge his passion for pack trips deep into the Cascade Mountains.

Jolley also chairs the board of directors of the Methow Valley Irrigation District, which, like many others across the West, has run afoul of state and federal regulators over the amount of water it uses.

Its troubles are rooted in the federal Endangered Species Act, which calls for protecting the habitat of scores of threatened fish, birds and other creatures.

Jolley, a property developer with building projects on both sides of the state, said he thinks the regulatory agencies are overstepping their bounds, trying to force the district to give up water rights so that more water is available for fish.

“What is the predominant document, the [Endangered Species Act] or the Constitution of the United States?” Jolley asks rhetorically. “It seems like they’re trying to get to that point of taking by coercion and threat.”

Spokesmen for state and federal regulatory agencies insist it’s nothing so sinister.

“They divert 25 acre-feet per acre to water a crop that requires 2.7 acre-feet per acre,” said Ray Newkirk of the state Department of Ecology. “During dry periods, the irrigation district has been known to dry up the Twisp River.”

Irrigation began in the Methow Valley in the 1880s, when fish were so plentiful that little thought was given to saving them. But valley development and construction of hydroelectric dams in the region have depleted most of those runs of salmon and steelhead.

The district, which irrigates less than 2,300 acres with water diverted from the Twisp and Methow rivers, is fighting a two-front war.

A truce of sorts was declared in June when the district signed a consent decree to settle a lawsuit brought by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The district agreed to modify its intakes and fish screens to bring them into compliance with the Endangered Species Act within two years.

But a nearly decade-long battle still rages with the state Department of Ecology.

The state agency and the Yakama Indian Tribe claim the district’s unlined open canals waste water that could otherwise be used to help fish migrate.

The dispute escalated when the district’s directors voted July 3 to reject a plan to close the more than 20 miles of canals and convert to pressurized pipelines fed by wells.

The district’s more than 300 customers grow alfalfa and water gardens on spreads no bigger than 30 acres. The canals are ditches no more than 4 feet wide and less than a foot deep.

Jolley wears a T-shirt depicting a frog that says, “Save the Canals . . . and Me.”

The T-shirt is a trophy of another successful battle Jolley and others waged in court to oust former directors who favored the ecology department’s pressurized pipe proposal.

The new directors wrote ecology director Tom Fitzsimmons earlier last month outlining their concerns about the pressurized pipe system, particularly its projected costs and water rights guarantees.

District customers are assessed $60 per acre per year for water, director Mike Gage said. It is estimated that it would cost between $132 and $160 an acre to operate and maintain the pressurized pipe system.

Newkirk, the ecology official coordinating the project, said the agency has given the district until September to say whether it will embrace the estimated $6-million pipeline project.

If the district balks, the state could go to court and seek an enforcement order requiring the district to stop its wasteful water practices, he said.

Newkirk claims there is money available from the Bonneville Power Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to pay for about half of the project’s cost. Ecology would pick up the remaining tab, he said.

Should the district decide against the pressurized pipe system, its costs still will be higher, Newkirk predicted.

“What they don’t really understand is no matter what solution they choose, it’s not going to be cheap,” he said. “If they do not do the project, the Department of Ecology could issue an enforcement order.”