SEATTLE — Spurred by a recent King County Superior Court ruling striking down parts of existing water usage law, conservation groups have challenged Washington State University’s water rights.
Specifically, the groups object to the university’s use of underground water to maintain a brand new 18-hole golf course in the dry, rolling hills near the Idaho border.
The Palouse Water Conservation Network, the Palouse Group Sierra Club and Pullman resident Scotty Cornelius filed the lawsuit Thursday in Whitman County Superior Court. The lawsuit names WSU, the Washington Department of Ecology and the state Pollution Control Hearings Board.
The filing is both an appeal of an April decision by the Pollution Control Hearings Board that upheld WSU’s rights to the water, and a new lawsuit stemming from last month’s decision by a King County Superior Court judge that struck down parts of the Municipal Water Law, the law governing water usage in Washington state.
The lawsuit continues a battle that conservation groups have been waging against the state and the university over the use of the water from the Grande Ronde aquifer, which conservationists say provides drinking water for more than 50,000 residents in Washington and Idaho.
The conservation groups also say water levels in the aquifer are dropping by 1.5 feet per year.
“We simply don’t have the water to squander on a golf course,” said Cornelius, who was identified as a water activist and private well owner.
The legal wrangling in Pullman is yet another chapter in the ongoing saga of the Municipal Water Law, which has been controversial since the Legislature passed it in 2003. Environmentalists, the state and utilities all have disagreed about the Legislature’s intent.
Generally, the measure was designed to provide more certainty and flexibility for cities, utilities and developers that draw water from streams and aquifers while also requiring more conservation.
Historically, to obtain a right to a certain amount of water drawn from a stream or aquifer, a party had to put that water to good use, such as by serving a home or irrigating a field. If the water right holder didn’t use the water, he risked losing the right to use it.
Parts of the Municipal Water Law worked directly against the historic precedent.
In June, King County Superior Court Judge Jim Rogers said lawmakers overstepped their bounds by redefining some entities as “municipal water suppliers” and allowing cities and developers to have a right to water they had not used.
On Monday, the state attorney general’s office appealed the Rogers’ decision to the state Supreme Court.
Rachael Osborn, a lawyer representing the conservation groups and Cornelius, said WSU was retroactively redefined as a “municipality” — giving it the right to water it had not used. Osborn argues that under Rogers’ ruling, WSU should not have that water right.
In 2004, WSU applied to the Department of Ecology to consolidate its water rights, a practice that allows WSU to pump water through any combination of its seven wells. The state approved the application, but conservation groups. Last April, the Pollution Control Hearings Board upheld WSU’s rights to the water.
“We do not believe that the recent court ruling in King County will have any impact on the consolidation of our water rights, but that apparently will be an issue that will be answered through litigation,” said James Tinney, a WSU spokesman.
WSU officials have said the water rights consolidation had nothing to do with the golf course, and was necessary to water the campus as a whole. The university also says its water use has declined dramatically over the last two decades.
The 18-hole golf course, scheduled to open in August, replaces a 9-hole course.
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