Mayors of small towns and cities across Whatcom County shared a letter Wednesday advocating for more state focus on short-term water management in the wake of extreme floods and drought throughout 2021.
The letter, sent to directors at several state agencies including the Department Ecology, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Department of Agriculture (WSDA) and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, was signed by representatives from Blaine, Everson, Ferndale, Lynden, Nooksack and Sumas.
“We are concerned that the attention of your agencies is focused on other priorities and issues of concern to you, while the crisis we face with water management in the Nooksack River basin goes virtually unnoticed,” the mayors said in the letter.
“Instead of focusing on the entirely predictable twin problems of too much water in the river and streams at one time of the year, and too little at other times, your agencies have focused on issues that will do little to nothing to protect our salmon runs, protect water for our farms and citizens and protect our communities against these recurring low instream flows and devastating floods.”
Spurred by a perceived lack of action from state agencies following 2021’s extreme summer drought and November flooding, the mayors requested meetings and a reprioritization of immediate solutions in the Nooksack drainage, rather than continued focus on the ongoing process of water-rights adjudication.
Adjudication is the legal process for determining claims to water, which has been a long and contentious battle in Whatcom County, with Indigenous communities, farmers and other interests fighting for priority.
Legally, water rights claims are prioritized from oldest to newest. Currently, the Nooksack Indian Tribe and the Lummi Nation have the oldest claims in the region, though state administrators don’t know how much claim the tribes legally have.
The adjudication process, just getting started in the Nooksack River Basin, could take years.
“Does focusing on questions on who has the right to water make sense in responding to this crisis?” the letter asked. “Does spending potentially decades and multiple millions of dollars on litigation regarding water rights make sense in the light of these twin problems and the growing crisis?”
Ferndale mayor Greg Hansen said he is concerned about the state’s response to November’s floods and frustrated with the lack of attention on Whatcom County despite its continued growth.
“The city of Ferndale, along with all the cities on the Nooksack, really share those concerns about the incredibly slow bureaucratic process in doing river management work,” he said. “These problems needed to be solved a long time ago, but Whatcom County seems to be forgotten.”
The state’s slow response is particularly felt in Ferndale, where Hansen says levee development has been in the pipeline for years. Design work was supposed to be completed in 2021 but is still nowhere near ready.
Though he signed it, Hansen had reservations about the content of the letter; particularly, he noted, the absence of Indigenous voices.
“Any work being done in the Nooksack River Basin around flood mitigation has to include both Nooksack and the Lummi tribes, and this letter did not include them,” he said. “Their voices are required. They have to have a seat at the table for anything to get done.”
But other local mayors have grown tired of waiting for the adjudication process, and are ready to explore other solutions.
“There’s been a lot of talk over the last 50 years about doing something,” said Lynden mayor Scott Korthuis. “The reality is, there hasn’t been much action other than doing some levee work and doing some studies on the river.”
The flood damage alone will cost Whatcom County $100 million to $150 million in repairs, Korthuis said, and will cost Canadians just over the border another $1 billion.
“There’s not going to be one magic bullet that fixes this. We need to come up with a comprehensive management plan so that we can mitigate some of this flooding that’s destroying people’s homes.” — Kevin Hester, Nooksack mayor
“The time to do something is now,” he said. “The damage that was done in this most recent round was significant for us and our Canadian friends. All of these solutions will take time.”
Korthuis and Hansen are interested in exploring several solutions that could solve both drought and flooding concerns, including traditional dams, increased levee work, riverbed sediment management and managed aquifer recharge projects like the one in Lynden.
“A levee is just a short-term solution that could help, but we do think it will take multiple solutions to really solve this problem,” Korthuis told CDN. “A levee, sediment removal, water storage, all of these things are going to have to come into play.”
Other mayors agreed.
“There’s not going to be one magic bullet that fixes this,” Nooksack mayor Kevin Hester said. “We need to come up with a comprehensive management plan so that we can mitigate some of this flooding that’s destroying people’s homes.”
Following November’s floods, Hester said his community pushed for sediment removal from the river.
“The big outcry immediately after the floods from everyone was ‘you need to dredge the river. You need to mine gravel. You need to do this,’” Hester said. “Well, there’s a multitude of different issues that are affecting not just the river, but our entire water system here.”
The Department of Ecology has already scheduled a meeting with the mayors, set to take place this month. A DOE spokesperson said the agency is committed to working with all interested parties in the Nooksack basin on water supply issues and floodplain management. Other state agencies in receipt of the letter indicated they also are in communication with the mayors.
Whatcom Family Farmers, a local farm advocacy organization, expressed support for the letter on Thursday.
“We thank the Whatcom small cities for their candor in calling out the state’s backward approach that will serve only to worsen the dangerous water management failures already hammering our communities, our salmon and our farms,” said Fred Likkel, Whatcom Family Farmers’ executive director.
“We have publicly urged immediate action on key areas of needed improvement, including sediment management, water storage, river fixes and farmland protection. Instead, we get excessive regulation, heavy-handed litigation and proposed legislation that would decimate our farms. All being done without any realistic efforts to engage the community in collaborative, common-sense solutions.”
