Statement by Rob Masonis of American Rivers on Drought in the Northwest
This story is courtesy of Earth Share organization American Rivers
The people of the Pacific Northwest have the power to make the impacts of this year's drought more or less severe. Whether you are an urban Seattleite or an eastern Washington farmer, we can all take positive steps to ensure we have enough water for people, salmon, and healthy rivers.
The policy, scientific, and technological solutions required to solve our region's water problems exist today. The missing ingredient has been the will to employ them.
Drought is the result of weather patterns and climate change, but wasting water using inefficient irrigation practices, replacing forests and wetlands with pavement, and failing to use cost-effective water conservation measures in our cities and towns makes the situation even worse.
Droughts would be less painful and less expensive if our irrigation practices were more efficient, if sensible water conservation measures were taken such as using water efficient appliances and landscaping with drought resistant plants, if water were priced to encourage lower consumption, and if cities and suburbs treated storm water as a resource instead of a waste product.
This drought should serve as an incentive for counties across the region to guide development in ways that ensures residents' wells don't go dry and that leaves water in rivers for salmon fishing and river recreation, which are key components of many local economies in the Northwest. Future droughts could have an even more severe economic impact if communities do not adopt responsible development practices that protect sensitive areas like forests, aquifers and wetlands.
On the Snake and Columbia rivers, American Rivers is taking action in the courts and elsewhere to help river communities avoid catastrophic losses to the salmon and steelhead runs that help support local economies and quality of life. All river users will feel pain this year, including salmon-dependent communities. It is only fair that the burden is shared among all river users, so that communities, whether they benefit from irrigated agriculture, salmon fishing, hydropower, or all three, know that the region's response to this drought is a fair and equitable one.
American Rivers is open to considering new water storage projects that would not significantly degrade our rivers, but we believe that in many cases there are less expensive and less environmentally harmful alternatives available to meet our water supply needs. Before committing limited public resources to building new storage facilities, the need to increase water supply must be clearly established, all alternatives available to meet that need should be considered, such as conservation and efficiency measures and market-based solutions, and the principle of least-cost planning should be used in selecting alternatives.
