Tapped Out -- Running Out Of Water -- It's Hard To Believe, But A Major Crisis Confronts The Puget Sound Area

If it's drizzling outside - always a good possibility in Seattle in June - what you're about to read may be even harder to swallow:

The Puget Sound area is running short of water.

No, this isn't San Diego or Santa Barbara. Yes, the reservoirs in the Cascades filled to the brim last winter. No, there's no 1987-style drought on the horizon.

And yes, it still rains a lot here.

The weather hasn't changed; people have. There are more of us. And these days we expect to both have our water - for salmon, for kayaks - and drink it, too.

Christine Gregoire, director of the state Department of Ecology, calls water "the issue of the '90s . . . the most pressing problem we're going to have confronting us in the future." That from a state official whose portfolio includes air pollution, hazardous waste and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

The problem is most pressing on the leading edge of urbanization, in such places as East King County and the Kitsap Peninsula that draw their water from the ground. Population growth, environmental concerns and new state and federal requirements have squeezed all the air out of the cushion between demand and supply in some communities.

Supplies ran so low last summer in the Cascade View Water District, between Redmond and Carnation, that board Chairwoman Janice Vice went from house to house, sometimes turning water off at the meter.

"It isn't just us; it's everybody," Vice says. "It's global."

That includes some of the big regional water systems, such as Seattle and Tacoma. The rivers those systems dammed and diverted in the Cascade Mountains supplied abundant water for generations.

Now, planners say, the surplus those venerable sources provided for so long is being sucked dry by growth. And developing new sources of water won't be easy.

"The ground rules have changed - a lot," says Rosemary Menard, in charge of the Seattle Water Department's supply plan. "This whole idea that you can go up and build a big dam - we don't operate in that kind of world any more."

Wars over water, dating back to the last century, are both legion and legendary in the West. But Western Washington - Fungus Corners - has largely been spared.

No longer. Those who would tap more rivers to flush more toilets and water more lawns are locked in battle with those who argue that the rivers that pour into Puget Sound have given almost all they can.

Withdrawing more for human use will carry a steep price, they warn - not only in dollars, but in fish, recreational opportunities and, perhaps, a piece of the Northwest's soul.

"A lot of it is just values; that's what it comes down to," says Mike Williams of the Washington Environmental Council.

"Do we want trophy trout streams? Do we want white-water rafting? Or do we want more dams to feed more growth?"

State officials charged with resolving such disputes have searched for some middle ground since 1985, without success. Last fall, at a conference at Lake Chelan, the competing interests finally agreed to try writing water-allocation plans cooperatively, one basin at a time, without resorting to the courts.

The so-called Chelan Agreement was only a first step. Divisions remain deep. But a consensus already has emerged on some broad issues.

Water conservation, for one - the need for permanent reductions, not just temporary fixes in dry years. Odd as it might seem, some of the water-saving programs pioneered in drought-stricken California and arid Arizona soon will debut here.

State and local government officials, tribal fishermen, environmentalists and business leaders all say conservation must be emphasized, kicked up to the same lofty plane in the public's consciousness as energy conservation and garbage recycling.

Which raises another concern: fear from all sides that, because it rains here, the public won't understand - or will refuse to believe - the severity of the water crisis. Kaleen Cottingham, Gov. Booth Gardner's water adviser, calls it "the illusion of abundance."

"We need the people to understand that the water is finite," says Terry Williams, fisheries manager for the Tulalip Tribes. "We need to get across the concept that there's very little left."

But that can strain credulity.

"How do you tell the guy with water dripping off his ears that there's not enough water?" asks Jim Miller of the Federal Way Water and Sewer District.

A SUMMER PROBLEM

It does require some explaining.

The water-supply problem here is mostly a summer problem. Reservoirs can store only a fraction of the rain and snow that falls each winter in the mountains. Those reservoirs are at their lowest, and rainfall is most meager, at precisely the same time demand is highest.

Single-family homes account for most of the increased demand. And most of that extra water goes to keep lawns green.

Late summer is also when salmon need water in rivers to swim upstream to spawn. Robert Groncznack, superintendent of the Seattle Water Department, calls the season "white-knuckle time."

Not every city or water district is on the edge, even at white-knuckle time. Everett, for instance, says it has enough water available to last several more decades. But, overall, the region is in trouble, says Bob Wubbena, an Olympia consultant and member of the executive committee of the American Water Works Association.

Studies done by his firm suggest that if per capita consumption in King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties doesn't drop, and no new sources are developed, total peak demand will surpass supply by 2000 - and sooner in some places.

Hard to believe? Take a quick tour of King County's growth frontiers:

-- On Union Hill, east of Redmond, the private water association now serves 1,600 customers - twice the number it supplied five years ago. And the homes in the newer subdivisions are using three to four times more water in the summer than the older houses.

The association's well can't handle more customers, engineer John Phillips says. A new well should come on line this summer, but Union Hill's aquifer - the underground reservoir - is nearing capacity.

-- The Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District, east of Lake Sammamish, had 2,700 customers when manager Ron Little came to work there in 1981. Today it has 7,800. "We can experience a shortage in two, three years if we aren't successful in getting more wells," Little says.

The district has drilled a new well near Issaquah. But the aquifer may be threatened by leaking tanks at an Issaquah gas station. And the district's bid for a permit to use the new well is jeopardized by concern it could reduce summer flows in Issaquah Creek.

-- Both Sammamish Plateau and Union Hill say the long-term solution to their water woes is to tie into Seattle's system, which already serves 80 percent of King County's residents.

Almost all Seattle's water comes from the Cedar River, dammed in the early 1900s, and the South Fork of the Tolt, tapped in the 1960s. "We had a lot of excess capacity," says Menard, the Water Department planner, "and we've been living on that for a long, long time."

Now it's almost gone. Menard says average daily demand finally has caught up with average daily supply.

-- To the south, in fast-growing Federal Way, water and sewer district manager Jim Miller says the district can draw an average 11 million gallons per day from wells before its aquifer starts to dry up. In 1990, the district used almost that much - 10.2 million gallons per day.

With help from neighboring districts, "we figure we can get by until about 1995," Miller says.

-- To meet demand after 1995, Federal Way expects to tap a new pipeline Tacoma plans to build to carry more Green River water to Pierce and South King counties.

But Tacoma, which began diverting water from the Green in 1913 and which has been pushing for the second diversion and pipeline since 1979, still is several permits away from breaking ground. The Muckleshoot Tribe, state fisheries agencies, environmentalists and kayakers all have raised objections. "They're trying to run the Green River dry," says Tom Deschner of the Northwest Rivers Council.

The Muckleshoots still haven't forgotten that Tacoma's existing water project permanently blocked miles of upriver salmon-spawning habitat nearly 80 years ago.

The tribe and Tacoma are negotiating. But the depth and longevity of the dispute are symptomatic of the polarized state of water-resource planning in Washington today.

TRIBAL VETO POWER?

To accommodate growth, Seattle is considering developing a new source on the North Fork of the Tolt. Kitsap County, whose ground-water supplies are limited, is eyeing rivers across Hood Canal on the Olympic Peninsula.

But Terry Williams of the Tulalips maintains that, with the exception of the Skagit and, perhaps, the Snohomish, the Puget Sound basin's rivers have been tapped out, that they can't give more water without harming salmon and steelhead.

"We're not real anxious to say, `This is a surplus, you can take it,' " Williams says.

Under state law, it's the Department of Ecology's job to decide how much water must remain in rivers - and, by extension, how much more can be withdrawn. But the Ecology Department has established such standards in just 17 of the state's 62 basins. And it hasn't done any since 1985.

The Ecology Department suspended the program that year, after a particularly nasty fight over the Dosewallips, Duckabush and Hamma Hamma rivers on the Olympic Peninsula that highlighted the polarization of the parties, the complexity of the issues and the ambiguity of state water law.

The system wasn't working, Ecology Department officials say. They have spent six years searching for something better. "We have had gridlock in this state on water issues since 1985," says Cottingham, Gardner's aide.

It's no coincidence that the system collapsed shortly after federal judges gave Puget Sound tribes and their allies a powerful new weapon.

Building on the 1974 Boldt fishing-rights decision, courts held that 19th-century treaties that guaranteed tribal members the right to fish also implicitly obligated the government to protect salmon and steelhead habitat from environmental degradation.

That doctrine hasn't been tested in court yet. But it has raised widespread concern about possible tribal "veto power" over all kinds of development. It helped draw water utilities to the bargaining table, ultimately to Chelan.

And it is one reason why the water-conservation drumbeat is becoming more insistent. "We're not excited about giving municipalities more sources when they haven't taken a hard look at conservation yet," Terry Williams says.

If nothing else, utilities consultant Wubbena says, an aggressive water-conservation program now is a political necessity for his clients: "We're not going to be able to do new source development without conservation."

`GENTLE PERSUASION'

Water conservation isn't completely foreign to Western Washington. The Seattle Water Department has been promoting it since 1980. Bill inserts and newsletters preach its virtues.

Utility-sponsored theater troupes visit schools, staging skits. Emergency measures were ordered during the 1987 drought.

But utilities haven't been required to push conservation, so many haven't done much. The state's role has been minimal. And, for the most part, water systems have relied upon what the Ecology Department's Jerry Parker, who works with utilities to save water, calls "gentle persuasion."

That's changing. "The screw is being turned more and more on conservation," says Rich Siffert of the state Department of Health.

In 1989, the Legislature passed the first detailed water-conservation law in state history. Among other things, it ordered the Department of Ecology to reduce waste "to the maximum extent" practical. In response to that law, the Ecology Department and the state Department of Health have announced they will require conservation plans from cities and larger water districts, including those that serve most of Puget Sound, within the next five years.

Last year, the two state agencies published guidelines utilities must follow in writing those plans. The rules, not yet final, require larger systems to consider measures ranging from higher summer water rates to utility-financed installation of water-saving toilets and showerheads in customers' homes.

"We're flexible. It doesn't matter how they do it," Parker says. "The end result is what we're after."

STRESSING CONSERVATION

In some cases, utilities are finding conservation makes economic sense, that it's a cheaper than building a new dam. The Seattle Water Department's draft water-supply plan, for instance, anticipates conservation programs will provide enough "new" water to handle anticipated growth for the rest of the century.

Conservation takes many forms. Some utilities are considering pumping surplus river water into aquifers in winter, so it can be available for summer. Tacoma's conservation plan focuses mostly on plugging leaks and otherwise tightening the system.

Other programs hit closer to home. State officials and local utilities are studying what works in California and Arizona, borrowing ideas from such places as Santa Monica and Pasadena.

Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett and other local governments formed the Water Conservation Coalition of Puget Sound earlier this year, to share ideas and coordinate promotion. "We're just learning what works," says Holly Kean, a King County Council aide who works with the coalition.

Some utilities are offering rebates to homeowners who install low-flow toilets and showerheads. Others are working to reduce lawn-watering and promote water-saving landscaping. Still more are looking into using water more than once - diverting treated sewage to water golf courses, for example.

The push is on. "Half the battle is to make people in Western Washington aware water supply is a problem," says Jerry Parker. But two questions linger:

First, just how much water can conservation save? State law and the Department of Ecology's proposed rules set no targets.

Environmental and tribal leaders, citing California examples, say aggressive conservation efforts can save 30 percent or more. That's higher than most local governments are aiming.

The King County Council has ordered suburban water systems to trim per capita consumption 4 percent by 1995 and 8 percent by 2000. Wubbena says 10 percent is probably the limit.

Conservation will only delay the need for new sources, he says - it won't preclude them.

Then there are the inextricable ties between water and growth, ties strengthened by the Growth Management Act the Legislature approved last year. It requires builders to document the availability of water to serve their projects before they get permits.

Without water, there can be no growth. And some environmentalists, while promoting conservation, worry that, without stronger land-use laws, conservation programs that work will simply provide more water to fuel still more sprawl.

"Do I have to save water just so they can turn around and sell it to someone else?" asks Cheryl Miller of the Sierra Club.

Wubbena says the clamor for more water can't be ignored. "Unless we want to put up a fence around Western Washington, we're going to have to deal with this." ------------------------------