The Walla Walla Water Management Initiative
Ecology’s offer is an attempt to generate real, protected water in the Walla Walla River by creating a cooperative alternative to traditional regulatory water management approaches which have limited effectiveness. Since junior water right holders typically are not served because allocated water rights exceed divertible supply, any relinquished water would go to the next junior water user and would not be protected in the river. Ecology’s offer is an attempt to overcome these challenges, create public benefit, and generate flows to support fish recovery while maintaining a thriving agricultural economy.
Center’s Contribution: Because the Water Management Initiative represents a new and untested alternative to current water management, those involved in the effort—irrigators, tribal leaders, municipalities, environmentalists, and others in the Walla Walla Basin, in concert with Washington Department of Ecology and others—asked the William D. Ruckelshaus Center to conduct independent research that would inform their efforts to design an effective and locally appropriate water management system to achieve instream flow targets.
The Center’s report describes the purposes, goals, and components of the Water Management Initiative as currently conceived by those in the basin and provides insights and experiences from similar efforts elsewhere. Through extensive research and consultation with a broad range of people familiar with water management, water rights, and other relevant concepts, the Center identified and examined eight innovative environmental management efforts in the United States and internationally that provide insights on specific components of the Water Management Initiative. The report describes those examples and highlights structures, mechanisms and practices that may be relevant to the goals of the Initiative.