For CELP in the news, click here.

With CELP’s help, dryland wheat farmer Randy Jones (Five Corners Family Farmers) challenges Washington State over policies to give away unlimited water for stockwatering.

Industrial feedlots are using a controversial loophole in state water law, threatening fragile aquifers and existing water users statewide.

For CELP’s work to help the Five Corners Family Farmers and to close the stockwater loophole, click here.

With CELP’s help, rancher Melissa Bates (Aqua Permanente) challenges Washington State over mismanagement of groundwater in the Upper Yakima River Basin.  

Currently more than 7,000 permit-exempt wells are being drilled EACH YEAR in Washington state.  Exempt wells are fueling rural sprawl, and used in unlimited quantities for feedlots and dairies.  Because these wells are not subject to regulation, there is no control over when and where they are drilled.  There is also no control over the impact of these wells on other water users and on hydraulically connected streams. 

For more on the work of CELP and Aqua Permanente to reform Washington’s exempt well policy, click here.

Water is restored to Spokane Fall for first time in nearly a century. 

CELP and Sierra Club - partnering with the U. of W. Berman Environmental Law Clinic - on May 5 announced a settlement of our appeal that will restore water to Spokane Falls.

The national significance: the legal basis for this appeal is the federal Clean Water Act that protects not just water quality, but also protects water quantity flowing in rivers (and waterfalls).

Key to the settlement was Avista's agreement to restore the bed of Spokane Falls, damaged by construction of mills and sewers.  CELP and Sierra Club will partner with Avista during the next several years to restore this beautiful waterfalls.

For more on CELP’s and Sierra Club’s work to restore Spokane Falls, click here.

Reforming FDR’s Columbia Basin Project & management of Grand Coulee Dam.

President Roosevelt’s personal decision to build the world’s largest dam at Grand Coulee -- partly to divert water and create the nation’s largest federal irrigation project -- continues to impact the Pacific Northwest.  FDR’s decision devastated salmon runs and Indian cultures that depend on the salmon.

CELP is working to reshape FDR’s historic decision by challenging the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s management of Grand Coulee Dam and latest water grab from the Columbia River.

For more on CELP’s work, click here.

Closing the

Stockwater Loophole

New

see: Kittitas Water Update and letter on Exempt Well MOA

Reforming

Exempt Well Abuses

Restoring water

to Waterfalls

Reforming FDR’s Columbia River legacy

(US Bureau of Reclamation  photo)

Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC)