Victories for Water & the Public Trust

In our fourteen-year history, CELP has achieved significant victories for Washington's rivers and streams. To accomplish this goal, CELP has:

•Acted as a watchdog on over 5,000 applications to withdraw water from Washington's rivers and streams.

•Ensured that enough water was in Rock Creek for threatened Puget Sound Chinook to return for the first time in over 15 years.

•Upheld important Endangered Species Act protections for endangered salmon in the Methow river basin.

•As a result of CELP's actions, for the last three summers irrigators in the Walla Walla River Basin have left water in the Walla Walla River during the summer for the first time in more than a century.

•CELP was instrumental in launching two new nonprofit organizations dedicated to improving river and stream flows, and improving conservation efforts in Washington: The Washington Water Trust and the Partnership for Water Conservation.

•CELP filed a petition with the Department of Ecology asking it to close the Columbia River System to further water diversions unless an applicant can improve river flows. American Rivers, Friends of the Earth, WaterWatch of Oregon, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, and the Institute for Fisheries Resources also signed the petition.

CELP has also released several readable, comprehensive reports detailing problems with Washington's water management and proposing ways to resolving these problems:

•Water Is Worth It: Making the Case for a Water Management Fee.

•Columbia River Vision: Strong and Sustainable Management of Washington's Waters.

•Dereliction of Duty: Washington's failure to protect our shared waters

•Washington's Wa$ted Water: How our lax efficiency laws waste millions of gallons and millions of dollars

•Six-Packs for Subdivisions: The Cumulative Effects of Washington's Domestic Well Exemption

•Fish Out of Water: Intersections Between the Endangered Species Act and Water Rights in the Pacific Northwest