Auburn looks at options
Published 10:52 am Thursday, December 11, 2008
By Dennis Box-The Courier-Herald
Show me the water.
Water rights, lake levels and in-stream flows were the talk of the town at the Dec. 4 meeting of the Lake Tapps Task Force. Members discussed and debated the amount of water going down the river, staying in the lake and potentially filling water bottles for folks living in Bellevue in the year 2025 if the drinking water rights for Lake Tapps are approved and not challenged.
While most of the meeting brought what members expected, Carolyn Robertson, government relations manager for the city of Auburn, added a wrinkle to the story.
Robertson said Auburn and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe are continuing to pursue legal action against the issuance of the Lake Tapps water rights to Puget Sound Energy. The city and tribe appealed the initial drinking water rights draft issued to PSE in 2003.
PSE intends to sell the water rights and the lake to Cascade Water Alliance, a non-profit company that supplies water to cities on the Sammamish Plateau.
“(Auburn) has no choice but to explore our legal obligation,” Robertson said. “We are back to square one.”
Auburn Mayor Pete Wilson, who was not at the meeting, said his city will run out of water by 2011.
The mayor said the “largest aquifer in western Washington” is found beneath Auburn, but the state Department of Ecology will not allow the city to tap into it because it is connected to the White River basin, which is closed to further water withdrawal.
“All other water rights are pre-empted by them (PSE) getting theirs issued,” Wilson said. “We are required by the GMA (growth management act) to take in growth. The agency is demanding it, but the other agency is not letting us get water. Sooner or later these two agencies will collide and we will be caught between.”
Wilson said the city asked to tap into the aquifer until Cascade would begin its withdrawal from Lake Tapps in 2025, but Ecology turned the city down.
The mayor said Cascade is trying to help the city get water, but Ecology is against the aquifer option.
Auburn may be able to purchase water from Cascade if the Lake Tapps water rights are approved, but the price and infrastructure construction is an issue.
Dennis Box can be reached at dbox@cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/courierherald.
