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it is one of the most beautiful areas of Washington state shall land counties.

Icicle Creek watershed from the Alpine Lakes Wilderness to Leavenworth and all the recreation, agricultural and tourism hotspots in between.

but there's a problem, and I'm sure it comes as no surprise that the problem is water.

tonight, we hear from members of a group that has been working for a decade to solve the water problem and preview a new film that documents the strategy for combating climate change, which is sure to make Icicle Creek water even harder to come by in the future.

The story of the Icicle Creek work group is next on Northwest now.

Who would have ever thought we'd have a water problem in a place like Chelan County surrounded by the High Cascades?

Well, the east side has always been a little drier.

But then when we add in the water needed for acres of pears and apples, the water needed to accommodate the growth in Leavenworth and the water needed to try to preserve a remnant of the bull trout, Chinook salmon and rare West Slope cutthroat trout populations.

You can start to see the problem.

For years, litigation was the order of the day as irrigators, environmental groups, local governments and tribes competed for an increasingly scarce resource.

But problems weren't really getting solved that way.

So the icicle workgroup was formed in hopes of finding a way to stretch the region's most scarce resource.

A new film documents that problem and the solutions.

Here's a preview.

Check out this river.

It's full of water, right?

Well, sort of.

There's a little more to the story.

This is the icicle watershed.

It's a pretty beautiful place tucked in the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains near the Bavarian themed town of Leavenworth with epic views, crystal clear water and diverse wildlife.

You could say it's magical.

The Icicle Creek in this area, the one that's a problem area, is continues to be an important part of our not only our history, but also our special relationship to the salmon.

What's unique about the icicle watershed is that all of the headwaters come from the Alpine Lakes wilderness area.

It's one of the most popular wilderness areas in the region.

It is truly a glorious area.

So as you might guess, settlers came and the communities here grew.

Farmers began to grow crops like apples and pears.

People visited and moved here to play in the incredible outdoors.

The demand for water got higher and higher.

There's a lot of competing uses for water.

Do you have ice sculptures in irrigation district, which is feeding our crucial, thriving agricultural industry?

And you have the city of Leavenworth.

The majority of our water comes from the icicle and has for years and years and years.

And you have the fish hatchery, which is, you know, essential for making up for the the damage to the native fish that were done by Grand Coulee Dam.

The salmon do have a right to complete their their life cycle in the manner that that was prescribed for them.

That includes habitat, that includes clean water, cold water.

The greatest thing they want more than anything is for my grandchildren to be able to fish and their grandchildren to be able to fish.

So there's lots of important big water users and not enough water.

So what do you do when you're running out of water?

Take it to the judicial branch of our government.

Naturally, litigation, litigation between the tribes and the county, between the irrigation districts and environmental groups.

One of the things that happened to Leavenworth some years ago was the partment of Ecology took away some of our water rights.

It was very challenging.

We had lawsuits year in and year out for many years after a lot of getting nowhere.

Some people started to wonder if there was a better way.

Basically, litigation is all about determining a winner and a loser.

Working cooperatively is about how do we all come out as winners.

Maybe it's better to if we can cooperate rather than litigate.

All the farmers, irrigators, NGOs, agencies and tribes decide to settle things in a different way.

They all wanted the same thing a healthy watershed with enough water for everyone.

So they formed the icicle work with the You can see the entire film right here on Cbbc on Friday, December 1st at 7 p.m.. And to learn more about the Icicle Work Group and to see the film online, just go to icicle strategy dot com.

Joining us now are Melissa Downes, policy lead for the Department of Ecology at Columbia River Office School and County Commissioner Shawn Smith, president of Herndon Orchards and a director of the Icicle and Chastain Irrigation District, Daryl Herndon and Davis Yellow Ash.

Washington's representing the Yakima Nation.

Melissa, I want to start with you.

I know you could go for an hour on the history of how this group formed, but what was the problem?

What did the group what problem did the group solve and how was it brought together?

Well, the problem, if you're familiar with any, you know, thing in the world of water, is litigation.

There were many parties in the basin that were litigating and we were really looking for a non litigious pathway to solve water resource and water supply problems.

So in 2012, the Department of Ecology and SRL and County and CO convened what's now the icicle workgroup, inviting those that are either water users or those that had water resource management interest in the basin to come talk about, hey, what's, what's going on and how can we solve problems of today but in the future as well.

And an important point, this isn't a couple of guys in a room.

This is 20 stakeholder groups, right?

I mean, this is there's a lot of angles to this, correct.

Federal, state, local, environmental, agricultural, tribal interests coming to the table.

Shawn, you're a young guy, which is a good thing for you.

So I'm going to ask you to reach back a little bit into your history and your knowledge of L.A. County back when, you know, the fish were running freight.

There was no water problem back when irrigators first showed up.

And we'll talk to Darryl a little bit about this.

It really wasn't an apparent problem.

It was a it was the middle of nowhere back then.

What changed in the intervening decades when it comes to the development of the county and cities and growth?

What happened?

Well, I think the fact that we got discovered as a place that people want to be and when that discovery happens, it turns into a situation of supply and demand and what we've been confronting lately is the fact that we truly are running out of water for the proposed development that's coming forward.

And we're wanting to do everything we can to protect the county's resources, but yet still provide the ability for people that want to come here, visit here, live here, that the water, it seems to be the linchpin.

yeah, I think that's true all across the intermountain in the American West for sure.

Darrell, interesting perspective from the from the irrigators and the growers over there.

Back when that started, there was no concern about growth or any problems.

It was the middle of nowhere.

There is plenty of water.

Let's plant some acres.

Nobody cares.

They're not going to build vacation homes over here.

Ever talk?

Talk a little bit about that history and how did how did growers and irrigators kind of step away from their position a little bit about, hey, folks, we were here first, so don't be putting a straw on our river.

Yeah, but in times past, the way none of these concerns were apparent to us.

But as the years have gone on and a big part of it is a little march and lawsuits that have come about for different uses of the water and realize that, you know, it's nothing's guaranteed.

And if we want to keep our rights to the water, then we've got to get a place at the table and and be there to defend them.

DAVIS Of course, when we talk about water rights to somebody who's a Native American, that's probably borders on the on the funny to some degree because, you know, you were there your people were there a long time prior to irrigators and developers and anybody else who has a has a has an interest there.

With that said, in more recent history, I was interested to learn how how did this water situation start and the fish migration problem started.

It wasn't in the icicle, it was downstream, right?

Yes.

In 1988 there was an agreement called a Grand Coulee Agreement.

And included in that agreement was what you'd heard about the mitigating issues.

And so when the Confederate tribes and bands of the elimination, the 14 which were not Japan, which I am a descendant of, of that area, reserved a fishery there of six square miles and eventually the railroad and the city of Leavenworth.

Eventually, that's where that was the land.

That was the the smaller reservation.

And so but within the treaty is the reserved right to harvest that all unusual and occurs some places which even though it's off the reservation, it's in our what is called our Northern Treaty territory.

But I was interested to learn it was the actually the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, which I didn't until I got my map out.

I didn't really understood how it connected.

Well, of course, there was no fish passage at Grand Coulee when they constructed it, right.

And so now you're talking about the losses of the migrating salmon, which.

Right.

You know, extend all the way up into the headwaters into Canada.

Yeah.

So and how that affects our other fisheries within the basin.

So these were concerns that we had as far as having continued to have the ability to harvest an article is one of those usually I'm accustomed.

And so the the idea of coming together with with other entities, other groups that have basically facing the same concern is that how do we manage the water in the best way possible, not only to meet the needs of of people in the area, but also on the needs of the.

For instance, the hatchery was the antiquated hatchery was losing a lot of water for no reason.

And so that's one of the main projects that that the working group focused on on the mitigation side.

Anybody can chime in on this one.

Do you feel that the Icicle Work Group is an example to other watersheds of how what can happen to maybe step back, bring people to.

I feel like there's a trend that that's happening anyway in salmon recovery, I kind of feel like there's been a lot of I think people are coming to the realization that that's really the only way to make it work, but that's my opinion.

What's your opinion?

Do you feel like this is an example to others?

Well, Department of Ecology and through the office of Columbia River, we are working on in several basins the Yakima based on the Icicle Creek watershed, the Walla Walla Basin to do in fact, this integrated water resource management planning and implementation to bring about ecosystem restoration, boost instream flows, provide water supply reliability and really build that climate resilient future on water supplies.

Well, talk a little bit about giving the gift, because that's part of this work group.

Shawn, what is the county giving?

And I would guess one of the things is water meters, because I'm sure that went over very poorly.

I don't even live there.

And I and I'm guessing that wasn't well-received.

So maybe you're giving a little.

And what are you getting in return?

Well, I think in the art of the deal, you have to have compromise and you have to be able to work together.

And if you stand to too firm, you're not going to get anything done from either side.

When we're looking at the fact that the water is in the ground, in our case, you know, I live on a piece of property with the private.

Well, the last thing I want to see happen is a water meter be put on my private.

Well, it is that something is going to be needed in the in the future.

Do not know.

We hope not.

And hopefully through this work together with the the working group, that we're able to not have to go to that extreme.

But when we're looking at commercial uses, that's one way that we can look at Is there a wasteful situation that needs to be stopped or slowed down so that you can at least bring awareness to the fact that the water is not being utilized to its fullest capacity, whether it be, you know, in a restaurant situation or like Darryl has in the irrigation side of things, it's not being used wisely.

Is it going to impact new and future permitting?

I think it will definitely impact it where we're right now running out of water.

And one instance is in Kashmir and that watershed coming out of the Mission Creek area.

We've only got a small handful of building permits even left that we can issue as a county.

And of course, we want to see that development done, but done responsibly so that we don't use up the resources that are so limited.

Darryl You guys, in my estimation of just doing the research on this, look like you're giving in terms of having to make some pretty substantial investments in your irrigation technology and putting in drains and plugging up leaks in, you know, in the flumes and really having to spend some serious bucks.

What are you getting out of it?

Talk a little bit about that investment and then what you're getting out of it.

Yes, Well, the main result of the things that we're doing is to guarantee a consistent supply of water to carry us through the year in As far as in the orchards, the new irrigation systems that are going in are much more efficient.

Low volume, low pressure type sprinkler heads use the water a lot more efficiently than than the older systems did.

So it's kind of just evolving with the times as the technology has improved.

We've tried to adapt it to be able to use it in the orchards.

Is there a savings that will come with that eventually?

Like if you cost it out over ten years, it's hey, it was a pain now because there's a lot of capital investment from our members, but ten years from now, it actually it actually turns into our favor.

Is that true at all or.

I think yes, I believe to a certain extent that does happen.

The new systems require less labor.

You know, that we we still have to do our maintenance in and of the systems.

But in in time, I think we use less labor and we get better results from the water.

So it might be negligible, but it's it's valuable that we're doing it just to protect the, the water that we have.

DAVIS One might make the argument that, you know, you your people already gave at the office, which was with the decimation of the fish runs.

What are you getting out of this?

What is the value that comes not from being a litigant, but a participant in this process?

Well, I think it's a part of wanting to get results.

You know, a leader once told me that we could be for whatever, clean air, safer streets.

But but what have you accomplished?

And so I think what this working group does is the accomplishments that have been made, and that will continue to be made as long as, you know, we focus on what was just mentioned, was making sure that the water there's adequate water supply.

And so in the streamflow, like in the rivers, like during the drought season, the 60 CFS.

Yeah.

And then when an average of the mean but over 100 CFS cubic feet per second and the goal is 200.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we want to be able to have have that just what other panelists describe, you know, good good ability to not not waste the water.

Yeah.

And so that's one of the main focus that we have of the five projects is the Leavenworth Hatchery, which, you know, is undergoing a reconstruction right now.

So those those are things that, as was earlier stated, you know, back in the day, I, I come from a policy background, you know, the tribal council also chief of police for 17 years.

So I know the value of collaboration and solving complex problems.

And so that was back in the day when the word was litigation.

But that's we've we've come a long ways in saying, you know, there are other ways to and having more water and producing more fish obviously does nothing but help the fishery and tribal interests in that regard.

So here I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit.

Anybody can chime in on this.

We reach our goal now.

We have instream flows during the tough summer and fall months when normally that river, that icicle Creek, is down to almost nothing.

We now have 200 cubic feet per second running through it and things actually went better than they thought they were going to.

We got to 50, sometimes pushing 300.

It depends on on how things are looking, what guardrails in place from coming in and and the county saying, well, we could put 300 more houses on the ground and irrigators saying, well, I'm going to plant 500 more acres.

Yeah, good for us.

And the fish producers saying, well guess what, we're going to double the size of a hatchery and being right back in the same situation ten or 15 years from now.

What kind of is am I overstating that?

Am I worried for no reason?

Or I'm kind of looking at the history of, for instance, building freeways.

You know, we we tend to grow to capacity.

What guardrails are in place, Anybody go?

Well, I think from a county standpoint, you know, we have the fact that we have building codes and we have zones and different capacities that are already worked into our code that we have for our area.

But one of the big things that really limits that expansion is the fact that such a small percentage of our county is actually in private ownership, about 13%.

The balance, 87% is in federal control or state control.

So the sidebars or boards are kind of already in place when you look at how big can we grow?

And as locals, we don't want to grow out of control and end up turning into one of the suburbs of a bigger city.

But you know that if you put 300 vacation homes on the ground over there, luxury vacation homes for a million bucks a piece they'd sell in a week, they would sell, you'd come right over and buy them.

Absolutely.

We'd be happy to collect that sales tax and we'd be happy to collect that property tax.

So not super concerned about that, but it's just controlling that expansion in such a way that it is manageable and we don't consume the resources that we have.

And like you said, when you're talking about building freeways, we're just driving over here this morning saying they're almost finished with this freeway right now, but it's already at capacity.

yeah.

So they add another layer or they add another lane or another expansion.

Daryl Love the fruit growers love love the product you produce, but what's to keep you from going in plant and put down another 200 acres and putting us right back in the same situation?

Basically, all the land that can be farmed is being farmed.

Now there's not any additional acreage to be developed in the in the basin that we're talking about.

So the geography does it too.

When you're looking at how our valley is situated, we're up to the hills or is no shoulder room anywhere?

The benches are yeah, yeah.

We're we face a bigger threat from development and houses going in to existing orchard land.

But that's going now to production.

Okay.

It is as any provision Melissa in the law for that.

Or is that something the state's keeping an eye on to make sure that a bunch of growers who said, you know something, I'm 73 years old now, my kids don't want to farm, I'm building houses.

And you know, that happens to well, some of that will happen organically as interest change over time.

However, to answer your previous question about what what's in place to prevent additional opportunity or that water coming back out of stream is a lot of the water rights will require what's called a water right change going forward.

And we're going to be putting in-stream flow as a purpose of use on those water rights to help protect that benefit going forward.

So it's only if those flows are provable and consistent, sustainable, that that that makes some sense.

Habitat restoration strategies.

I'm just going to go through them here quickly.

You're doing all kinds of work on the side channels, riparian vegetation, blowing out boulders to make a more natural fish ladder up the creek, lining canals, monitoring, modernizing hatchery operations.

So there's a lot of that, a lot of work in support of what this working group is doing on the physical side to actually make it happen.

Here's another question I have.

What's to keep another NGO from coming in and saying, well, here's our perspective on this.

We're going to sue.

Now, maybe this working group isn't going to sue, but we are.

You know, Bob's Bob's concerned about fish NGO comes in to sue.

I don't feel like that's likely because they're going to see the success and not want to goof it up.

But is that just a risk we take or are there any is there any way to prevent that?

Or what are your thoughts on that?

And DAVIS You know, do you see outside groups wanting to get involved in this or the problem has been solved?

Well, and in my experience, that has happened.

And so we are very experienced in dealing with, you know, those kind of I would call it interference if something, you know, is benefiting or our fishery and everybody is understanding why it's important that when they put in the Grand Coulee Dam what it did and and so and then working with with our neighbors, I was I was telling our neighbors who said, Yakama Nation, we're not going anywhere and neither are you.

So, you know, we have to figure out ways to, you know, to make and sometimes at some group from New York.

Yeah I mean that's that's the thing they're not hip to this and all of a sudden you're defending again.

Yeah.

Last 2 minutes here, here you are working to do all this remediation, all this work to increase the water, the capacity of the watershed, which includes some storage.

Luckily on Icicle Creek, because this doesn't work without storage.

So while there is a move right now around the west to take storage out, I don't see that happening on Icicle Creek.

What I do see, however, is despite all your hard work climate change coming in to kick it in the knee.

So you you have you've built the infrastructure to get up to 200 CFS, but no, there's less rain and less snowpack because of climate change.

How can that be mitigated?

That's open for anybody?

Well, I think the science is telling us that the the snowpack may be changing.

We may be seeing more rain, but we're not actually seeing a decrease in water supply overall.

So that's the good news.

It's the re timing that we need to deal with.

And you're correct that storage is going to help mitigate that going forward.

Timing mean moving that water a little later into the season or it might run off sooner or year or.

Yeah.

And having that infrastructure.

So having instead of having the big wash in May June, we got some for July, August and September, correct?

Yeah.

What are your thoughts about climate change, John?

Well, I think that as we're making these adjustments at the reservoirs that we currently have, especially for the irrigation systems, you know, the more technology that we can put into place that is available now, we didn't have it, you know, 15, 100 years ago.

These things were designed.

So as we're coming up to speed with that technology, it makes it so that we can time it differently because every year is going to be different.

We might see this happening for five years and it's going to dip and we're going to see something for ten years.

But having the ability to quickly adjust to whatever is coming, pulled and release kind of fine tuning.

Yeah.

Otherwise we end up with a mud puddle up there that's an inch thick and, you know, an inch deep and mud underneath it.

So getting ahead of that and using the technology now, I think is a wise thing to do.

And then you're talking about the influences coming in from outside and saying you guys shouldn't be doing that in the wilderness.

Well, we have the right to do it in the wilderness because it was here before it was designated.

Yeah.

So should we make it as monitor as we can and make it as efficient as we can?

I think we should.

So who's going to stand in the way that monitors that?

And we when we pop those dams out of there, which is the hip thing to do in other watersheds?

Well, this watershed will cease to exist.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Good.

Well, great conversation, everybody.

I really appreciate you coming here to talk to our audience in western Washington a little bit about an East Slope issue.

But I think it's instructive and I think I hope people in other watersheds listen to this.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having us.

Thanks, Tom.

A few months ago, I spent a couple of days up in the Nooksack Watershed to produce our Northwest Now special, Breaking the Barriers.

I hope you'll check that out.

Under Northwest now saving the salmon tab at KB Etsy dot org.

The bottom line one consistent theme emerged on the Nooksack and it was the same thing I've heard all across western Washington covering this issue for years now.

Everybody is going to have to give a little, but in the end, we're all in this together when it comes to restoring salmon runs.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

Northwest now can be found on the web at kbtc dot org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest.

Now, a streamable podcast of this program is available under the northwest now tab at kbtc dot org and on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

That's going to do it for this edition of Northwest Now until Next Time.

I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.