Sunny news in region as water worries ease

On the same March day that Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels triggered the city's drought plan, it began to rain.

A few days of rain weren't going to reverse months of dry weather that had left mountains bare of snow, Nickels cautioned.

But the rain kept falling.

Now, major Western Washington water suppliers are sounding increasingly confident that they have dodged the drought bullet.

Seattle water forecasts show it would take a freakish bout of dry weather in the coming months to create problems for the city's system, which also serves much of eastern King County. A Tacoma official predicted that city will cancel its drought advisory by early July unless things take a major turn for the worse.

A statewide drought declaration, issued by Gov. Christine Gregoire in March, will remain in effect. And Seattle is continuing to urge residents to conserve water, in keeping with its drought plan.

But "we're feeling a lot more comfortable," said Guillemette Regan, strategic adviser to the director of Seattle Public Utilities. "If we end the month of May even just where we are now, we're just feeling a lot better about things."

In most of Western Washington, precipitation was above normal for March and April and is on course to exceed the average for May. By contrast, February precipitation was less than a third of average, according to the National Weather Service.

State officials caution that a record-low snowpack still threatens to take a toll on wildlife and residents in Eastern Washington, which relies more on winter snow than spring rains for water.

Some Eastern Washington farmers are letting their fields go unplanted this year, thinking they can make more money leasing their water rights to the state for other uses. Several irrigation districts are expecting less than half their usual ration of water for farmers.

"It's going to be a tough summer," said Tom Monroe, operations manager for the Roza Irrigation District southeast of Yakima, which serves 1,700 landowners.

His district shut off the water for much of April and part of early May to save for later in the year. Now water is running at roughly a quarter of the usual level in the district's canals, which mostly irrigate fruit orchards, grapes and hops.

Still, the rains have brought a modicum of relief there. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which controls dams in the area, recently told the district to expect 38 percent of its usual water allotment, up from a 34 percent prediction in April.

The Legislature has allocated $8.2 million for drought relief, and Department of Ecology spokesman Curt Hart said some of that money will buy water from farmers who aren't using their share to give it to others who need it.

Hart said some of the money may also go to keep water in the rivers for fish. While there may now be enough water for drinking and watering lawns in Western Washington, preserving fish habitat is another matter.

There is little or no snowpack to feed free-running streams, which face record-low levels this summer, the National Water and Climate Center predicted this week. Dry conditions in 2001 forced state biologists to build a plastic streambed several hundred feet long to help bull trout get from Lake Kachess to a nearby stream.

Low water can make it harder for small salmon to migrate downstream, and for spawning adults to return. It can also cut off access to side channels that shield fish from the main current, or strand fish in pools. Those problems usually emerge later in the year, said Steve Keller, drought-response coordinator for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Seattle is confident enough about its water supply that it's now leaning toward resuming voluntary releases of water from a reservoir to aid fish in the Cedar River, Regan said.

But Seattle officials caution that people should still try to save water. Their predictions about how much water people will use hinges partly on the expectation that people will continue to conserve. Also, the computer models they use to forecast the coming months rely on historical trends, and this year is so unusual that the model may not reflect what will really happen, Regan said.

"We should still be cautious about it. It doesn't mean go out and wash your car every day," she said.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com