September to December 2026 Edition
Panel 1: 2025 Challenges of Yakima Perspective/Retrospective
Panelists: Panelists: Urban Eberhart (Kittitas Reclamation District), Brandon Parsons (American Rivers), Joe Blodgett (Yakama Nation), Larry Mattson (Ecology, Office of Columbia River), Arden Thomas (Kittitas County)
Speaking: Arden Thomas. Seated from left Larry Mattson, Brandon Parsons, Joe Blodgett, Urban Eberhard. Photo credit: Tom Ring
The panel reflected on the extraordinary challenges of the 2025 water year in the Yakima Basin and how the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan (YBIP) continues to guide collaborative action in the face of drought, flood, and long‑term hydrologic change. Panelists emphasized that the basin is still in Phase 1 of the 30‑year plan, yet collaboration has already proven essential for navigating increasingly volatile conditions. The Yakima Basin supports a $4.5 billion agricultural economy and includes 464,000 irrigated acres, with the Yakama Nation holding the largest farmland base in the basin. Much of the basin’s water infrastructure was built before the 1940s, and panelists noted that the whiplash between extreme drought and atmospheric river flooding in 2025 exposed both vulnerabilities and opportunities for modernization. They stressed that collaboration, putting everyone in the same room, educating one another, and working from a shared set of facts, was the only way to move past decades of litigation and toward creative, durable solutions. As one panelist put it, “you cannot be creative if you are not talking and are fighting,” underscoring the basin’s shift from conflict to cooperation.
Panelists walked through YBIP’s goals, including reliable water supply, restored fisheries, drought and flood resilience, and a robust regional economy. They highlighted the basin’s striking hydrologic reality: 84 percent of the Yakima Basin does not drain through a reservoir, making new storage essential to meeting future needs. The plan calls for 450,000 acre‑feet of new storage, supported by conservation, canal lining, SCADA systems for real‑time measurement, groundwater storage, aquifer storage and recovery (ASR), managed aquifer recharge (MAR), and flexible water marketing. Arden Thomas described county‑run water marketing programs that offset new exempt well uses and allow voluntary changes in water use rather than growth in demand. She also noted the unprecedented October 2025 curtailment, when senior water‑right holders in Roslyn, Yakima, Cle Elum, and South Cle Elum were told they had no legal right to divert. Joe Blodgett shared the Yakama Nation’s fisheries perspective, describing a program that began in the 1980s and now employs 240 staff. He highlighted recent habitat accomplishments, including the removal of the Bateman Island causeway, which had created thermal blockages and habitat for invasive predators near the mouth of the Columbia River. Despite low sockeye returns this year, the removal eliminated a major barrier for fish that did make it back. The panel closed by celebrating completed YBIP projects including Nelson Dam removal, Cle Elum downstream fish passage, Kachess River restoration, and acquisition of the Springwood Ranch reservoir site, while acknowledging the scale of work still ahead to secure water for farms, fish, and communities in an increasingly unpredictable climate.
Speaking: Joe Blodgett. Seated from left Larry Mattson, Brandon Parsons, Arden Thomas, Urban Eberhard. Photo credit: Tom Ring
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