“Just because it’s wet, just because it rains, doesn’t necessarily correlate to ample water supply.”
“I think the lessons [for western Washington] are that water is scarce … and it has to support not just the growing communities in western Washington, but also … trying to bring back our salmon.”
Those quotes from Tom Tebb, former director, Office of Columbia River, WA Dept. of Ecology.
“In these years where we see what we call a snowpack drought … precipitation comes down as rain instead of snow, or melts away too early, affecting water supply for folks in our critical April through September period.”
“Studies show that we can expect in Washington to have these snowpack droughts about 40% of the years going forward.”
And that’s Caroline Mellor, drought lead at the Washington State Department of Ecology.
As Washington experiences its third straight year of drought emergencies, two of the state’s leading water experts are warning that both eastern and western Washington face growing threats to long-term water security.
In a wide-ranging interview on TVW’s Inside Olympia, recently retired water manager Tom Tebb and Ecology drought lead Caroline Mellor outlined the compounding impacts of climate change, aging infrastructure, and over-allocated water systems across the state.
Tebb, who spent over 30 years at the Department of Ecology, said declining snowpack has upended traditional assumptions about water availability. “We’ve built essentially a paradigm that’s very fragile around agriculture that depended upon snowpack,” he said.
Mellor echoed that assessment, noting that warmer winters are turning snow into rain — reducing the state’s natural water storage. “Precipitation comes down as rain instead of snow, or melts away too early,” she said. “That affects water supply for folks in our critical April through September period.”
While central Washington’s Yakima Basin was the focus of the state’s April drought declaration, Mellor said western counties including King, Snohomish and Skagit are also under drought advisories due to low snowpack.
The conversation touched on infrastructure upgrades, water rights law, drought relief funding, and how to support tribal, agricultural, and urban water needs in a changing climate. Both Tebb and Mellor stressed the importance of adapting to what is quickly becoming a new normal.
“Just because it’s wet, just because it rains, doesn’t necessarily correlate to ample water supply,” Tebb said.
Mellor urged Washingtonians to prepare: “I would say that longer term, that there will be a future need to think about drought preparedness and drought resiliency beyond the [state’s] drought emergency response funds.”