April 18, 2025

New Drought Insurance Program Getting Underway in Washington

Water rights in Washington state are managed and administered by the Department of Ecology (DOE), and the Office of the Columbia River is a sub-agency that manages water along the Columbia River, forming the state’s southern border.

Building on plans that were developed in 2008, DOE is funding a Drought Insurance Program to assist agricultural water users with the option of securing interruptible water supplies in the form of lease agreements to provide a known source of supplemental water in the event of a drought declaration.

DOE is undertaking this effort to assist those farmers who hold interruptible water rights that may be curtailed in the event of a drought. The details of the interruptible lease contracts are not available, but the Columbia River water source has a few unique attributes that could make this program relatively straightforward to implement:

1. Droughts are fairly rare along the mainstem Columbia River, with the last drought occurring over 20 years ago in 2001
2. The state agency has secured a storage water supply of 33,000 acre-feet in Lake Roosevelt to fulfill the dry year leases, and that water supply is relatively inexpensive at $35 per acre-foot for water leasing.

These attributes will likely mean that the agricultural producers who face water supply risks can obtain a useful backup water supply at relatively low cost.