Sumas group wants out of Nooksack water-rights lawsuit
Several Sumas residents are seeking to be removed as parties to a Whatcom County court case that will determine who has historical rights to water in the Nooksack River basin, how much they can use, and how much be reserved for environmental protections that include salmon.
That case in Whatcom County Superior Court, formally called an “adjudication,” affects more than 30,000 water users in Whatcom County, including local governments, Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Tribe, farmers, businesses and rural residents with wells.
Calling themselves Sumas Out, the residents argue their land shouldn’t be included in the state Department of Ecology’s Water Resource Inventory Area 1, which is the Nooksack River watershed. It includes the rivers, creeks, ponds, lakes and groundwater in all of Whatcom County and part of northwestern Skagit County.
“Our water all flows to the Fraser River in (British Columbia). The adjudication specifically notes the water rights issues are for the Nooksack River, not the Sumas River. We should not be required to go through the significant legal expenses of an adjudication for an issue that has nothing to do with us,” Sumas Out’s Jerry DeBruin said in an emailed statement.
Because of the topography around Sumas, water generally flows downhill toward the Fraser River system.
That’s what happened in November 2021, when a rain-swollen Nooksack River sent water surging across Sumas fields, inundating the town and flooding the Abbotsford, B.C., area.
DeBruin grows corn and grass, crops that are commonly used at cattle feed. He’s also chief of Whatcom County Fire District 14, which serves the rural communities of Sumas, Kendall and Welcome.
Sumas Out has not formally made its request to be excluded from the WRIA 1 adjudication.
In the lawsuit, water users must show that they have a water rights through documentation or other avenues.
Whatcom Family Farmers, an agricultural advocacy group, recently issued a statement in support of Sumas Out’s claims.
“The Sumas Out group’s plight underscores what we’ve said all along about the state Department of Ecology’s planned water rights adjudication: It’s an incredibly blunt tool that will cause far more damage than any good it brings. Sumas River basin water users not only take no water from the contested Nooksack River basin, they don’t want it — because the only time they receive it is during catastrophic Nooksack River floods, like we experienced in 2021 as well as 1990,” Whatcom Family Farmers spokesman Dillon Honcoop said in a statement.
Like many rivers in Washington, the Nooksack is mostly fed by runoff from the Cascades Mountains. It runs high in fall and winter, and low in the warm and dry summer months.
Ecology spokesman Jimmy Norris told The Bellingham Herald that the state is including all of Water Resources Inventory Area 1 for the adjudication. WRIA 1 is legally defined as the area from the Nooksack basin north to Canada and west the ocean, Norris said in an email.
“Even though not all areas of WRIA 1 are connected to the Nooksack River system, this area makes up the lands identified by Lummi Nation and Nooksack Tribe as subject to their water claims. Resolving all tribal water claims is crucial to fair and secure water management for future generations,” he said.
Norris said that the Sumas Basin, including surface and groundwater, is within the treaty claim of Lummi Nation and Nooksack Tribe and is part of the adjudication lawsuit “to pursue full resolution of (tribal) water rights.”
