State warns of drought impacts on crops and salmon.
Last month, the Department of Ecology issued a statewide drought emergency declaration due to “dismal snowpack.”
According to Caroline Mellor, Ecology’s drought lead, this year’s drought is not as bad at this time as the historic 2015 drought year. However, it is the worst drought since 2015.
This year is like 2015 in terms of snowpack drought conditions—when a warm winter leads to a low snowpack, even with close to normal, or above normal, precipitation. Snowpack usually serves as natural storage for water supply for when water is needed the most, in late spring, summer and early fall.
The warm winter caused both December’s historic floods and the drought conditions seen today.
Since 2023, snowpack has largely declined and drought conditions have worsened. By April 29, 2023, Ecology recorded 113% snowpack compared to 19% in 2015. By 2024, that number fell to 65%. In 2025, 74%. This year, 42%.
In an April press release, Gov. Bob Ferguson said, “If you look at our mountains, the challenge we are facing is clear. We’re taking emergency action to protect fish, farmers and communities across Washington.”
The innovations of farmers
In Eastern Washington, a drought declaration is simple: it’s going to be dry, said Dillon Honcoop, communications director of Whatcom nonprofit Save Family Farming. It takes preparation to have enough water for crops. In Western Washington, the story is a bit more nuanced.
For local farms, around 80% of irrigation comes from aquifers, he said, as opposed to streams.
“We’re blessed with a really plentiful aquifer here that is very well recharged every winter,” he said. “That’s part of the larger water management issue that our area has that we’re talking about a lot.”
Greg Ebe farms 1,200 acres of seed potatoes in Ferndale.
“It’s just concerning,” he said, “the weather patterns with less snowpack. We’re still getting precipitation in the form of rain, not snow, which benefits the aquifer. But unfortunately, I would expect some low-end stream flows on the Nooksack River.”
While this year’s drought will require a bit of shifting gears, Ebe doesn’t anticipate any change in yields. He relies mostly on the aquifer, and he farms his potatoes in rotation. This year, he will rotate away from the fields most reliant on the Nooksack.
Even more efficient than field rotation is Ebe’s switch to drip irrigation about three years ago. Since then, his water use has become 95% efficient, he said.
“We just don’t use a lot of water,” he said. “It’s been a big change, a big benefit to our farm. We’re producing larger yields, better quality with less water. It’s been kind of a cool innovation.”
Ebe Farms now operates with 70% drip irrigation, he said, and he plans to bump it to 90% in the coming years.
More important than the amount of water in Western Washington is how that water is managed, Honcoop said, in cases like the Nooksack River adjudication and water laws such as RCW 90.14, which operates on a “use it or lose it” principle.
With the way water rights work in the state, sometimes farmers are disincentivized to use less water even in a drought year, he said.
Ebe did not respond to questions about reduced water impacting his water rights.
“The state has said, if in a given period you don’t use your full water right, then you’re going to lose that,” Honcoop said. “There’s this disincentive of, well, ‘we probably should try to be more efficient, but at the same time, we don’t.’ There’s sometimes where people just don’t even want it to be known that they’re using less water because then they’re in a position where they might lose part of their water right that couldn’t then be spread elsewhere or used for different things as crops change, diversification happens, that kind of a thing.”
Broken pathways for salmon
According to Annitra Peck, executive director of the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association, drought has been a continuous problem for local salmon.
“There’s a bit more attention to this summer because they’ve already classified it and declared it as we are in an active drought right now,” she said, “but this has been the trend now for at least a decade.”
Chinook salmon are federally listed as an endangered species. Low summer flows in the Nooksack cause fragmented pools of water, which warm quickly and grow bacteria, challenging the ability of salmon to escape.
“This affects the tribes and their way of life and their identity and resource that they rely on to provide for their way of life,” Peck said. “It affects the fishing economy. We have the second largest fishing fleet in Washington, and if a decline of salmon continues, it clearly affects that economic sector in our area. It affects the ecological importance that salmon provide as a food source to orcas, but then there’s over 365 other species that all directly rely on salmon as a food source, from terrestrial animals to birds, all kinds, that go beyond just the connection to the ocean and orcas.”
The habitat restoration efforts of the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association, along with Lummi and Nooksack Natural Resources, are vital in protecting salmon against drought conditions, she said.
Lummi and Nooksack Natural Resources did not respond to requests for comment.
“This is becoming such a bigger problem,” Peck said, “but in the short term, if we can keep planting trees and keep providing shade on the creeks and keep the habitat intact and the ability to have water storage and floodplain connections to the river and all of these other benefits, then those do really help weather us through some of these times where there is less.”
Exposed areas dry faster. Less vegetation means less groundwater recharge. Lummi and Nooksack have been leaders in floodplain restoration and barrier removal, Peck said.
Despite the increasing obstacles, Peck maintains hope. In the 35 years since the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association started, salmon research has increased greatly, and many more people are involved.
“It’s so overwhelming,” she said. “It does feel like there’s bigger issues happening, but it does feel like there’s more work being done from all different angles that is all contributing towards moving the needle. We just turned 35 years old, our organization, and at the time of inception, we were one of only a few organizations doing this type of work and paying attention and starting to look at the different ways that salmon are being impacted and watersheds are being impacted and what we’re doing about that, right? And now you look at it and it’s a big web of work that’s all happening towards the same common goals.”
—By Sam Fletcher