Mitigating Drought

 Mitigation Tools for States

 Case Study: Washington

The Department of Ecology was authorized to undertake emergency action and provide emergency assistance during the 1986–87 drought; they subsequently became the state’s permanent drought authority.

Actions taken by state agencies:

Department of Ecology

• Granted city of Seattle a temporary water right permit to install emergency pumps to withdraw dead storage from their reservoir, helping the city to satisfy municipal needs and provide late-season instream flows
• Helped city of Tacoma fund the pumping of a lake upstream from Howard Hanson Reservoir to provide water so that the city could continue diverting water from the Green River while instream flows were maintained

Department of Health

• Provided funding for many large public water systems to complete comprehensive plans
• Produced several handbooks and guides that were distributed to utilities to help them with planning

(Summarized from Wilhite, D.A. 1993. Drought Mitigation Technologies in the United States: With Future Policy Recommendations. Final Report of a Cooperative Agreement between the Soil Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; and the International Drought Information Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. IDIC Technical Report Series 93–1, International Drought Information Center, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska.)

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