The Struggle for Water Rights on the Yakima Reservation
Agent Jay Lynch warns that unmanaged irrigation is drying up tribal streams and threatening future agricultural viability for both the reservation and the surrounding valley.
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Agent Jay Lynch of the Yakima reservation reported that the appropriation of water from boundary streams like the Ahtanum and Yakima rivers is becoming a serious question. Under the 1866 treaty, Indians were ceded exclusive fishing rights in these streams, but irrigation rights were not considered at the time. Irrigation has since left the Ahtanum stream practically dry, and Lynch worries that current canal plans for the Yakima river will exhaust its flow as well. He believes the long-term solution requires a new treaty to formally address irrigation water, noting that current trends require military enforcement to keep stockmen from violating reservation boundaries and destroying fishing preserves.
“It would require a company of soldiers to keep the stockmen and their stock outside the reservation boundaries and to maintain the fishing preserves.”
Water rights remain a central, contentious issue in the Yakima Valley, where competing demands between agricultural interests, tribal sovereignty, and ecological health continue to shape the region's landscape and economy over a century later.
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