The Hanford Water Wars
A federal court ruling protects local ranchers from mortgage holders in the complex bankruptcy of the Hanford Irrigation Power Company.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The rights of the Hanford-White Bluffs water users under their contracts with the Hanford Irrigation Power Company were preserved by a decree from Judge Rudkin’s federal court in Spokane. The case originated with the American Power & Light Company of New York, which forced a receivership, followed by the Dexter Horton Bank attempting to assert priority over the ranchers' water contracts. Judge Rudkin ruled that the mortgage holders' rights are subordinate to those of the farmers who purchased land and water rights, noting it would be 'inequitable in the extreme' to terminate contracts the trustee had previously authorized for its own benefit. The decree recognizes the water users' rights in the entire system, including the power sites and transmission lines.
“It would be inequitable in the extreme to permit it to abrogate and terminate these contracts made by its express authority after it has received the benefits derived from the sales.”
Long before Hanford became synonymous with nuclear production, it was the site of intense struggles over water rights and private equity control of public infrastructure. The tension between profit-driven creditors and the ranchers relying on the water mirrors contemporary disputes over utility deregulation and the privatization of water resources.
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