Prosser Pump Owners Seek Irrigation District Exclusion
Prosser commissioners rule that landowners cannot dodge the irrigation district while holding onto private water rights.
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Can a man serve two masters? If the man is a water-user under the N. P. I. gravity canal and has a pump, he cannot, or at least that is the way the county commissioners have ruled. The hearing on the proposed irrigation district Monday brought about 25 land owners before the county board at Prosser. They came to have their lands excluded from the district. All of them are pumpers, some depending for their water supply entirely upon wells, and others supplementing the canal water by pumping. The land owned by those who want out of the district aggregates about 1,250 acres, the most of which has no water right from the irrigation company. While the commissioners did not commit themselves as to what action they intend to take upon these requests, they did say that no lands with a water right will be exempted unless the water right is relinquished. The board holds that no lands which are directly benefited by the irrigation system should be exempted. If they are not so benefited, then a water right is no good and should be surrendered. If a land owner considers a water right of any value to him, he admits the case is a benefit to his land and should stand his pro-rata share of the repair and maintenance of the system. After hearing the objections and receiving the requests the board adjourned until next Monday when they will meet and fix the boundaries.
“If a land owner considers a water right of any value to him, he admits the case is a benefit to his land and should stand his pro-rata share.”
This 1917 dispute captures the perennial tension in the high desert of the Tri-Cities: who pays to keep the water flowing? Decades later, water rights and the costs of irrigation infrastructure remain the central civic arguments defining the growth and regulation of land in Benton County.
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