A Private Canal Scheme Tries to Put a Tollbooth on the Yakima's Water
A state land commissioner warns that a canal company wants to control a lake north of Ellensburg and charge every future Yakima canal for passage.
The controversy between the people in North Yakima who favor the Whitson high line canal scheme and those who favor the reclamation of the land under the Carey Act by the Washington Irrigation Company was given some fuel the other day when State Land Commissioner Callvert was in the Kittitas Valley. Mr. Callvert has no hesitancy in saying that, in his opinion, the Whitson people do not intend to irrigate Kittitas Valley, but that their sole purpose is to attempt to control the lake north of Ellensburg, so as to compel all future canals there and at Yakima to pay tribute to them. The commissioner thinks they will fail in this. His idea is that the state shall control the impounded water for the benefit of the whole valley of the Yakima and that this shall be accomplished by the construction of works to be paid for from the proceeds of the sale of the Carey Act lands, which will aggregate in the Yakima Valley over $500,000.
“Their sole purpose is to attempt to control the lake north of Ellensburg, so as to compel all future canals there and at Yakima to pay tribute to them.”
The fight over who controls impounded water in the Yakima and Kittitas basins has not gone away; modern Washington still argues over water rights, storage, and who pays for irrigation infrastructure. Then as now, control of a lake or canal could decide which farms prosper.
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