State OKs brewery water plan

The quest by Thurston County's three largest cities to put to municipal use the water once used to brew beer at the Olympia Brewery reached another milestone Tuesday.

The state Department of Ecology gave final approval to the cities’ request to change the purpose and place of use for the water rights tied to the historic property, with one minor modification.

The cities can now pursue the planning and construction of the capital improvements to put the water to use in their communities.

“We recognize the importance of this decision for Lacey, Olympia and Tumwater as they work toward finding the water supplies necessary to meet their growing needs,” wrote Kim Schmanke, an Ecology spokeswoman, in an e-mail announcing the decision.

City officials couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday.

The cities condemned the water rights and about 18 acres of land for a future wellfield in 2006. They paid $5.3 million to compensate the property owner, Well B Ng LLC. The brewery closed in June 2003, costing about 400 employees their jobs.

The cities needed to get approval from Ecology. No one owns the waters of the state. Instead, individuals and groups are granted the rights to use them for a beneficial use. As such, Ecology needed to sign off on the cities’ request to change the purpose of the use from industrial to municipal and the place of use from the former brewery property to the water utilities’ service areas. In addition, it needed to grant a change in the points of withdrawal for when the future wellfield is developed as some existing wells might be replaced.

The volunteer Water Conservancy Board of Thurston County earlier determined the cities would receive one-third of the water rights that the former brewery held dating back to 1936.

By law, water rights not used for five consecutive years revert back to the state in a process called relinquishment.

All the former brewery’s water would have been relinquished had the cities not used another state law that extends the clock to 15 years from five years if it’s claimed for a “determined future development,” or, in this case, future municipal use.

The board arrived at its quantity by taking the highest 12 months of water use within the lowest five-year consecutive period of use. It determined that occurred from June 1998 to June 2003, the month of the brewery’s closure.

Ecology changed the time frame to between 2001 to 2006 after it determined case law required counting back five years from the date when the plan for determined future development was established, Schmanke explained. The cities established that plan in 2006 when they condemned the water rights.

As a result, the final annual quantity of water transferred to the cities will be 2,283.53 acre-feet, 44 acre-feet less than the board’s determination. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons. The cities will split the quantity equally so each city would receive the rights to 761 acre-feet.