We are working class family farmers committed to saving our domestic wells from huge corporate wells. Most of our families have lived here for over a hundred years. The proposal to drill exempt wells for a large corporate animal feedlot threatens to mine our aquifer of huge amounts of water and force us off the farms we love.
A family tradition of dry-land wheat farming
on the Columbia Plateau
threatened by a 30,000-head “factory farm”
and the State’s exempt well loophole.
~ photographic sampler from Sheila Poe ~
Grandfather, Ezra Thompson, in 1928. (Sheila Poe family archive)
Father, Harold "Feathers" Thompson, is 14 years old driving the tractor pulling the combine 1937. (Sheila Poe family archive)
Father, Harold Thompson, on one of the first self-propelled combines, about 1955. (Sheila Poe family archive)
Father, Grandma, and sister Mary, about 1928. (Sheila Poe family archive)
Grandma and Aunt with the horses, 1930s. (Sheila Poe family archive)
Donald R. Collin overhauling the family well, about 1972. Through the years the family maintained their own domestic well until recently. (Scott J. Collin, Sr family archive)
Pull combine on the Collin farm, 1951. (Scott J. Collin, Sr family archive)
Background for Five Corners Family Farmers
Five Corners Family Farmers is a group of old farm families in Franklin County of eastern Washington State. We are located by the historic Five Corners crossroads in Central Franklin County, just a mile or so north of the Juniper Dunes Wilderness Area. All of our families are working class farmers; several of us work both on and off the farm, to support our families.
We are located in an area of some of the driest of dry-land farms in Eastern Washington. Our annual rainfall is between 7 – 9 inches. With the arid state of our environment, a moratorium on the drilling of irrigation wells in our area exists, due primarily to the nature of our non-replenishing aquifer.
FCFF (Five Corners Family Farmers) is a member based non-profit corporation of the State of Washington, established to protect domestic water rights for all the people of Washington State. Our primary focus has been to overturn of a 2005 Attorney General’s Opinion (AGO # 17) allowing unlimited “stock-water”.
FCFF formed as a group to combat the imposition into our family-farm neighborhood of a huge factory-farm feedlot of 30,000 cattle. Local government did all they could to run interference for the developer. Notice was minimal, local landowners in a one mile radius, only, were notified by mail. When the original notice was made, it referenced, a 1,000 + head feedlot. Imagine our shock when it was found later to mean 30,000 head.
The real problem for us is the amount of water this developer will draw from our aquifer. Ecology estimates that use by this “factory farm” will approach or exceed 4 million gallons per day. Together the twenty FCFF members will take more than 350 years to use the same amount of water that Easterday Corporation will mine in a single year.
Local farmers joined together as a group in early September 2008 to appeal Franklin County’s Conditional Use Permit. Despite our presentation of procedural and legal code irregularities. Franklin County Commissioners voted to support the developer.
The Easterday Corporation has chosen to establish his well right thru the “loop-hole” in the law provided by AGO # 17. He has “leap-frogged” ahead of more than 65 senior water-right applicants in Franklin County alone. A petition was filed by FCFF and the Center for Environmental Law & Practices (CELP) with the Department of Ecology. Due to another obscure clause in the law the developer had the right of refusal to consider, and thus thwarted the Department of Ecology from making their rightful decision. The case now must progress to judicial review or legislative action.
Currently the developer has made arrangements to transfer an existing water right to his site by purchase. Yet he continues to misuse the system by attempting to use a water right that is one-quarter of the amount of water use he will require. He intends also to change it a seasonal use to year round use. Again local government is bending over backwards to assist him in this questionable enterprise.
Well water in Eastern Washington is a scarce natural resource at best. Two natural lakes in the immediate vicinity have dried up due to overpumping by irrigators. Members of our group have already lost wells due to over-irrigation.
Quasi-legal associations are pushing the agenda of their large corporate members to mine aquifers of our state -- at the expense of senior water rights holders, and at the expense of all the people of Washington State.
We continue our efforts, we ask the Legislature to step up to the plate. Our cry is: SAVE THE WELLS…
Erosion damage to farmland from well-drilling. For more photographs, click here.
