About the project:
Concern that new groundwater wells were reducing water availability for fish and other water users led to the Washington Supreme Court’s 2016 Hirst decision, which halted rural homebuilding reliant on permit-exempt wells. In response, the 2018 Streamflow Restoration Act allowed new wells while aiming to offset their impacts and investing $300 million in river restoration. Here, we aim to join practitioner interviews with a new statewide geospatial dataset linking permit-exempt wells and offsets to document emerging implementation patterns as key legislative reporting approaches in 2027.
Principal Investigator:
Philip Womble, Evans School of Public Policy & Governance
