By Ellis O’Neill, KUOW

It’s been raining this July, but much of Washington is still in a drought, because of our hot, dry spring and early summer.

Just 30 minutes outside Seattle, in the town of North Bend, most development is on hold till an issue of water is resolved.
On a sunny Saturday, long lines of cars waited for the light to change at the intersection of North Bend’s main streets. Signs advertising new homes lined the sidewalk.

The population of North Bend has nearly tripled over the last 30 years, and more than eight times as many people now live in the city of Snoqualmie as did in 1990.

All those people need water.

“It turns out that North Bend, Washington, relies on water from one spring and one well,” said Nick Bond, the state climatologist. “They can draw only a certain amount from that.”

That’s because the spring and well where North Bend gets its water are in the Snoqualmie River watershed. If the river drops below a certain level, the city has to stop using water or replace all the water it takes with water it buys from a different watershed.

With this year’s drought, the river is already low.

“Flows right now on the Snoqualmie are about half of what they usually are for this time of year,” Bond said.

“Those stream flows are continuing to drop,” he said. “Anticipate that, as we get later into summer that, yeah, there could be some real problems there.”