Buying Land in Kittitas County, Washington

The 2011 Supreme Court case that froze permitting for years

Kittitas County's most consequential land-use event of the past two decades is arguably not a zoning ordinance but a court case: Kittitas County v. Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board, decided by the Washington Supreme Court in 2011. The case arose after the Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board found the county's comprehensive plan and development code noncompliant with the Growth Management Act on multiple grounds -- including a failure to develop the required written record explaining its rural element, a failure to protect agricultural land, and, critically, a failure to protect water resources. The Supreme Court specifically held that county comprehensive plans cannot permit evasion of state water-permitting requirements by relying on subdivisions built around multiple permit-exempt wells rather than an actual water right.

The real-world consequence was severe and long-lasting: parts of Kittitas County stopped processing building permits for roughly six years as a direct result of this litigation, with areas near Ellensburg specifically affected for roughly four-and-a-half years. This history is exactly why water-availability documentation is treated with unusual rigor in Kittitas County today -- it isn't bureaucratic caution for its own sake, it's the direct legacy of a building-permit freeze that lasted the better part of a decade in parts of the county.

A five-year groundwater moratorium and a fully appropriated basin

Running roughly parallel to the litigation, the Washington Department of Ecology grew concerned that unrestricted permit-exempt well drilling by landowners and developers in Upper Kittitas County was affecting senior water-right holders' ability to access surface water they were legally entitled to in the Yakima River Basin. Nearly 3,000 exempt wells had been drilled in the lead-up to formal action. When negotiations between the county and Ecology broke down in 2009, Ecology imposed a groundwater withdrawal moratorium across Upper Kittitas County that remained in place until 2014.

The Yakima River Drainage Basin, which covers the majority of Kittitas County, remains fully appropriated today -- meaning there is no water legally available for new appropriations through the ordinary permitting process. To get a building permit tied to a new well anywhere in this portion of the county, an applicant must prove water is available not just physically (the well can produce water) but legally (the withdrawal doesn't impair a senior water right). Kittitas County requires new water uses tied to county development permits to be mitigated against Total Water Supply Available, including mitigating for the county's cumulative historical impact from exempt-well development dating back to the 1945 groundwater code, typically through acquisition of senior water rights or participation in an available water bank. See the dedicated well-water page below for how this mitigation process actually works for a specific parcel.

Wind energy, regulated partly by the state, not just the county

Kittitas County also hosts substantial commercial wind-energy development, most notably the Wild Horse Wind Power project -- approved by the state's Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) in 2005, built on roughly 9,500 acres east of the town of Kittitas, with 149 original turbines and a later expansion adding more capacity, for a combined output in the range of 270+ MW -- and the separate Kittitas Valley Wind Power project. Because Washington routes large energy-facility siting decisions through EFSEC rather than leaving them purely to county zoning, an expansion or modification of an existing wind facility can require both a county development-agreement amendment and final EFSEC approval. If a parcel sits near an existing or proposed wind project, confirm the facility's current permitted boundary and any applicable setback with both Kittitas County Community Development Services and EFSEC directly.