WATCH: Grant County farm water fight with Ecology headed to State Supreme Court

(The Center Square) – A decade-long fight over water rights in Central Washington is headed for the Washington State Supreme Court.

The fight for Ron and Robin Fodé and Fode Farms centers around water use on their farmland near Moses Lake, and the State Department of Ecology contending the family had no right to tap into “a vulnerable aquifer.”

Fodé, alongside his wife, Robin, took over the fourth-generation family farm in eastern Washington in 1984 and continued growing crops and producing cattle.

They grew potatoes, onions, sweet corn, and other vegetables, but the crops require a great amount of irrigation water in a part of the state that gets very little rain.

“It was January 2017, I applied for transferring water rights, as I’d done many times in the past, and I was waiting and waiting for an answer back, just in case there were any questions,” said Ron Fodé in a