Here in the Northwest, we are blessed in more ways than one — for example, I can walk right over to the faucet in my house and drink the water.

For some people in our country, the human right of access to clean and safe drinking water isn’t guaranteed.

Folks, we aren’t just talking about the Flint situation or the fact some tribal reservations have been on a “boil” order since as far back as they can remember. We are talking about the water right here in Pullman.

In 2008, a man by the name of Scott Cornelius, along with both the Palouse Water Conservation Network and the Sierra Club Palouse Network, brought a lawsuit against the Washington Department of Ecology, Washington State University and the Washington Pollution Control Hearings Board.

They opened this case because of suspicion that WSU may have been violating regulations for water rights and usage passed by the legislature in 2003 after the expansion of the university’s golf course and the consolidation of its water systems.

The Washington Supreme Court determined in Feb. 2015 that the university purchased its water credits in the 1970s fair and square, that water usage by the university was on the decline since then and that they in no way forfeited any rights to water by consolidating the water system.

At the time, the university purchased somewhere in the neighborhood of 971 million gallons of water to support housing, agriculture programs and other functions.  In recent years, the school has used about half of that — which shows a great effort on their part.

But, here’s what puts the frosting on my cupcake: about 10% of the water usage at WSU goes toward keeping the golf course green during the year.

Why does this bother me? First of all, I don’t like golf — I have the patience and coordination of a toddler. 

That bias aside, everywhere you turn at WSU, there are signs for water conservation;  you may have seen them in the showers at the Student Recreation Center, or in the bathrooms of the CUB, where the signs tell you which way to use the flushing handle.

What you won’t see on campus are the signs promoting the golf clubs, sports, or even the course. So, why should students like myself be asked to cut corners on water and not spend an extra few minutes in a nice, hot shower in the dead of winter? Just so the conserved water can be “reallocated” to keep the golf course green in the dry summers?

Now, if the golf course helped the university make millions of dollars or was packed full of people 80 or even 60 percent of the time, I most likely wouldn’t complain.

Have any of you stayed in Pullman during the summer? It’s like a desert out here! The only thing missing is the sand — yet the golf course is lush and green.

The entire state of California had this problem; they were going through more water than they had in reserve and Pullman is no different.  We are currently burning through water like condoms on a victory Rose Bowl weekend, at a rate of about one foot of water per year out of the shared aquifer.

That means more than just the livelihood of the university rests on the aquifer’s water levels and if the current usage rate continues, there may not be anything left 25 years from now.

No matter the reasoning in the court case or the university’s justifications, we, as members of the Palouse community, can always do more to conserve water.

Dumping ten percent of invaluable (and irreplaceable, given our snow levels this year) water resources into something few members of the community use is completely irresponsible even if it is legal.

As many human rights and ecology lawyers have said, just because something is ‘legal’ doesn’t make it right.