Jury favors Mattawa orchardists in lease dispute with Grant PUD

EPHRATA – A Grant County Superior Court jury last week ruled in favor of a Mattawa-area couple involved in a years-long civil dispute over their orchard operations on property leased from the Grant County PUD.

The PUD had sued orchard owners John and Debbie Doebler in February 2023, alleging the couple failed to vacate the property and were trespassing on the 23-acre tract after being initially notified in 2019 that the utility district intended to terminate their lease at the end of 2022.  

PUD staff said there had been a determination that Native American cultural resources important to area tribes, including the Wanapum and Yakama people, were on the underlying property.

Consequently, the lawsuit alleged, the tract needed to be protected as part of a 2008 licensing agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the district’s Priest Rapids Project, which includes operations at the nearby Wanapum and Priest Rapids hydroelectric dams and adjacent Columbia River shorelines.

The Doeblers first began using the property under a lease signed in 1989, when the PUD considered the land to be “surplus” to district operations. In November 2005, the district and the Doeblers then agreed to extend the lease on a month-by-month basis, contingent on ultimate approval by FERC.

But during a two-week trial that ended last Tuesday, Nov. 18, the Doeblers’ attorney, Tyler Hotchkiss of Wenatchee, told jurors that the PUD never applied to FERC for approval of the lease extension. Even after, said Hotchkiss, the Doeblers submitted an application and $1,000 fee to the PUD in 2014 for such a request.

“The Doeblers believed Grant PUD would follow through on its commitment to seek FERC approval,” Hotchkiss wrote in an “affirmative defenses and counterclaims” trial document.

Following deliberations that continued until last Wednesday afternoon, the jury rendered a 10-2 verdict which said that the PUD is obligated to honor the 2005 lease agreement with the Doeblers until the district “submits an application to FERC for approval.” Two jurors dissented.

The jurors’ majority verdict also found that the Doeblers had not breached the lease and were not committing civil trespass by continuing orchard operations on the land.

In a statement afterward, PUD spokesman Chuck Allen said, “We respect the jury’s role and the legal process, and we appreciate the time and effort involved in this case.”

The statement continued: “While we are disappointed with the outcome and believe there are important legal issues that warrant further review, our commitment to our customers, employees, and the longstanding heritage of our partnership with the Wanapum remains unchanged. We will be evaluating our options, including the possibility of an appeal, in accordance with the law.”

Such agricultural land leases are a rarity with the utility district, which only had three with private tenants. Two ended; only the Doeblers’ was contested.

One of the rulings issued in the complex trial by Judge Anna Gigliotti barred jurors from hearing about a state archaeological determination that said, in essence, the property was located atop a “cemetery” considered sacred by Native Americans.

Hotchkiss told jurors that a survey showed no evidence of human remains within the orchard boundary. And in her trial testimony, Debbie Doebler noted that several of the Wanapum people worked in planting trees when the orchard was established.

But his closing statements to jurors, PUD attorney Mark Wilner of Seattle cited testimony by Brett Lenz, the utility district’s cultural resources manager, that hundreds of “significant” artifacts had later been located on surrounding grounds. To fully ascertain what might lie beneath the orchard would involve uprooting scores of trees and further disrupting the site, said Wilner, calling that “an impossibility.”

He also referenced a 2024 letter from the Wanapum to FERC regarding the site’s cultural importance to the tribe, saying the site “sits on top of a Wanapum village.”

Wilner acknowledged that the Doeblers had been responsible and compliant tenants, regularly making lease payments, since the original lease was signed in 1989. But Wilner contended they violated the lease by continuing to develop the property, including adding an irrigation system and grafting fruit trees, after being told by PUD staff to cease operations and vacate the land.

“This was not personal,” Wilner told jurors, saying it was “simply a license compliance issue … for protection of cultural resources on project lands.”

In rebuttal, Hotchkiss noted that two PUD commissioners, Nelson Cox and Tom Flint, both farmers, were sympathetic to the Doeblers’ predicament, and that the five-member commission voted in November 2020 for staff to resume a negotiation process with the couple.

Hotchkiss also said a strip of adjacent shoreline property owned by the PUD remains accessible to the public, including use by off-road vehicles.

“The Doeblers did everything to comply,” said Hotchkiss, including putting rent money into escrow during the legal dispute “to save the family farm.”

The PUD was required to apply to FERC with a lease extension application, but failed to do so, he contended. If approved, it would allow the Doeblers to remain on the land until year 2052 when the PUD’s current operating license expires, said Hotchkiss. If the application was denied, then the lease termination date should be in 2040, he said.

“We don’t want sympathy,” Hotchkiss told the jury. “The Doeblers only want fairness … they want justice.”

Among others who testifed at trial were John Doebler and David Harder, a cultural resources expert on behalf of the Doeblers; former PUD manager/CEO Kevin Nordt, current PUD lands manager Shannon Lowry, and Wanapum leader Clayton Buck.

Along with Wilner, the PUD was also represented by attorney John Cadagan of Spokane. Hotchkiss was assisted by attorney Skye Johnson.