Clark County, Wash., farmer Bill Zimmerman will have to get by this season on the same amount of water allotted to one household.

VANCOUVER, Wash. — A 100-acre berry and vegetable farm must get by this season on 5,000 gallons of water a day, a limit ordered by the Department of Ecology, which says it’s just enforcing the law.

Bi-Zi Farms needs 125 acre-feet of water, according to farmer Bill Zimmerman. One acre-foot is 325,851 gallons.

At 5,000 gallons a day — the maximum he is allowed to withdraw without a water right — drawing that much water would take 22 years.

“We’re trying to be very frugal with that 5,000 gallons a day,” Zimmerman said. “We have had to make some very harsh choices.”

The cutback has been coming for years and has been well publicized, especially on social media by Bi-Zi Farms, which has an on-farm produce store on the east edge of the state’s fourth-largest city.

Zimmerman, whose forefathers bought the land in 1872, applied for a water right in 2009 to irrigate 94 acres after the farm converted from seed and forage crops to more water-intensive produce.

The application is still pending. To get a water right, Bi-Zi Farms must prove that if it draws more than 5,000 gallons a day from the farm’s well, two nearby creeks won’t lose a drop of water. The groundwater under the farm and the water flowing in the creeks are presumably connected.

If the creeks did lose a drop, Zimmerman must acquire an active water right in the immediate area to offset what he takes from the creek.

The technical work must be done by a hydrogeologist or engineer. Zimmerman estimates getting to a solution will cost somewhere between $100,000 and over $2 million. At the low end, it might be doable. At the high end, “we might as well forget it,” he said.

Until this year, Ecology let Zimmerman irrigate while the consultant he hired worked on the problem. “This year they stuck to their guns,” he said.

Ecology spokesman Jeff Zenk said the department hopes Zimmerman can get water. “Nobody wants to see Bi-Zi Farms go out of business. We understand the value it has for the community,” he said.

“We want the Zimmermans to succeed, but they have to follow the law,” Zenk said. “A water-master will observe water use from a distance and if it appears more water is being used than allowed, we’ll have to consider enforcement action.”

Subdivisions neighbor the farm. A Clark Public Utilities District waterline runs past the farm, but Zimmerman says hooking up and buying PUD water would bankrupt the farm.

Any water rights that are relinquished in the area are kept for the creeks. The state Supreme Court in 2015 took away flexibility Ecology had in being creative in allocating water in the public’s interest.

Zimmerman said the farm will try to adjust. It fallowed ground and planted more oats and hay and did not plant sweet corn, green beans, pumpkins or cucumbers.

“The sad fact is that those are four of our big crops,” Zimmerman said. “We have had to make some very harsh choices.”

The farm store will rely on produce grown on other farms. Likewise, the farm’s pumpkin patch will be stocked with pumpkins grown elsewhere.

Zimmerman said the farm will try, as usual, to have a corn maze. “We hope we can get it to grow,” he said.