Washington farmer facing Ecology fine vows to farm ‘as I did before’
Published 8:32 am Wednesday, February 18, 2026
DEER PARK, Wash. — Robert “Bob” Greiff, the 85-year-old farmer facing a $112,000 fine and a lien on his farm from the Washington Department of Ecology, says he’ll be farming in a month.
“I’m going to farm that property as I did before, water it the same way,” Greiff told Capital Press. “Like any other year, we plant a crop and we irrigate what we can and hope nature waters the rest of it so we get a good crop.”
Greiff says he’s done nothing wrong.
The farm is 150 acres, outside Deer Park, Wash. Greiff will turn 86 in May. He farms with son Bobby.
The dispute centers on two parcels on the Greiff farm that are separated by a road, with 69 acres on one side and 37 acres on the other.
Robert Greiff contends his father applied for a water right for the 69-acre parcel when he bought it in 1952, and irrigated the land for 70 years until 2019.
In 2019, Ecology told Greiff that his water rights only allowed water to be placed on the 37-acre parcel. As the dispute played out, the agency fined him for irrigating on that parcel after receiving a cease-and-desist order.
The local water board later approved a plan to expand the water rights to include the 69-acre parcel without increasing the water volume. That plan was denied by Ecology when it was sent for the agency’s review, and Greiff missed the deadline for appealing its decision.
Greiff said he hasn’t heard further from Ecology.
“Haven’t heard a peep out of anybody,” Greiff said. “I’m just sitting tight and seeing what goes on.”
‘Agency overreach’
Shad Sullivan, property rights chair for R-CALF USA, recently posted a video on social media discussing Greiff’s situation. The video received 315 reactions and been shared 80 times as of Feb. 17.
“Washington State has a mess on their hands with state agency overreach towards agricultural producers,” Sullivan told Capital Press, also citing Ecology’s case against Coulee City, Wash., ranchers Wade and Teresa King, among others. “There’s obviously a problem there with overreach and authority on a state level.”
Sullivan first heard about Greiff’s case a year ago, and called him by phone a few months ago.
“Bob was upbeat about the whole situation; maybe he understands the gravity, but his life experience doesn’t let him get in a total panic,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan believes attention to the King ranch “saga” may be slowing down Greiff’s case.
“Either way, both of them have to be contended with,” he said. “If there’s others in the state, we’ve got to deal with that too.”
Legal assistance
Sullivan recently mentioned Greiff’s case to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. Rollins has expressed support for the Kings.
Sullivan is involved with the rollout of USDA’s Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework, an initiative designed to protect farmers and ranchers from “politically motivated lawfare.”
There’s also a program at America First Policy Institute, Sullivan added.
“The whole thing is, nobody can afford these attorneys, so it’s always a death by a thousand cuts,” he said.
Discussions are underway to bring attorneys on board for both cases, he said.
“They’ve got to leave these producers alone,” Sullivan said. “It is no secret that there is a war on agriculture … At the very foundation of all this, freedom and liberty to produce how you see fit on your own land is a property right. This war that we’re talking about is all about the land.”
Sullivan hopes state agencies “surely will come around to the right way of thinking and leave these producers alone,” with enough pressure from federal agencies.
“These ideologues that have infiltrated into these agencies, especially in blue states, left-leaning states … We have to stop these people, because at the end of the day, we’re not a free American unless we have access to our own property rights,” he said.
North Spokane Farm Museum
Greiff is president of the North Spokane Farm Museum, located next to the land in question.
The museum is a tax-exempt entity, sitting on property owned by the museum. The museum has a board of directors, including a treasurer and secretary, Greiff said.
Greiff built a new building last fall, 100 feet wide by 120 feet long, on the museum property, to store more materials.
He says it won’t be affected by the struggles with Ecology and will continue, “as long as everybody follows the rules of the tax-exempt.”
The museum accepts donations from visitors. The museum recently had a booth at the Spokane Ag Show.
‘I just want to see it resolved’
“I just want to irrigate on the rest of the property that I own,” Greiff said. “I just want to see it resolved. Other than that, I have no problems. I’ve been farming it for all my life. I’ve done nothing wrong. We have a permit for so many gallons of water, and I’ve put the water where it needed to be, and that was it.
These people are not farmers, they don’t have a clue of what to do,” Greiff continued. “Everybody thinks I cannot irrigate 100 acres; well, they don’t know how to irrigate if they don’t know how to irrigate 100 acres. It’s not the same crop and it’s not all in one place, either. We move the water around.”
