Aquifer project progresses

The long-term outlook for drinking and irrigation water in Moses Lake, Ritzville, Davenport, Othello and throughout the farm-rich Columbia Basin Project is increasingly positive but still has conflict, attendees of the Columbia Basin Development League (CBDL) annual conference were told November 6.

The Odessa Aquifer that supplies water to much of the eastern Columbia Basin Project – via wells too deep for replenishment by rain and snow – was the number one topic at the conference held at Big Bend Community College.

“There is an urgency and a need to relieve the Odessa Aquifer by getting deep irrigation wells off line,” Levi Johnson, development coordinator of the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District, told the audience of 200.

Johnson described the recent widening of the first 13 miles of the East Low Canal and other infrastructure improvements in his district. That work began to clear the way for delivering Columbia River water via surface canals to some 87,000 acres where farms are tapping the declining Odessa Aquifer.

“Municipal water users withdraw relatively small amounts of water from the aquifer compared to agricultural users,” said Derek Sandison of the state Department of Ecology. He is the director of Ecology’s Office of Columbia River, based in Wenatchee. “Let’s get these big users off groundwater and on surface water,” he said.

But, Sandison said, “There seems to be an outbreak of amnesia” with some interests forgetting or disregarding the objectives of the Odessa groundwater replacement effort and refusing to acknowledge the significant public investment that was necessary to make the replacement water available. He said the Project’s multi-faceted plan for getting farms off Odessa Aquifer wells dates back to 2004.

The plan includes making water available through several programs including the Lake Roosevelt Incremental Storage Releases Project and a Coordinated Conservation Program. The water that is currently available is already contracted by East Columbia Basin Irrigation District through the Bureau of Reclamation. Additional water that is being made available through the Odessa Special Study is already permitted by the Department of Ecology to the Bureau of Reclamation. Now, the Bureau is in the process of renewing their master contract currently held with two of the Columbia Basin Irrigation Districts (East and Quincy) to make service contracts available for water distribution to landowners.

Some farmers want to establish a surface irrigation system of their own rather than as part of the Project, he said. In a subsequent interview, Sandison said he was referring to a proposal by the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association.

Mike Schwisow, the Columbia Basin Development League’s government affairs director, said the goal of the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators’ proposal “is to benefit a small number of irrigators while making service to other nearby landowners economically unfeasible.” That is counter to the purpose of a publicly owned water system.”

The federal Bureau of Reclamation would have to approve the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators proposal, which Sandison said “is limited to only about 9,000 acres that would be eligible to receive replacement water.” That represents less than half of the land needed to meet the objectives of the Odessa Ground Water Replacement Program. Sandison stressed, “We cannot lose sight of our goal to get as many farms off deep wells as possible; proposals that would underperform just won’t cut it.”

Several speakers praised the expansion of the Columbia Basin Project as a partnership of federal and state government agencies and local irrigation districts, all with the same goal of getting farms off wells that are draining the Odessa Aquifer.

The Columbia Basin Project was envisioned to be built out over 70 years. So far, 680,000 acres within the Project’s boundaries are irrigated via a system of surface canals, pipes, pump stations and other infrastructure.