Water managers near the
Moses Lake area are excited about a new project to get water to growers
in a region where groundwater has been disappearing at an incredible
rate.
The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project began back when Grand Coulee dam was built and allowed farmers to grow crops in the dry desert areas of Eastern Washington. The project was designed to be built gradually, and take as long as 70 years to be completed. One region that was supposed to eventually be served by the project was east of Moses Lake.
The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project began back when Grand Coulee dam was built and allowed farmers to grow crops in the dry desert areas of Eastern Washington. The project was designed to be built gradually, and take as long as 70 years to be completed. One region that was supposed to eventually be served by the project was east of Moses Lake.
But for various reasons, the infrastructure to carry the water to that area was never completed. One reason was a lack of funding authorized by congress. Another factor, a realization that water removed from the Columbia river had a negative impact of native salmon, which were also listed as an endangered species:
Jim Blanchard: "The state of Washington went through a tremendous change in the way they needed to look at fish in the entire state and that include the Columbia river.”
Farmers there came to rely more and more on groundwater from the Odessa aquifer.
But nowadays parts of that aquifer are declining by up to ten feet per year.
Craig Simpson: "They've been lowering their wells to a point where it's not economical for them to go any deeper, because their not able to get the water so they've decreased their amount of acres they're irrigating for high value crops and are doing more crop rotation as a result.”
That's Craig Simpson manager of east Columbia irrigation district, who says growers nowadays don't have enough water for the lucrative crops that bring in a lot of cash like potatoes and are switching to lower value crops, like wheat.
But now, a federal stimulus grant of $50 million will allow the Bureau of Reclamation to expand the capacity of an existing canal in the area, and bring water to 10,000 acres in that Odessa region. Part of the deal relies on agreements inked with the Spokane and Colville tribes that allow the Bureau to get additional water from Lake Roosevelt.
But the Center for Environmental law and Policy, a Spokane Environmental group is worried about the plan, given the trend of a drier climate in the Northwest. Rachael Osborn is an attorney with that organization.
Rachael Osborn: “we are already seeing reduced snowpack in the Columbia mountain ranges in the future we think there will be less water in the future. Is it right to be taking out more water now when we are already stressed and don't have enough flow for the fisheries?”
The environmental group is challenging the expansion of the irrigation plan in court.
The Bureau of Reclamation spokesman counters by saying the impact on endangered salmon runs in providing water for this project should be minimal.
Jim Blanchard: "The water will be removed from the river in times when there is excess of flow rates needed for the salmon, there won't be any additional water taken out in August that would have normally gone down stream. We have a tremendous amount of water ins storage in FDR reservoir we have about 4 and half million acre feet of storage right there, and were talking about 30,000 acre feet, so you can see it's a very small percentage.”
But increasing irrigation in the Odessa area for 10,000 acres is one thing. The Bureau is currently studying options for how to irrigate the remaining 100,000 acres in that region that are currently relying on the declining groundwater. A draft environmental impact study on that is scheduled to be released later this year.
Copyright 2010 Spokane Public Radio
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