Introducing the Columbia Plateau Aquifer System
Introducing the Columbia Plateau Aquifer System
COLUMBIA BASIN — Nobody has heard of the Columbia Plateau Aquifer System.
As executive director of the Columbia Basin Groundwater Management Area, Paul Stoker knows this.
But everyone has heard of the Odessa Sub-Aquifer and its declining water levels over the last several years. So Stoker is aware he's blowing minds with the revelation said sub-aquifer doesn't really exist.
"The Odessa subarea is a political subdivision like a county or city boundary created by the politicians in Olympia back in 1967," Stoker said. "It does not represent an aquifer. The people who live in that area have significant problems with the groundwater. So it's become fairly easy for people who didn't know any better to say it's the Odessa aquifer issue."
While it's true the problems are an aquifer issue and they fall within the Odessa Subarea, Stoker said the area is a subdivision of the Columbia Plateau Aquifer System, which covers Adams, Franklin, Grant and Lincoln counties, from Coulee City to Pasco.
In late March, the state's Senate Capital Budget included $2 million for the management area to extend stratigraphic mapping into Lincoln County and deeper into the Grande Ronde Basalt Group, the primary water-bearing zone used in the Columbia Basin. The state's House Capital Budget included $1.5 million for the research projects but did not contain the Senate bill's request for a report on surface and ground water by Jan. 1, 2009.
In consulting an artist's rendering of what the land looked like 15 million years ago, Stoker described the scene to form the aquifer system.
"There opened up a fissure, they figure a quarter-mile wide, 40 miles long, that shot lava 10,000 feet in the air," he said. "It disgorged 200,000 cubic-miles in 60 days. It flew out across the land, just like an ocean. It flowed from Colfax to Grand Coulee to Pendleton to Portland in 60 days, and it covered the whole region with up to hundreds of feet thick of red-hot lava. That happened 300 times, but they weren't all that big."
The events would add pancake-like layers of land across the land. As the layers rolled across the land, the flow-bottom of the lava would cool as it touched the land, crystallize and turn into gravel. The flow-top would cool as it hit the air and also crystalize.
The middle of the lava flow cooled very slowly, forming a basalt flow. The gravel comprises an interflow zone, or an interbed, Stoker said. This is where the water used in the Basin is. Interbed series include the Wanapum and the Grande Ronde.
The top of the system, in Coulee City, is approximately 3,000 feet above the bottom point in Pasco.
Over the last eight years, the system of three counties were mapped, with Lincoln County joining efforts two years ago.
Data gathered thus far already helped to determine how to drill wells for clean water at the Moses Lake Skyline area, Stoker said, and why the water table declined in Connell wells.
"That is the reason the county commissioners went to the state Legislature and convinced them to help finish filling in the gaps," he said. "So they can start to get an understanding of what our aquifer systems look like … It's only been in the last two years we've realized how this whole thing really worked."
Anytime a decision is made, from a city to the federal level, Stoker said, the effect needs to be known and whether it would work or not.
"Without adequate knowledge about the basic groundwater we have below us, decision makers can't with any certainty make any decisions about what to do about the quantity and quality issues we have," he said. "They just can't do it. Otherwise, it's a shot in the dark."
Stoker and the management area are well aware there's a lot of information to convey about the system, some of it quite scientific in nature. The management area is looking at ways to make the info more approachable to the general public, he said.
"If it's coming out of my tap, why should I care?" Stoker said. "Well, when it stops coming out of your tap, you're probably too late to fix it."
For more information, contact the management area office at 509-488-3409.
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