'It's kind of a big gamble'

Odessa farmer replacing well

ODESSA — Neil Fink planned to take his visitor out by the well he's abandoning for some pictures.

One hundred feet away sits the stake for the new well he's digging, where he hopes to find enough water for part of his irrigated operation.

But the warmer temperatures mean the land all around the well has softened and gotten muddy. Too muddy to drive and risk getting Fink's truck stuck — a flatbed bearing drilling equipment for the person Fink hired to drill his new well sits in the muck not too far away — and ultimately too muddy to get too close.

"The guy's drilling for water and I'm standing in mud," Fink mused. "What's wrong with this story?"

The need for water for his farming operation drove the lifelong Odessa resident, who assumed his wheat and occasional seedpea and potato operation from his father in 1981, to abandon the well.

"That's kind of what I went to school for, agriculture economics," Fink said. "Ended up back here and took over the farm."

He lives with his wife of almost 23 years, Lecia, and children, Brian, 21, and Sara, 19.

Reaching a depth of 600 feet, the well went from pumping 1,600 gallons per minute to pumping less than 500 gallons a minute.

"It's been dropping the last few years and it finally wasn't really worth running the well any more," Fink said. "We're just going to bag that hole and about 100 feet away, we're going to drill another one."

The old hole might be in the wrong location for any good water, he noted, and the state Department of Ecology's casing regulations would require him to change sizes, too costly an expenditure.

Fink expects the new well to reach at least 2,000 feet in depth, but says it's not for certain whether or not he finds water in the new location.

"It's kind of a big gamble," he said. "Hopefully the water's down there, but there's no guarantee."

Under the new regulations, Fink anticipates casing the new hole down to 800 feet. He expects the well driller by the middle of the week.

"It's just getting a little bit tight in the year," he said. "It's going to take about six weeks to drill the hole, then once the hole's drilled, it takes a while to get everything put together, things put in the hole, get the bowls and all that business. Usually I start watering about April 1. Everything goes right, I'm hoping to hit that target."

Fink said he's had good years with his operation, and he has to get through the bad years. He finds positive signs for the future in the rising prices of wheat. If he has water and is able to rent out an irrigation circle per year to potato growers, the price of rent helps, as do potatoes as a rotation crop for his corn.

Fink hopes to see the second half of the Columbia Basin Project completed. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project was originally slated to be completed decades ago. The state allowed farmers to begin drawing water from the aquifer in the 1970s, believing they would ultimately get water from the planned expansion of the project. Cost concerns and concerns about restoring declining salmon runs helped to derail the expansion plans, leaving only the aquifer to supply the farms.

"For farmers, we would much rather spend money paying for surface water which we know would be there rather than to punch these holes farther and farther," Fink said. "You might have water, you might not. You just don't know how long."

If he doesn't hit water?

"Then that's just money down a dry hole," Fink said.

He has one operating well, and said he would limp by with that. An operation where he resides would probably slide back into dryland farming, he said. He probably would utilize the bill passed by the state senate to enable Odessa Subarea water users to protect their water rights from relinquishment for non-use, in hopes the surface area would ultimately arrive or the price of wheat would rise.

"I'd like to see all kinds of water coming out of a new hole," he said. "I'd love to see that second half being built. I'd love to putt money into that than punch in deeper, pulling out of these deep depths, plus guaranteed water."

With deep wells providing water to a high-value crop, there's more at risk if something happens, he said.

And the future?

"Hopefully I'm still farming," he said. "We'll just keep on going, hopefully. Get some water here, get everything put back in and get everything going."