MLIRD

Reader encourages involvement

On July 16 a second M.L.I.R.D. forum was held. Some citizens spoke in favor of keeping everything just as it was in 1928, when the lake was surrounded by farms, orchards and ranches that used lake water to "irrigate." Now the lake is surrounded by an ever expanding urbanized zone with a minute number of true "irrigators." Only those who live on the lake front and water their lawns with un-metered, unrestricted lake water still demand to be considered "irrigators." The thousands of the rest of us who have paid for decades for lake water we've never had access to, don't call ourselves "irrigators" for watering our landscapes with expensive, metered city water.

Some urge keeping the Legislature out of local issues. I want to remind every ratepayer that it was a very small group of property owners and investors who went to the Legislature in the early 1960s and added the cost of improving lake shore and water quality to the same property owners paying for irrigation water they've never received. To sort this out and make it a fair system where the true costs are shared by all those who benefit, we need to add our thoughts and let our local Representatives and our Senator know. E-mail, snail-mail, text or call them. They are the ones who local citizens have gone to in 1928, 1962 and 2012. Looking to make some changes to a system set up 84 years ago, by people who never conceived this area would grow into what it has become, is what we're trying to do now. Remember, our dams and the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project was a pipe dream equal to "Seward's Folly," you know, Alaska. Both are now invaluable to America.

Why pay for I.D. water we've never gotten?

Get involved.

Jon Smith

Moses Lake