Canal project will require bridge work

EPHRATA — The ongoing project to widen the East Low Canal and increase the amount of water it can deliver to customers in Adams and Grant counties is likely going to require abandoning two small bridges, and rebuilding 10 others, in both counties.

The task will be finding the money to pay for it all.

“I’m here to help you figure out how to fund these bridges, and we will be your partner,” said G. Thomas Tebb, director of the Columbia River office for the state Department of Ecology.

“But my job is to finish the canal, and not build county bridges, though I see that as part of finishing the canal,” he told members of the Grant County Commission on Monday.

Tebb was joined by Melissa Downes, a hydrologist with the state Department of Ecology, Michael Schwisow, a state lobbyist representing irrigation districts in the Columbia Basin, and Clint Wertz, the field office manager for the Bureau of Reclamation in Ephrata.

According to Downes, there are 17 bridges across the East Low Canal in Grant and Adams counties. Of those, five (four in Grant County, one in Adams) are “adequate” — in no need of repairs or replacement — and 12 (two in Grant County, 10 in Adams) need some kind of modification to allow the canal to be widened.

It was estimated that it would take about $1 million per bridge to bring the bridges up to date. Most were built in the late 1940s — about the time the canal was constructed — to allow farmers to cross the canal with tractors and two-ton trucks.

“We don’t have the money,” said Commissioner Richard Stevens.

While two of those bridges have already been replaced to allow for the widening of the canal, Downes said that Grant and Adams counties have been asked to “vacate” — abandon and dismantle — one bridge each.

No bridges have been identified — in fact, the state, county, the Bureau of Reclamation would have to do some research to figure who actually owns the bridges in question — but several identified the bridge on Road W Southeast north of Warden as the best candidate in Grant County.

“That’s an old timber bridge,” said Grant County Public Works Director Jeff Tincher, noting that the bridge is in fairly good shape, isn’t in line for any upcoming maintenance, and during the last traffic study in September of 2013, averaged about 17 cars per day.

However, any attempt to vacate a bridge would require a public hearing, Stevens noted.

Tebb said he would help officials in both Adams and Grant counties go after federal and state grants and get as much money as they could to replace the bridges.

“We’ve got a little bit of time, about two to three years, before the first bridge needs to be rebuilt,” Tebb said.

The widening and improving of the East Low Canal is part of the Odessa Ground Water Replacement Program, put in place by the state legislature about 10 years ago to provide irrigation water to farmers in Grant and Adams counties from the Columbia River and its reservoirs as opposed to well water pumped from the declining Odessa aquifer.

In addition to widening the canal, a number of siphons have been replaced and the Bureau of Reclamation is beginning to create delivery systems along the length of the canal.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.