MLIRD passes $1.6 million 2021 budget, seeks home for giant dirt pile

MOSES LAKE — Do you need some dirt?

The Moses Lake Irrigation and Rehabilitation District — still — has about 50,000 cubic yards of dirt it dredged from the bottom of Moses Lake in 2019, sitting on land between the lakeshore and East Broadway, near state Route 17.

“It’s a pretty good sized pile,” said MLIRD Board of Directors President Bill Bailey.

According to Bailey, the original plan was to donate the dirt to the Port of Moses Lake, which planned to spread it on several fields the port irrigates to grow crops near the Grant County International Airport.

The dirt is the property of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Bailey said, and because of that, it cannot be sold.

It can only be given away.

“We’ve tried to give it away,” Bailey said. “But whoever takes it has to haul it.”

As part of its $1.6 million 2021 budget, passed unanimously by district directors at an online meeting Wednesday, the MLIRD has allocated between $200,000 and $300,000 to haul all that dirt to the Port of Moses Lake — assuming the port still wants it.

“It’s kind of a rough deal,” Bailey said. “We spend $1.4 million to get it out of the water, and we’re looking to spend another $300,000.”

The Port of Moses Lake still wants the dirt, according to Executive Director Don Kersey.

“Yes, we would take it,” Kersey wrote in an email to the Columbia Basin Herald.

Moving dirt is the only major project in the district’s 2021 budget, though the $1.6 million also includes $60,000 for lake treatments and $100,000 for continued research into Moses Lake’s ongoing blue-green algae problem.

“We’re still kind of on hold for specific improvement projects,” Bailey said. “Our organization has been in a mode of not doing anything more than we absolutely have to until our current health crisis is over and until all our court actions are settled.”

The five-member MLIRD board of directors initially approved a contract last fall to haul the dredgings away, but Bailey said the company submitting the low bid did not have proper insurance, so the board voted to void the contract and hold off on awarding the contract again until the district had a better handle on what’s needed.

“We’re going to hold off on that and see if we can come up with a better plan,” Bailey said.

As part of its 2021 budget, the district set its per-$1,000 assessment for property owners in the district at 70 cents, 10 cents lower than in 2020. In large part, that lower assessment is the result of a roughly $2.8 million reserve the MLIRD is sitting on, Bailey said.

The reserve is needed in case the MLIRD decides to do more dredging on Moses Lake or some major event — such as the failure of North Dam some years ago — demands the district’s immediate response.

“We have another liability we hold, the dam on Rocky Ford Creek, which is a check dam,” Bailey said.

The little dam was designed to ensure lake carp don’t swim up Rocky Ford Creek, which is home to a major fish hatchery, and to ensure creek silt doesn’t empty into the lake, Bailey said.

“That’s something we need to have a reserve for,” he said.

In the meantime, the MLIRD has a small mountain of dirt, just in case anyone is interested.

“We’re hoping somebody needs a bunch of it, and they’re willing to haul it,” he added.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].