Doing it right: New pumping house is the beginning of a wetter future

WARDEN — The dust that filled much of the sky over Grant and Adams counties May 27 was a stark reminder for many of the need to finish the Columbia Basin Project.

“We’re in a drought,” said Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, as blowing wind toppled empty chairs in front of the newly-completed EL 47.5 pumping station near the intersection of West Leslie Road and Howard Road in Adams County.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a joint project of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, and the University of Nebraska’s National Drought Mitigation Center, almost the entire western United States, with the exception of the Cascade Mountains, portions of the Olympic Peninsula, and mountainous regions of Idaho and Montana, is experiencing drought in one form or another.

Grant County is experiencing moderate and severe drought, while all of Adams County is experiencing severe drought, according to the center’s website.

Schoesler said it’s a drought not all that different from the late 1960s, which prompted a number of farmers to drill deep wells into the Odessa Aquifer to irrigate their farmland.

But those wells — drilled because the East High Canal, which was supposed to provide irrigation water to the eastern reaches of the Columbia Basin Project, was never built — have nearly drained that aquifer dry, Schoesler said. And repeating what one farmer told him, the senator added trying to get more water out of the ground is “a race to the bottom.”

“We found the bottom, and the bottom is below sea level, water that’s not fit to drink, doesn’t grow very good crops and isn’t even potable,” Schoesler said. “So we found the bottom, and we lost the race.”

Which is why this pumping station, finished in late winter, was built. The EL 47.5 irrigation system — named for the milepost along the East Low Canal — will provide water to roughly 8,500 acres of farmland currently watered by deep wells.

It’s a tiny portion of the 87,700 acres of the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program. But it is a start. And more systems like the EL 47.5 are planned.

When Congress created the Columbia Basin Project in 1943, it authorized water taken from the Columbia River at Coulee Dam to irrigate 1.1 million acres. Currently, only 671,000 acres within the project are irrigated.

A group of notables gathered at the new pumping station on May 27, including Schoesler, Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, Rep. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy, Washington State Department of Agriculture Director Derek Sanderson, Department of Ecology Director of the Office of Columbia River Tom Tebb, Bureau of Reclamation Ephrata Field Office Manager Mark Maynard, as well as leaders with all three local irrigation districts distributing water to farmers within the Columbia Basin Project.

“The goal is to ease irrigation reliance on groundwater and reduce depletion of the aquifer,” said Duaine Anderson, president of the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District Board of Directors.

Anderson said the 8.8 miles of the EL 47.5 system will allow farmers along the pipeline who hold groundwater permits to swap those rights for Columbia Basin Project water. The entire project cost $20.8 million — $5 million from the state legislature and the rest funded by the sale of bonds paid for by landowners purchasing water on contract — at a rough cost of around $1,980 per acre of irrigated land.

“I don’t know if that’s a bargain or not, but it seems very inexpensive,” Anderson said.

Three more distribution systems are currently being designed — at canal milepost 11.8 and milepost 22.1, northeast of Moses Lake, as well as milepost 79.2, east of Othello. A total of eight distribution systems are envisioned as part of the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program.

“It’s hard, it’s expensive, it’s not easy to do, but it’s taken a lot of effort over 20 years to get to a point where we actually have some water deliveries to Odessa,” said Craig Simpson, the secretary manager of the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District, which encompasses all of the proposed distribution systems. “We’re going to keep moving forward.”

Eventually, that means extending the promise of river water to every farmer within the Columbia Basin Project’s boundaries, Schoesler said.

“We’re going to do it right, and we’re going to do it well. We have two choices,” Schoesler said, noting all the dust swirling around in the air. “Days like today, and days that are more prosperous.”