Watering the high desert

OTHELLO — The city of Othello is instituting an irrigation water utility for new subdivisions built around Othello. The new utility will establish a separate water system for lawns, gardens and other outdoor uses, using water from outside the municipal system.

Othello Mayor Shawn Logan said the goal is to conserve municipal water resources.

“Water is valuable in the desert,” Logan said.

City officials have expressed a desire to discourage the use of drinking water to to irrigate lawns. Logan said using well water for irrigation simply isn’t the best use when water is such a valuable resource in the high desert.

“We have the funding (for the irrigation utility). We’re looking for a piece of property to set up a water-holding pond,” he said. “It’s a work in progress.”

The holding pond will allow the city to provide continuous water to property owners, he said.

City building regulations require new housing subdivisions to install separate water lines for the irrigation system. The city will still provide the water, but it will be coming from a separate non-potable source.

City officials are working with the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District to provide the water, Logan said.

“We’re doing the logistical, administrative work that we have to do to get the water to the subdivisions,” he said.

The separate irrigation water requirement only applies to new construction. Installing a separate system for existing properties would be too expensive, Logan said.

“The cost-benefit doesn’t work on that,” he said.

City officials have been working on initiatives to reduce potable water use, and looking for ways to replenish the city’s existing aquifer.

Othello officials spent most of 2022 monitoring the aquifer to see if water pumped into it stays there. The water was pumped from an irrigation canal, treated, then pumped into the aquifer using a modified city well near the canal. The next phase of the project is to work on obtaining funding to scale the project up and build the facility to do it.

The idea behind the separate irrigation system is to take some of the pressure off the existing water sources.

“We didn’t want the problem to get worse,” he said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.