MLIRD looks at assessment changes following new law

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Irrigation and Rehabilitation District hopes to have its new assessment structure ready for the public by Sept. 1, according to MLIRD Board President Bill Bailey.

“We will decide how these rates will be determined and then publish them and make them available,” Bailey said. “There are a lot of factors that need to be considered.”

Bailey spoke following passage by the Washington State Legislature during the regular spring session of a measure supported by Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, to clarify the MLIRD’s legal status and ability to levy assessments on property within the district. In 2020, a Grant County Superior Court judge found in favor of property owner and former MLIRD board member Mick Hansen when he challenged the district’s method of levying assessments on property, noting the district could not levy an irrigation assessment because it has no way of delivering irrigation water to properties in the district.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed Dent’s bill into law in early May.

“We wanted to get them back into business,” Dent said. “The lake is so much better now, and they’ve been doing a good job of keeping the lake clean.”

Bailey said the MLIRD is considering changing how it will assess properties for both water and the intangible benefits of maintaining the lake for recreation. The lake is governed under two separate sections of state law that govern irrigation districts and a later statute enacted in 1962 creating rehabilitation districts.

The MLIRD will assess some properties for water delivery, Bailey said, like lakeshore properties or the private water delivery systems in Cascade Valley that draw water for lawn irrigation from the lake. Bailey said the company the MLIRD is working with can use satellite images to determine how much actual land can be irrigated on a parcel, and the district will levy accordingly.

“They will be assessed for water on the basis of irrigable acres,” Bailey said.

However, Bailey also said property owners in the district will be assessed based on something much more intangible — the value of the lake to their property or businesses. Properties will be assessed points, Bailey said, with lakefront property or property near a boat launch or even property with a lake view receiving more points than property farther from the lake.

In fact, Bailey said, businesses may be assessed on the basis of how many of their employees came to Moses Lake because of the lake itself.

“It’s nebulous, but it’s not,” Bailey said. “The benefit to everyone in the community is something.”

While Moses Lake is not and never will be as pristine as the snowmelt waters of Lake Chelan, Bailey said a clean Moses Lake is a valuable asset to everyone who lives here, whether they live on it, boat on it, fish or even swim in it.

“No one wants to come to a lake that’s solid algae or scummed over,” he said. “We have a usable lake.”

The MLIRD is one of the main organizations within the Moses Lake Watershed Council working to improve conditions on Moses Lake and limit the potentially dangerous blooms of blue-green algae in late summer during the last few years.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.