Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008

Odessa meeting times announced

By John Trumbo, Herald staff writer

Public meetings to reveal progress on the Odessa Subarea Special Study involving alternatives for ground water irrigation for about 140,000 acres in Central Washington will be at Coulee Dam and Moses Lake on Sept. 10-11.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is preparing an environmental impact statement with the state Department of Ecology to evaluate issues relating to using Columbia Basin Project surface water to offset ground water irrigation.

The first meeting will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Sept. 10 at the Coulee Dam Town Hall, 300 Lincoln Ave., in Coulee Dam. The second meeting will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Sept. 11 at Big Bend Community College's Advanced Technologies Education Center, 7611 Boling St., Moses Lake.

Several alternatives will be presented at the meetings and the public will be allowed to ask questions of bureau staff working on the study.

The alternatives are to enlarge and extend the existing East Low Canal south of Interstate 90 and construct a new East High Canal north of the interstate, to serve about 127,000 acres with surface water by diverting 453,200 acre-feet of water annually from the Columbia River.

The other alternative being studied is to enlarge and extend the existing East Low Canal, which would serve about 62,000 acres with about 202,300 acre-feet of water annually from the Columbia River.

The estimated cost for the first alternative is from $1.9 billion to $4.4 billion, while the cost for the second alternative is from $377 million to $2.2 billion.

Getting an alternative to irrigating with ground water is important because deep wells are having to reach as far as 750 feet to pump water from the aquifer. Deeper wells bring higher pumping costs and poor water quality due to high water temperatures and high sodium, noted Ellen Berggren, manager of the Odessa Aquifer study who is with the Bureau of Reclamation in Boise.

The water issue in the Odessa Aquifer is critical for potato farmers in Adams, Franklin, Grant and Lincoln counties, Berggren noted in a report released to the Herald this week. The loss of all potato production in those counties is estimated at $630 million annually and the elimination of about 3,600 jobs, according to a 2005 report from Washington State University at Pullman.