KID eases watering restrictions; CID innovation boosts its water

Monday was a better day for Tri-City area residents and the drought-stricken lawns and crops they are trying to keep alive.

Cooler weather is allowing watering restrictions to be eased for customers of the Kennewick Irrigation District, while an idea borrowed from the Everglades provided an immediate boost in the water available to some Columbia Irrigation District customers.

The Kennewick Irrigation District announced Monday that residential customers now can water each zone up to 30 minutes on the previously set two-day-a-week schedule. Last week, following days of triple-digit temperatures, the watering time had been cut to just 20 minutes per zone.

Additionally, the district began to allow spot watering in areas of lawns showing distress on Monday. Those patches can be watered with a hose for up to 30 minutes per day per spot outside of the designated watering schedule.

This should allow lawns to recover some before temperatures rise again, said Jason McShane, KID engineering manager.

The district also continues to allow hand watering of trees, shrubs, perennials and gardens or their watering with high-efficiency devices such as micro-spray, soaker hoses and drip lines.

The cooler temperatures have helped bring Yakima River flows back up, resulting in more water available to KID, but temperatures are predicted to increase again.

KID warned last week that Yakima River flows available to KID are difficult to predict more than a day out, and restrictions on watering could continue to change through the summer.

High temperatures are expected to be in the upper 80s or low 90s in the Tri-Cities until the weekend, when they should be well into the 90s again, according to the National Weather Service. The high July 19 could be 97 degrees in the Tri-Cities.

Normal highs for the Tri-Cities in July are about 90 degrees.

A very strong high-pressure ridge over the Mid-Columbia has weakened and shifted to the east, said Mary Wister, a weather service meteorologist. That has allowed a Pacific frontal system to move in.

Although temperatures will heat up this weekend, the weather service does not foresee another stretch of triple-digit highs in the near future, she said.

KID also will contact agriculture and other non-residential water users with more than three acres of land to discuss their revised water restrictions.

Columbia Irrigation District

CID has senior water rights in the Yakima River, which should mean adequate water for its customers so far this summer.

Instead, it was having trouble getting water to the Finley end of its canal. The problem? Unusually warm water that contributed to weeds clogging the river.

The weeds were wall-to-wall from one side of the river to another, said CID general manager Joel Teeley.

The district turned to a company in Olympia that uses boats to clear aquatic growth from ponds, just as boats in the Everglades clear paths through the water.

“It was a very good idea,” Teeley said. “It’s just like mowing the lawn underwater.”

Monday morning, a boat was used to cut the weeds near the south shore from the Wanawish Dam on the Yakima River upstream about 400 yards.

One pass over the weeds and the flow improved immediately, Teeley said.

Head gates into the CID canal that were completely out of the water were again submerged and controlling the water flow, he said.

The water was expected to reach Finley about midnight. The weeds should not grow back again this season, Teeley said.

This story was originally published July 13, 2015 at 11:13 AM with the headline "KID eases watering restrictions; CID innovation boosts its water."