Kennewick Irrigation District turns 100

Kennewick Irrigation District turns 100 years old this year. In our long history, KID has always been serious about risk management and protecting our irrigation water supply. Here are some ways we are working towards those goals:

Grants

KID continues to maximize benefit from customers' capital improvement charges by leveraging them with grants. We were recently awarded three grants totaling $2.85 million.

• Two WaterSMART Grants from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), leveraged with those funds, will allow us to line miles of canal. We have installed impervious liner on more than 18 miles of earthen canal since 2010. We anticipate it will take six more years to line all of our earthen canal sections.

• Geotechnical evaluation and design of a new reservoir adjacent to Steptoe Boulevard will be funded by a Washington State Department of Ecology grant leveraged with capital improvement funds.

Electrification

Lining and reservoir construction are good projects, but more is needed to protect our water supply. Our irrigation water comes largely from return flows, and conservation efforts further up the Yakima Basin have negatively impacted those flows. Up-basin lining, piping, re-regulation reservoirs and target flow enhancement, where the state and federal government spent over $100 million so far, have threatened KID’s water supply. Impacts of those conservation efforts were felt in 2015, when the district struggled to meet demand due to very low river flows. Prior to 2015, the return flows that supply us were more reliable and predictable.

Electrification of Chandler Pumping Plant is our interim supply solution that will mitigate the aforementioned up-basin conservation; it will “fix” our low-flow year supply for the foreseeable future.

Our irrigation water is diverted from the Yakima River at Prosser Dam and flows down an 11-mile canal to Chandler Pumping Plant. There it drops down through two penstocks and spins turbines, which turn pumps to deliver water into KID's main canal. This system resourcefully uses no electricity, but is inefficient with water. It takes 1.5 gallons of water to pump one gallon of water into the main canal.

With electrification, the water previously used to spin turbines will remain in the 11-mile stretch of river between Prosser Dam and Chandler Pumping Plant, enhancing aquatic life during droughts while providing KID with a full water supply.

KID has begun the process to select an engineering firm to work with the USBR on environmental review, design and permitting for electrification. The USBR previously estimated the electrification project cost at $30 million to $60 million. Recently, KID contracted with a local engineering firm to re-evaluate the project scope and the new estimate is less than $25 million.

New Water

While these efforts are underway, work continues on the next big water project; the Columbia River Initiative.

The KID Board recently approved creation of a new Water Infrastructure and Supply reserve fund and transferred $100,000 to start the fund this year. The district will charge all customers a flat rate of $2.50 per account and $4.54 per acre or fraction thereof. Over time, this fund will grow to be used to construct a large scale water supply project that will protect Kennewick’s urban landscape and the 10,000 acres of production agriculture that depend on a reliable supply of water. In order to build a Columbia River project, all “new water” has to be mitigated; KID will have to acquire existing water rights; then build a water conveyance system estimated to cost in excess of $100 million. This fund will provide the necessary resources needed to protect our water supply for the next 100 years.

This story was originally published March 23, 2017 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Kennewick Irrigation District turns 100."