Kennewick Irrigation District: Making the desert bloom

The past year has been a momentous one for the Kennewick Irrigation District (KID). It has continued to make significant strides forward to protect and secure our water supply, which our community depends on to make the desert bloom.

The 2019 water year was one of shortage, with below-average precipitation and snowpack in the mountains. Below-average reservoir storage lead to pro-ratable water rights being reduced to 72% of supply for KID and other Yakima River districts. This situation led KID to call on storage water from the reservoirs to meet our supply needs for the first time in our 62-year history.

To manage our demands with short supplies, KID implemented a voluntary watering schedule that was highly successful in smoothing out the demands and ensuring that adequate water was available for our customers.

While the 2020 water year is, at the time of writing this, shaping up to be better than 2019, KID is always looking ahead at measures that will protect and reinforce our supply.

One concept being actively pursued by KID is central storage, or a large reservoir within KID that can be used not only to manage our peak demands and water deliveries more efficiently, but also to store water for supplemental use in a drought situation.

The central storage reservoir would be gravity fed in and out of the KID main canal, taking both operational spill water and excess flows from the river during times when the river ecology wont be negatively impacted and storing them for delivery during times of shortage.

The conceptual reservoir (actually designed as a series of cells that hold and exchange water) could be as large as 14,000 acre-feet, or nearly half of the capacity of Bumping Lake reservoir near Chinook Pass. KID engineers have identified a site in Badger Coulee that is ideal for locating the central storage reservoir; of the nearly 400 acres needed, KID has already acquired 123 acres, and is in the process of acquiring the rest.

Another project that is still being pursued by KID is Chandler Electrification, which was authorized by Congress in 1994 to help mitigate for KID water supplies lost to federally funded water conservation projects up basin in the Yakima River, including those projects implemented pursuant to the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan (YBIP). To move this project along or identify equivalent projects that would mitigate KIDs lost water supply, KID is working closely with our partners as part of a Lower River Leadership Team.

This team includes the Yakama Nation, Department of Ecology and the Bureau of Reclamation, whose mission is to address lower river issues, including the KID water supply that could not be resolved through the YBIP process. KID continues to participate in YBIP and is highly supportive of components of the plan that benefit the entire Yakima Basin and do not cause unmitigated harm to others, including the Bateman Island Causeway breach (now known as the Yakima Delta Ecosystem Restoration.) That is moving forward through a recently funded feasibility study led by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and the Army Corps of Engineers.

While the past year saw KID move on from previous longstanding partnerships such as the Yakima Basin Joint Board, changing times and circumstances have provided KID with the opportunity to form new partnerships such as the Lower River Leadership Team and the Amon Basin Partners that better highlight and enhance KIDs values and commitment to serving our community and ensuring a healthy lower Yakima River for generations to come.

This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Kennewick Irrigation District: Making the desert bloom."