Bumping Lake central to water talks

YAKIMA, Wash. -- An expanded Bumping Lake northwest of Yakima -- often studied and always rejected for decades -- is one of the key elements of a developing plan to meet future water needs for fish, farmers and communities.

A conceptual proposal that includes increasing the basin's smallest storage reservoir to 200,000 acre-feet of capacity appeared to pass its first test Thursday.

A roundtable group of water interests, called together by state and federal officials, generally supported a larger Bumping Lake and other elements of an initial phase of a plan projected to take up to 40 years to complete.

Making the first piece happen over a 10-year time frame will be ambitious and expensive. Rough estimates place the cost at up to
$4 billion and, possibly, several billion dollars more for the overall plan.

Funding could be sought from Congress and the Washington Legislature as early as 2011.

The first phase would include construction of a 162,000 acre-foot Wymer reservoir in the Yakima River Canyon, north of Yakima; a slight increase in capacity at Lake Cle Elum; fish ladders at Bumping, Cle Elum and Clear Lake dams; more irrigation conservation; water banking, and municipal aquifer storage and recovery.

Those improvements, according to rough estimates developed by consultants to the study group, would add up to 335,000 acre-feet of water to the basin water supply and would reduce the potential water rationing that junior water-right holders would experience in a drought year like 2005.

That year, the junior users received 38 percent of a full supply. A fully implemented plan could see rationing at 63 percent of a full supply.

The group that met Thursday, representing farmers, fish agencies, the Yakama Nation, state and federal agencies, and an environmental group, has been meeting since June at the request of the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the Washington state Department of Ecology, to hammer out a basin water plan on which all basin interests can agree.

The group is scheduled to complete its work in December.

The agencies called the group together after the Bureau of Reclamation ended a five-year, $18 million study and rejected three proposed storage projects reviewed in the study.

The centerpiece of that planning effort was the huge Black Rock reservoir, east of Yakima, that carried an overall price tag of more than $7 billion, including nearly $5 billion for construction.

Coming up with a long-term water plan has always been elusive in the Yakima River Basin.

Derek Sandison, director of the state Department of Ecology's Office of the Columbia River, said the planning group is taking an approach not previously attempted. This effort involves all interest groups and seeks a solution that satisfies a variety of needs.

"The objective here is consensus on a package that addresses all water supply and aquatic needs," he said.

Expanding Bumping Lake, however, has been among the most contentious of possible water solutions. Previous proposals sought to expand Bumping to 436,000 acre-feet of water.

The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who owned a home at Goose Prairie near the 33,000 acre-foot lake off State Route 410, always posed a roadblock.

And environmental groups have uniformly opposed new storage, including Bumping, without first wringing every drop of conservation from the century-old Yakima Irrigation Project.

But one environmental group now appears willing to consider support for a larger Bumping as long as the need is documented and is part of an overall plan that provides benefits to fish.

"If it is the way to meet demand and provide benefits for fish, we would go with it," said Michael Garrity of Seattle, the Washington conservation chair for American Rivers.

Garrity also said the planning group should consider land-use issues to address the proliferation of rural homes tapping into groundwater with exempt wells -- a practice that's kicked up a big political fight in Kittitas County.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also would support expanding Bumping Lake as long as the habitat losses to bull trout and spotted owl can be offset, said Jeff Thomas, a Yakima-based biologist for the federal agency.

Both species are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Irrigation representatives said they are generally comfortable with the elements in the first phase and the time allotted to implement them.

But backers of the failed Black Rock reservoir expressed concern the first phase wouldn't go far enough to meet everyone's water needs, especially with climate change expected to reduce winter snowpack by more than 40 percent within 30 years.

Charlie de la Chapelle, a Lower Valley farmer and member of the grassroots group that supported Black Rock, said the plan doesn't provide enough water and takes too long.

Some fishery represen-tatives said they would prefer to see fish ladders at Rimrock Lake and Kachess dams -- currently proposed to be delayed for more than 25 years -- completed within the first 10 years.

*David Lester can be reached at 509-577-7674 or dlester@yakimaherald.com.