County proposes to pipe Columbia water to basin

YAKIMA, Wash. — Yakima County commissioners are offering their version of using Columbia River water to supply basin water needs.

Call it Black Rock lite.

The county’s plan, outlined for the first time Monday, proposes to pipe water from Priest Rapids across the Army’s Yakima Training Center to a reservoir in Selah Creek, northeast of Selah.

Water from the 100,000 acre-foot reservoir would supply the Roza Irrigation District, which provides water to 72,000 acres of farms stretching from outside Yakima to Benton City.

There’s no cost estimate for the county’s plan. But the idea of pumping 500,000 acre-feet of water from the Columbia is much smaller than the proposed huge Black Rock reservoir, which the federal government rejected late last year because the price tag of more than $7 billion didn’t meet federal guidelines.

The Black Rock proposal sought to pump water into a 1.6 million acre-foot reservoir in the Black Rock Valley, east of Yakima.

While the county’s renewed focus on using Columbia River water poses political and environmental problems, it could be more acceptable than trying to expand Bumping Lake or create other reservoirs in the Yakima River Basin, commissioners said.

“This is off-stream storage. It would not interfere with the flow of the river,” said Commissioner Rand Elliott. “It leaves water in the system for other uses and I think a logical argument could be made for it.”

The plan was unveiled before a work group of representatives of fish agencies, the Yakama Nation, irrigation districts, conservation groups, state and local governments.

The work group could decide as early as next month whether the county’s proposal deserves a place in the list of proposed actions over the next four decades.

The group has been meeting since June to develop a consensus on how to provide for the future of irrigated agriculture, restore fish runs and allow for future municipal growth. The group is being asked to reach agreement on the broad outlines of a basin water plan next month.

Further development of plan details would occur over the next year.

A proposed integrated plan, which the county hopes its plan will become a part of, suggests expanding Bumping Lake, northwest of Yakima, and adding the Wymer reservoir, a 162,000 acre-foot reservoir in the Yakima River Canyon, north of Yakima.

An acre-foot of water is enough to cover one acre to a depth of one foot, or more than 325,000 gallons.

The effort is being led by the state Department of Ecology and the federal Bureau of Reclamation. The goal is to have a plan ready for state and federal funding in 2011.

Derek Sandison, head of the Ecology Department’s Office of the Columbia River, said the concept of interbasin transfers, such as the one proposed by county commissioners, are being considered by the group, but only in the last phase, currently projected to begin in 25 years.

Expanding Bumping Lake has been on the table for decades. But environmental opposition and concern about its small watershed have always doomed the plan.

The work group wants to expand Bumping Lake by more than six times its current 33,000 acre-feet.

That opposition surfaced again Monday as the group met at the Yakima Area Arboretum. David Ortman of Seattle, representing the Sierra Club, renewed the group’s stance against Bumping Lake, saying the expansion would cause unacceptable impacts on the endangered spotted owl because of the loss of old-growth timber, and bull trout, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

In addition to storage, the plan includes fish ladders at basin dams, more use of ground water for storage, water conservation, water marketing and fish habitat.

Roza Irrigation District officials said the county’s proposal lacked enough detail for them to take a position.

“There was a lot that wasn’t put on the table,” said Ric Valicoff, a Parker Heights fruit grower and chairman of the district’s board of directors. “It’s not thorough enough for us to make a conclusion.”

The district’s position has been to favor new storage somewhere within the Yakima basin, which stretches from near Snoqualmie Pass to Richland in Benton County.

Yakima County’s Commissioner Elliott said the county has discussed its plan with officials with the Yakima Training Center, which the pipeline would cross. Army officials didn’t commit to anything during an initial discussion, he said.

Elliott said Yakima County wants to see new storage included in any plan to solve basin water problems. He added, all the elements should be included in one phase, not spread out over decades as the group has so far discussed.

“A new source of water is crucial to the long-term security of water availability in this county,” Elliott said.

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