CBDL delegation visits capital

During the first week of May, a Columbia Basin Development League delegation visited Washington, D.C. to provide briefings on the current status of the Odessa Subarea Special Study and solicit continued support from Washington’s Congressional delegation. Participating in the trip were CBDL past chairman Clark Kagele, Odessa; CBDL trustee and East Irrigation District Director Bernie Erickson; Chris Voigt, Washington Potato Commission Executive Director; Derek Sandison, Director of Ecology’s Office of Columbia River; CBDL Executive Director Vicky Scharlau and Government Relations Director Mike Schwisow. The group’s composition reflected the coalition that has developed supporting the Odessa study plan to bring Columbia Basin Project water supplies to replace failing deep well supplies.

The current economic situation and the difficulty Congress is having with getting budgets adopted was a topic of discussion in every office visited. Past practice across the West has been that Congress would provide capitalization for Bureau of Reclamation projects through federal appropriations, with project beneficiaries repaying through long-term contracts. This is how the existing Columbia Basin Project infrastructure was built.

Given the current situation, the group used the budget discussion as an opportunity to lay out the current thinking on how implementation of the Odessa plan can move forward without immediate federal funding. It was explained that the plan can be broken down into manageable parts consisting of expansion of the East Low Canal (ELC) to full capacity south of I-90 and construction of eight pumping plant/lateral pipeline systems that would deliver water to the east from the ELC. This funding concept looks to the state of Washington through the Office of Columbia River to get things started by making a significant investment in the East Low Canal portion of the project to make deliveries possible over the entire length of the canal. The eight lateral systems would be developed using existing irrigation district authority to create Local Improvement Districts. The LID infrastructure financing method is used by local governments across the state to finance all sorts of infrastructure projects and works in a manner similar to Congressional financing. The East Columbia Basin Irrigation District would establish the LIDs with input from landowners, sell bonds to finance construction and pay them off through assessments on the lands receiving water. Irrigation district law allows repayment for a term of up to 50 years.

The concept was well received in meetings with Senator Maria Cantwell and Congressman Doc Hastings and by staff in the other congressional offices that were visited. The group asked that the Senator and Congressman continue to monitor the project and be ready to provide encouragement to Reclamation if implementation gets bogged down in bureaucratic red tape.

The group also met with David Murillo, Reclamation Deputy Commissioner for Operations and Reclamation’s chief budget officer. They explained that Reclamation has been caught between increasing demands for water projects in the West and shrinking Congressional budgets. They were enthused when they heard the concept that was presented and said that it might represent a new approach that could be used in other projects across the West.

The delegation also provided briefings for Mark Rupp, who is Governor Gregoire’s Washington, D.C. representative; Jaime Shimek, Senior Policy Advisor to Senator Patty Murray; Roger Crockrell, Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee; Mark Dunn, Vice President, Government Affairs for Simplot; Brent Baglien, Government & Legal Affairs for Con Agra and Kris Polly, President of Water Strategies, LLC.