By Ann McCreary
As work moves forward on piping sections of Methow Valley Irrigation District (MVID) ditches, the district has developed a process to provide individual wells to MVID members who will no longer receive irrigation water from its system.
The plan, approved last week by MVID’s directors, outlines how members will be compensated for the cost of installing irrigation wells, and sets payment caps based on the number of acres to be irrigated.
About 80 parcels now served by MVID’s ditches will be converted to wells as part of MVID’s $10 million Instream Flow Improvement Project. The project is designed to keep more water in the Methow and Twisp rivers for endangered fish, and provide more reliable irrigation to district members.
MVID broke ground on the project last month, and is now laying pipe to enclose the district’s east side canal, which serves district members east of the Methow River.
The east side pipe will end at Beaver Creek, and about eight parcels south of that point will receive irrigation through wells.
Next spring the district will begin piping its other canal on the west side of the Methow River. About 70 parcels at the end of the west side canal will no longer receive irrigation water through the piped system, and will convert to wells for irrigating.
The well conversion process is being facilitated by Trout Unlimited, which has helped acquire funding for the district’s improvement project. Trout Unlimited this week issued a request for qualifications for providers interested in installing the 80 small irrigation systems.
Trout Unlimited will create a list of “preferred providers” from which landowners can choose to install complete well systems, from assessing the current well system to installing and hooking wells to existing irrigation lines, said Roger Rowatt, construction manager for the MVID piping project.
“The idea is to get a one-stop-shopping opportunity for landowners,” explained Greg Knott, project manager for the MVID Instream Flow Improvement Project.
Landowners won’t be required to pay any upfront costs for installing wells. Instead, Trout Unlimited will issue vouchers to landowners that guarantee payment by Trout Unlimited to the well contractor, within the established spending caps.
To coordinate with the canal piping project, MVID has created a schedule for well conversions that gives priority to landowners at the end of the canals, because irrigation will be discontinued there first during construction.
Knott said work on the well conversions will begin this fall, and all wells should be in place by the end of 2015.
Because each well will entail a different set of circumstances, MVID has established a three-member Board of Adjustment to hear extenuating circumstances and consider financial adjustments.
The state Department of Ecology requires that all the irrigation wells be metered and water usage reported to MVID, which will report to Ecology to ensure the water usage is in line with the district’s water rights, Knott said.
Work on piping the east canal is ahead of schedule, Rowatt said. About 8,000 feet of pipe out of a total of 27,000 feet has been laid. Six local subcontractors are working on the project with Tapani Underground, based in Battle Ground, Washington.
“I hope to have all the pipe in the ditch and backfilled by the end of the month,” Rowatt said.
MVID’s improvement project marks the end of more than 25 years of regulatory battles and lawsuits over inefficiencies and waste in the district’s irrigation system, and over the district’s withdrawal of water from the rivers and adverse impacts on habitat for endangered fish.
