Columbia Basin Water Project
My heart goes out to my California audience regarding the fact that northwest farmers are celebrating a new pipeline that will provide desperately needed irrigation water. Reporting on this seems like salting the wounds of Central Valley farmers who have had to watch crops dry up when irrigation was halted. I’m Susan Allen, back after the break. I have to pinch my self to believe it, but yes, the federal government is investing in a new twenty five million dollar pipeline to drain more water from the Columbia River to aide...not some endangered guppy, but farmers and ranchers. The Grande Coulee Dam built in 1942 was intended to be one of the nations largest irrigation projects projected to magically turn a million acres of desert into farmland. Development and salmon issues competed with agriculture for water rights and the full potential of the project never materialized. Today that’s changed. the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project is back on track, fabulous news for thousands of farmers who draw water from an aquifer that is declining rapidly. Despite protests by groups like the Center for Environmental Law and Policy whose director Rachel Pascal believes that farmers “need to accept that they may have to revert to dryland farming” Washington lawmakers have paid homage to the fact agriculture is valuable and brings more revenue to the state than software or airplanes. My hope is that Idaho, Oregon and yes, California will follow suite.
