Water Resources

Water is becoming a very hot topic in light of the continuing drought. The first new water supplies since 2005 in the Columbia Basin Project for groundwater replacement have been made available. Vicky Scharlau is the Executive Director for the Columbia Basin Development League.

SCHARLAU: The new water in this instance has actually been water that has been conserved through efforts of the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District, working closely with the other two Columbia Basin Project districts which is the Quincy and South districts. They've gone through a process over the years of trying to put in pipeline to help eliminate everything from seepage to just evaporation.

Scharlau says it's important that people see some forward movement.

SCHARLAU: It's the first positive externally visible movement to the rest of the public that the efforts that the State of Washington, the Department of Ecology and the Bureau of Reclamation along with the landowners in the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District and the groups like ours at the Columbia Basin Development League, this is the first we've seen of water moving to landowners through a process that started addressing deep wells being dug into the aquifer and the Odessa aquifer going dry. So now the farmers are having access to surface water.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.