Odessa Failure
Odessa Failure. I'm Greg Martin with Washington Ag Today.All is not well with the Odessa Subarea. A recent legal opinion strongly challenges the legality and legitimacy of the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District's development fee that is included in its very expensive and highly questionable normalization and bonding proposal for bringing surface water from the East Low Canal to Odessa Subarea deep well irrigators. It shows that the ECBID's "development fee" for Odessa Aquifer is effectively fraudulent and contrary to the Irrigation District's RCW. The opinion concludes that the ECBID "Charging the initial landowners constructing facilities five or more times more than any amount associated with the costs incurred to benefit them, as compared to the remaining landowners, is obviously disproportional and unlawful. Such a charge appears part and parcel of ECBID's general campaign against landowners building their own distribution systems. The US Bureau of Reclamation and Ecology should be concerned about involvement in a scheme under which 'the district is [likely to be] held to have acted arbitrarily and fraudulently'." Furthermore, this illegal development charge further justifies why Odessa Aquifer Irrigators have consistently opposed the ECBID's plan and are supporting the Privately Funded Project for the Odessa Aquifer.
And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.