07/25/06 Bringing Water to the Mountain

Bringing water to the mountain. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. The Red Mountain area of the mid-Columbia region is a prime viticulture appellation. One thing it is missing is water. A meeting was held last week to discuss the problems of bringing irrigation to Red Mountain. According to Vic Johnson, District Manager of the Kennewick Irrigation District, it's not a problem of water. JOHNSON: It's not the project necessarily; it's the limitations on water permits. You can slap a pump house in the river and dig the pipes in and everything but if you don't have the permit to take the water out of the river, you don't get any place. So what we've got to have is a water permit to service that, probably 3000 acres there and we are limited by our bureau contract to a certain number of acres and a certain amount of water. The Red Mountain area was never given a water right when it was developed. Johnson says they have been working on this for quite a long time. JOHNSON: 1993 I think it was submitted and in 2003 permit was approved by Ecology and it got to the Water Pollution Control Board which is part of Ecology and challenged there and it denied it and it got appealed, appealed, appealed clear up to the Supreme Court in the State of Washington and they said, no way, we don't want to hear it. If we don't have any of that administrative stuff, it has to come from the state, the approvals and what not, there isn't anything we can do just stand there and look at it like everybody else. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.