[7] Washington Calls For Comment On Water Management Plan
The state of Washington has released a draft programmatic EIS on several early elements that may play a part of a major overhaul of managing Columbia River water, one that includes development of new water supplies for both instream and out-of-stream uses.
The three actions in the draft EIS include the additional drawdown of Lake Roosevelt for municipal water supply, irrigation and flow enhancement downstream of Grand Coulee Dam. During drought years, even more water could be used to help junior water rights holders and for flow augmentation.
In non-drought years, the added drawdown is estimated at one foot, and another .5 feet in drought years. Any agreement would also include an accord with the Colville Tribe over the action.
The second element is to study the possibility of using supplemental feed routes to carry water from Banks Lake to Potholes Reservoir to supply the South Columbia Basin Irrigation District.
The last element involves a voluntary agreement submitted to the Department of Ecology by the Columbia-Snake Irrigators Association that proposes to undertake conservation and other measures to free up new sources of conserved water in exchange for new uninterruptible water rights on the Columbia and lower Snake rivers. -B. R.
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