Odessa Aquifer Irrigators Reject ECBID Financial Plan

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Columbia Snake River Irrigators Association

Apr 01, 2015, 08:40 ET

MOSES LAKE, Wash., April 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Odessa Aquifer Subarea Irrigators are strongly rejecting the US Bureau of Reclamation's and the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District's "Normative" Socialized Financing Proposal for the Delivery of Surface Water to the Odessa Subarea.

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In recent correspondence to the US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District (ECBID), various major land owners (and their financial/technical representatives) in the Odessa Subarea are bluntly rejecting the flawed socialized/normative financial strategy proposed by the ECBID, because it will lead to significant time delays and increased costs in getting surface water from the East Low Canal to deep well irrigators. Major landowners are also indicating that this normative/socialized approach will undermine their objective of converting as much irrigated acreage as possible from groundwater to surface water and will diminish the financial resources already allocated by Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) and the USBR to expedite source water conversions.

In particular, the landowners/irrigators (and their representatives) are stating that the ECBID's socialized financial strategy has several major flaws including:

It does not add acres and it inefficiently distributes costs across all acres regardless of location to the East Low Canal thus increasing system costs.
It does not allow for legal state water spreading, so total system costs cannot be overcome by the ECBID's "normative cost zoning" which everyone pays for everything, thus adversely impacting irrigators' ability and willingness to pay.
The ECBID's revenue bonding strategy, which is not obligated for the new system(s) debt is unproven and speculative, and does not offer lower interest rates or any annualized cost advantage, and substantially increases total debt service.

On the other hand, the irrigators/landowners Privately Funded/Financed Project to bring surface water to the Odessa Aquifer is a viable, cost-effective and realistic option to immediately begin replacing the use of groundwater from the declining Odessa Aquifer in eastern Washington, and it offers a practical and reasonable solution that can be developed in a short timeframe to begin effectively resolving the Odessa Aquifer depletion issue for the following reasons:

The participants' direct, private sector financing agreement is a proven tool to build large-scale irrigation systems, and the pre-construction engineering is completed and the financing is secured.
The Privately Funded/Financed Project is a turn-key project, where operational control can be easily and quickly transferred to the ECBID when construction is complete and this model can be applied to all systems on the East Low Canal.
The economic model for the Privately Funded/Financed Project is vastly superior (to ECBID's approach), as system configuration is determined by individual irrigators paying their own marginal system costs, and where the System 1 Participants have already secured $40 million of financing to do project construction upon USBR's approval of a water service contract.

In summary, the landowners/irrigators are urging that a water service contract be immediately provided to Irrigators in the Odessa Subarea, who would develop one or more water delivery systems using their own direct private sector funding/financing, while applying water to crops in the most highly efficient manner using state-of-the-art irrigation technology, and more importantly quickly transitioning irrigated acres from a declining groundwater source to surface water from the East Low Canal. Moreover, every effort should be made by the USBR, ECBID and Ecology to allow the private sector to move forward with system(s) development, while the ECBID focuses on direct canal modifications.

For more information, please contact Darryll Olsen at 509-783-1623 or email.

About the Odessa Aquifer Privately Funded Project
The Odessa Aquifer Privately Funded Project has been widely endorsed by many newspapers and decision-makers as a viable, cost-effective and realistic option to immediately begin replacing the use of groundwater from the declining Odessa Subarea Aquifer. Following are recent editorials endorsing/supporting the privately funded/financed project:

SOURCE Columbia Snake River Irrigators Association