07/05/05 Lawmakers visit deep well irrigation

07/05/05 Lawmakers visit deep well irrigation

Washington Ag July 5, 2005 During the recent Washington Wheat Tour lawmakers, legislative staff and state agency people visited the Odessa sub-area where irrigation wells, drilled decades ago in anticipation of the delivery of Columbia Basin Project water that never came, have been drying up. Participants visited Clark Kagele's farm. There they saw an old 300 foot well where the water table dropped 180 feet in one day after pumping for 35 years. It's now used only for stock watering. Kagele decided to drill a new well a short distance away but had to go down over 24-hundred feet to get irrigation water. Kagele: "The drilling costs alone are in the high 300s. About $360,000. Then of course you have all the equipment to put down that hole. Easily could have a half-million dollars into it by the time your done." And Kagele says there are no guarantees about how long the new well will last. Kagele: "No guarantees at all. You are sitting in a mystery crack of water and you haven't got a clue. That thing may dry up on you some day." Some farmers whose wells have dried up have gone back to dryland crops which Kagele says negatively impacts the communities through reduced input demand and also lower land values and tax base. He says the solution is to complete the second half of the Columbia Basin Project. More on that tomorrow. I'm Bob Hoff.
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