Members ATtendance

VISITORS:  Enuf Adams, City of Colfax; Bill French, interested citizen; Jim Osiensky, Professor Dennis Owsley, Graduate Student in Geohydrology; and Andy Rogers, City of Colfax.
 

1)      Call to Order AND APPROVAL of june 13, 2002 Minutes- Mark Workman (Chair) called the meeting to order at 2:30 PM.  Minutes for the June 13, 2002 meeting were approved as presented. 

2)      OK Project Update Presentation-  UI Proffessor Jim Osiensky and graduate student, Dennis Owsley used a Power Point presentation to review observations and study results of the Palouse Basin aquifer since pumping began in the late 1800s.   This was followed by recent findings from the OK Project.  The presentation was very informative and again highlighted the complexity of the unseen aquifer systems that supply water to the Palouse communities.  A handout covering the details and conclusions will be made available at the next meeting.
        KEY CONCLUSIONS: The water tables started dropping almost from the beginning of pumping and have been falling ever since.  The fact that the fall in the Moscow area, which was in the shallow aquifer until the 1960s, appeared to track the fall in the deep aquifer in the Pullman area was clearly coincidental.  After Moscow and the University of Idaho had drilled deeper wells into the Grande Ronde aquifer system in the 1950s and 60s and switched their primary pumping from the shallow aquifer to the deep aquifer, water levels in the deep aquifer began falling similar to the previous fall in the shallow aquifer.  This also tracked the fall in the Pullman area deep aquifer but it may also be coincidental.   
        Connectivity of regional wells, water chemistry considerations and water level considerations as well as geolithic considerations, presented previously by John Bush, seem to support the concept of at least two subbasins. 
Not only does the hydrogeology of the Palouse Basin appear to be quite complex with many points still unknown but understanding what the water level information provided by the loggers are saying is also challenging.  
Jim pointed out that background “noise” from barometric pressure changes to pumping wells makes it difficult at times to see correlations between different well logs and understand what is happening from a ground water hydrology perspective.  He is in the process of removing as much of the noise as possible to make the correlations more obvious.  He is looking at shallow aquifer water levels as well as deep aquifer water levels.
        The data seem to indicate that the subbasin divide runs right through WSU.  Jim is not sure whether it is a real or hydraulic boundary.  He is leaning toward a hydraulic boundary.     The WSU test well appears to be in the east basin with the Moscow wells, the Palouse well and the DOE monitoring well.  He said the lack of data on University wells are hurting the study. There is a very good correlation between the Palouse well and the DOE well. 
        Moscow well #9 appears to be somewhat unique with complex connections to the surrounding wells.  At this time the reasons are unclear.  Where water levels change 10 feet in the surrounding wells, they change only 0.1 of a foot in well #9. 
Water levels go up in the summer in the Pullman area which is the opposite of the Moscow area where they fall in the summer.  This appears to support the possibility of recharge in the Pullman area with a lag time causing it to show up in summer. 
In the long-term everything may be leaking together but in the short-term there are significant differences which seem to suggest subbasins. 
        Dennis Owsley talked about continuity and recharge in the Grande Ronde aquifer system.  As far as recharge is concerned, it just does not appear to be occurring.  Again the connectivity between the Moscow and Pullman area wells appears to be minimal. 
There are 3 production zones in the Pullman area in the Grande Ronde aquifer system but only 2 in the Moscow area.  Moscow has a lot of sediment in the upper section which does not produce and Moscow area wells bottom out against the granite much sooner than those in the Pullman area. 
Dennis emphasized the complexity of the aquifer systems.  Fracture zones appear to play an important part in well production.  Wells 50 feet apart can respond quite differently, apparently due to the fracture systems intercepted.  He gave various examples of this connectivity or lack of it.
        In the Q & A portion, Jim discussed where a monitoring well should be located to get the best results.   The site needs to have easy access and be located close to WSU.  The McGreevy well is on the Pullman side of the divide and the DOE, Paulson and Brawdy wells are on the Moscow side.  No specific site has yet been picked.
         Jim said the Palouse wells are relatively shallow.  They have a higher water table than the DOE well but there appears to be no doubt about the connectivity.
        Jim talked about the downward potential in the Palouse Basin.  The deeper a well is drilled the lower the water table.  This is because of the downward potential.  Water flowing into a well from upper aquifers drains to the lower water table without filling the lower aquifer.  Somehow water in the deeper aquifers is being drained from the basin.  He mentioned the WSU test well apparently draining out through the Imnaha formation at the bottom of the well, over 2000 feet deep, which is below the Snake River.  As a result the bottom of the well was filled to prevent the drainage.  Why this is occurring is not yet understood.
Jim said he did not think we are ready to try to build a new model of the basin.  There are too many unknowns as yet.  The WSU test well, which appears to be in the east basin, creates serious problems.  We still do not know enough about recharge to know what to include in a model.  Flow data and age dating of water create problems.  We are just beginning to study the area between Pullman and Colfax which presents some additional challenges.  The size of the basin is still an unknown. 
        An interesting additional point that Jim mentioned is that there appears to be a direct connection between Union Flat Creek and water pumped in Pullman.
    Kent Keller will present his portion of the report next month.  He is on vacation this month.

3)      Status of Proposed Projects and Research Support

a.  Water Quality Study – Jim Osiensky reported that he has been talking with Joe Baldwin of Boise DEQ and Hudson Mann of Lewiston DEQ about what should be included in the tests of water samples from local wells.   DEQ has said it wants testing for all potential pollutants which means $2300 per sample.  Jim thinks he can get them to reduce the number of pollutants in the tests based on their absence in previous testing.   This would reduce testing costs to about $615 per sample and allow considerably more samples to be tested with the available funds.

b.    Palouse Basin WRIA –  Kirkland reported that the Palouse Conservation District held a Palouse River Basin WRIA 34 information meeting in Pullman.   Doug Allen of Washington DOE in Spokane made a Power Point presentation on the Washington WRIA process, its background and what has occurred todate.   The first public hearing meeting will be held in Colfax on July 30, 2002.  Rob Buchert of the Palouse Conservation District is heading the planning phase until a professional facilitator is hired to guide the planning process. The Phase I Planning Process will last a year.  Assuming it is successful, it will be followed by the Phase II which focuses on technical assessments and further data acquisition and then a Phase III which focuses on watershed plan development. One of the bigger challenges is how to include the Idaho portion of the basin since this is a Washington funded initiative.
The date for the August Palouse River Basin WRIA organizational meeting has not yet been set.

4)      REPORTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS –

a)      At this point PBAC ran out of time and decided to conclude the meeting.

b)     Art Garro announced that Pete Grigas, one of WSU’s representatives, is leaving WSU and the Committee. It was suggested that Gary Wells, a WSU engineer who specializes in wells and water supply for WSU be invited to replace Grigas.

5)      NEW BUSINESS- There was no new business.  The next meeting date was set for August 22 due to several people being gone on vacation; then the meeting was adjourned. 

6)      NEXT MEETING DATE

The meeting was adjourned by consensus.

Respectfully Submitted,

Larry Kirkland