Members Attendance

VISITORS:  Emily Adams, City of Colfax; Alyssa Douglas, UI grad student; Kent Keller, Professor, WSU; Farida Leek, WSU grad student; Jim Osiensky, Professor, UI; Hanxue Qiu, WSU Postdoctoral Research Associate; Andy Rogers, Public Works Supervisor, Colfax; Kathleen Warnick, interested Citizen; Joan Wu, Professor, WSU .

 

1)      Call to Order and Approval of February 20, 2003 Minutes
Mark Workman, PBAC Chair, called the meeting to order at 2:35 PM.  The minutes of the January 16, 2003 meeting were approved by consensus.

2)      While the Power Point projector was being set up Kirkland gave a quick update on the Ralph Naylor LLC pumping application.  The application request has been reduced from 14.35 cfs to 4.08 cfs per day over the 8 month application period.  Since this is less than the 5 cfs request which automatically requires extra information, Kirkland talked to Bob Haynes.  He said IDWR is still requiring the extra information for the Naylor application.  The acreage to be irrigated has also been reduced to 199 acres from the 760 previously applied for.  If the maximum amount of water applied for were used it would amount to almost 10 feet in addition to the approximately 2 feet of normal precipitation for this area.  Kirkland said IDWR will not permit application of more than 3.5 feet per acre according to Bob Haynes so in reality the peak pumping request might be 4.08 cfs or 1830 gallons per minute or 2.64 million gallons per day but the actual application of water to the 199 acres could not exceed 227 million gallons for the 8 month period.  Kirkland said this still appears to be an excessive amount of water to apply in this area.  UI only applies 60 to 70 million gallons of recycled water to the golf course, arboretum and other green space at the University of Idaho which totals about 300 acres.

3)      Rob Corcoran reported on the status of the new WSU well drilling.  The contractor, Geotech, has been doing prep work removing several old sheds and building a settling pond.  Corcoran said WSU had decided to drill a 20 inch hole to 500 feet and then 15 or 18 inches below that.  The larger hole is expected to increase the service life of the well.

4)      Mark Storey reported that eastern Washington/Whitman County representative Mark Schoesler has offered a bill in the Washington legislature to change the law to allow cluster development in agriculture areas of Whitman County such that it works out to 1 residence per 10 acres and up to1200 gallons of water per day per house from a central well. 

5)      Kirkland called attention to a slight revision to the proposed handout to large pumping applicants in the Palouse Basin area.  Workman asked PBAC members to review it for the next meeting.

6)      Further OK Project Updates and Research Projections by Jim Osiensky and Kent Keller    - Jim and Kent passed out a progress report on the “Hydrostratigraphic Conditions in the Palouse Basin,” more commonly designated the OK Project. 
        Jim Osiensky said much of the work on the OK Project up to this point has been data collection.  Several years of data are ready for serious analysis to try to build new models that better explain what the data seem to be showing.  Everywhere samples from the Grande Ronde indicate older water which seems to be saying no new water is getting into the aquifer system.  The basin is hydraulically stable, that is, there is a gradient from the water on the surface and in the upper aquifer systems to the water in the deeper Grande Ronde aquifer system.  If there were fractures or holes through the strata, surface and shallow aquifer water should drain naturally into the deep aquifer.  Besides the very effective vertical barriers there also appear to be some horizontal barriers creating sub-basins in the deep aquifer system.  This is a new and challenging concept.  Pumping stress is rapidly transmitted within the sub-basins but undetected outside the sub-basin.  However, on a long-term basis all the sub-basins are acting as a single basin with water levels falling in a consistent pattern throughout.  To further complicate the sub-basins, some wells very close together are showing no direct connectivity.
To help figure out a way to put the preliminary conclusions of these data together in a model that makes sense, Jim proposed the following:
*  Improve monitoring across the basin away from the pumping centers by installing several dedicated, multilevel monitoring wells in select locations.
*  Use these monitoring wells plus additional sampling of water geochemistry to search for recharge and water loss pathways.  The long-term water decline seems to imply that water is being lost from the basin somewhere other than through the pumping centers.
*  Put a team together to work through the data to figure out how to explain the short-term perturbations in sub-basins with the basin-wide water level declines. Jim said Jerry Fairley from UI and Joan Wu from WSU were available and interested in participating.
Jim then talked briefly about the pumping test that was in progress using City of Moscow well # 9 and University of Idaho well # 4.  A quick response was seen in the Washington DOE observation well but no response was seen in UI well # 3, which is only 100’s of yards from from the two pumping wells. 
        This was followed by a discussion of the need for a clear summary of accomplishments and progress by PBAC and the OK Project which can be handed to decision makers who are being asked to continue support of PBAC research and projects.  Eventually Kirkland was assigned to work with Keller and Osiensky to draft a summary sheet that Becker and Workman would review. 

7)      Discussion of Possible Request for Federal Funding Help - Kirkland reported that he had had several discussions with Senator Craig’s office about the possibility of federal funding help to expedite finding the most effective solution for stabilizing the deep aquifer water levels and providing the Palouse Basin with a long-term dependable water supply.  A concern raised by several PBAC members was the amount of match required.  After some discussion of what funds and in-kind participation might be used for matching, it was agreed that Kirkland should turn in the application limiting direct PBAC funding participation to no more than the $30,000 presently available in the budget for matching.  To the extent possible, use of state funds and in-kind matching were encouraged.  Kirkland indicated that he would apply for $100,000 for three years.  The application is due March 14^th.  More details will become available as the request works its way through the appropriate committees and the hearing process. 

8)      Public Involvement - Townsend said he had been contacted by several citizens inquiring about the possibility of PBAC holding an evening meeting that would presumably allow more interested individuals to attend.  After some discussion it was decided to keep the meeting time the same but to go back to alternating between meeting in Moscow and Pullman.  Mark Workman will locate a meeting room for the next meeting in Pullman.

9)      NEXT MEETING DATE
Since the next meeting date falls in the week of spring break, several members said they would not be able to attend.  The date was therefore moved back a week to March 27, 2003.

The meeting was adjourned by consensus.

Respectfully Submitted,

Larry Kirkland