Members Attendance

VISITORS:  Bill French, Moscow Citizen and member PWCN; Bob Haynes, Regional Manager IDWR; Kent Keller, Professor, WSU;  Carl Osborne, interested citizen; Jim Osiensky, Professor,  U Idaho; Andy Rogers, Public Works Superintendent, Colfax; Scott King, King Groundwater Science, Inc.; Kathleen Warnick, interested citizen.

1)      Call to Order and Approval of December 19, 2002 Minutes
Mark Workman, PBAC Chair, called the meeting to order at 2:30 PM.  The minutes of the December 19, 2002 meetings were approved by consensus. 

2)      OK Project Update by Jim Osiensky and Kent Keller- Jim said a major effort is being directed toward removing the “noise” from the water level data.  The noise comes from pumps turning on, running and then turning off; barametric pressure changes; and possibly from precipitation loading of the land surface followed by evapotransporation, wind affects, trains passing and other not-yet-identified causes.  It is possible that there will be more connectivity than thought once the noise has been removed.  An advantage of the loggers is the amount of detailed data provided.  However, removing the noise from the same data is a major task.  Jim is seeking ways to automate and speed up the process.
        To nail down the connection between Moscow and Palouse, Jim is planning another pump test starting with Moscow well # 9 and then pumping with well # 4 three or four hours later.  Monitoring of the pumping will be in all area wells but a special effort will be made to identify the start of pumping of well # 9 and then # 4 in Palouse wells.   The goal is to see if a second pump test reproduces the apparent connectivity observed in a previous pump test.
Based on the Golder Pump test of the new Pullman well and another Pullman pump test there appears to be no direct deep aquifer connection between Moscow and Pullman wells or Pullman and Palouse wells.
        There was some discussion of the accuracy of the loggers.  Jim said they were tested in a bucket of water before putting them out in the field.  Only one of the original dozen have gone bad.  It was sent back to the factor to be recalibrated.
The new loggers that PBAC authorized purchase of have arrived and will be put into area wells to expand the data collection network.  The next major monitoring effort will be in Colfax and the area between Colfax and Pullman and Palouse to see if there is observable connectivity with the Pullman, Moscow or Palouse pumping sites
        Eric Stern is the new student who will be working on this project and who will be taking over basin water level measuring from Dennis Owsley.  
        At this point there was a question directed to Bob Haynes about IDWR records of wells in the Grande Ronde.  Bob responded that IDWR records can be searched based on well depth but older wells did not have to be recorded so might not be in the data base.
Jim Osiensky said he and his team are tracking down various wells they hear about but do not have records on.  They are also looking for wells along the Snake River to see if there is connectivity between the water coming from these and the deep aquifer in the Palouse Basin.  Jim asked that anyone knowing of new or old deep wells outside the Moscow-Pullman area to let him know where it is.
        At this point Kent Keller took over and began with a review of what geochemistry his group is focusing on in the local aquifers.  The oxygen 18 molecule in water varies with the climate conditions at the time it entered the aquifers.  The amount of carbon 14 in carbon dioxide dissolved in the water can also be used to date and characterize the water in the aquifers.  The Grande Ronde aquifer system water has a very narrow geochemical signature for these molecules.  The water in the shallow aquifer or surface water or water discharged to the Snake River has a different signature.   The age of these waters increases with increasing depth for the location of the sample.  There has been no significant change in these characteristics for the various sources of samples since 1965 when Crosby and Chatters did the first measuring.  All the pumping in the past 35 years have not changed these characteristics.  The deep aquifer system water samples are consistently 12 to 24,000 years old, uncorrected for geological contamination.
Kent would like to sample the geochemistry of the various aquifers in wells drilled for monitoring to improve the vertical resolution.   Water samples from area wells may actually be a mixture of water from several aquifers.  In Washington this will mean drilling multiple wells to various depths to do this sampling.  In Idaho it may be just as easy and no more costly to drill multiple wells as to do multiple level well completions.  The main goal is to separate sampling zones so there is no confusion as to which aquifer the water is coming from.
        A question was asked about drilling a test well at the proposed Naylor Farm sites.   A test well is much less costly than a production well because of its smaller diameter but testing could be done in a production well also.  Assuming no connectivity showed up initially with the Moscow or Palouse wells, it would be ideal to have a multilevel test well or well field of test wells nearby to further monitor connectivity.  The complexity of short-term connectivity over even small areas in the Moscow and Pullman well fields has been documented.   Just because no short-term connectivity is documented does not mean that there is not a long-term connectivity.  Whatever monitoring is done should take this into account.
Jim said the proposed monitoring program would include monitor of water levels in the Wanapum or shallow aquifer from which Moscow gets about 30 percent of its water and local residents in the County get all of their water as well as monitoring of water levels in the Grande Ronde aquifer system.
        Tom Scallorn said he had seen water levels in Moscow well #6 change when pumping started in well # 9 after it had been sitting for some time.  This was interesting news to Jim, who said he would follow up on it.  

 

3) The Naylor Water Right Application
After some discussion PBAC agreed by consensus to support continued negotiations by the Cities of Moscow and Pullman with Ralph Naylor Farm LLC to try to arrive at an agreement that would permit Naylor to proceed toward a water right while protecting all senior water right holders from any adverse impacts resulting from pumping by Naylor.

4) Status on Projects and Research Support –  Kirkland recommended postponing this item since there will be a semi-annual reporting on the OK Project and related research at the next meeting.

 

5)        Reports and Announcements- Rob Corcoran  said  WSU is anticipating that Geotech will start drilling the new 1000 foot WSU well to replace well # 6 and provide improved backup for well # 7 about the 10^th of February.  The expected completion date is July, 2003 with a pump test occurring in June or July.   He emphasized that WSU wants to minimize the amount of water needing to be disposed of during the pumping test.   
 

At this point several people had to leave. The meeting was adjourned after agreeing to January 16, 2002 for the next meeting date.

7)      NEXT MEETING DATE

The meeting was adjourned by consensus.

Respectfully Submitted,

Larry Kirkland