CONCLUSION

 

No one was paying attention to the Odessa area problems when the Columbia River water initiative and management programs first got started.  Odessa has now, however, become the “poster-child” for Columbia basin water scarcity problems.  

 

 

In conclusion:  

•    Driving around the eastern part of the Odessa Subarea it is pretty easy to understand that it will be impossible to import irrigation water without extraordinary expense.  Not only are there no reliable local surface waters, but there is no infrastructure to deliver water to farms.  To build such infrastructure would be extraordinarily expensive – far beyond what is affordable to local farms or even within the range of reasonable subsidy by state or federal government.

•    The bottom is dropping out of the aquifers and the logical and economically feasible solution is for irrigated farms to revert to dryland wheat farming – which, by the way, many local farmers are successful at.

•    No one wants to accept the reality stated above.  There is manipulation by the big players (? corporate potato farmers and processors) and sympathy play by the smaller farms.  Political leadership is needed to speak candidly that mining the Odessa Aquifer has caused its anticipated consequences, , and that it will simply cost too much to bring water in from “outside” (ie, the Columbia River).  The people of Washington State should be asking for such political leadership.

•    Irrigators outside Odessa are using the Odessa situation to manipulate state law and policy to their own advantage.  (examples?  Not discussed in body of paper, above)

•    Some Odessa farms (on the western edge, near the CBP) are likely to receive “replacement” water from the Columbia River.  By the time the few Odessa farms that are physically capable of being “bailed out” receive Columbia River replacement water, there will be little if any water available for other uses in the Columbia River system.