The Columbia Basin Project

 

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Columbia Institute for Water Policy

Odessa groundwater mining was allowed, in part, because of the early belief that the Columbia Basin Project would expand into the Odessa subarea and replace groundwater use.  The Columbia Basin Project is the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation irrigation project that diverts water from the Columbia River at Lake Roosevelt and distributes it to about 650,000 acres of agricultural lands between Grand Coulee and the Quad Cities.


Maps from the Bureau of Reclamation’s “Story of the Columbia Basin Project”. 


But when it came time to consider expansion of the project in the 1980s, completion of the CBP was rejected as economically infeasible and environmentally harmful.  


The Bureau of Reclamation is again studying the potential for building the “second half” of the CBP, extending it into portions of the Odessa Subarea.  More discussion of this study may be found in the “Solutions” section of this Report. 


The CBP is the largest federally-run irrigation project in the United States.  Massive subsidies are required to pump water to CBP irrigators, including taxpayer support for the cost of the project and Bonneville Power ratepayer subsidies for the energy it takes to pump water from Lake Roosevelt into Banks Lake.  The following graph shows a breakdown of CBP subsidies in 1990 dollars.


Link to the 1995 article on subsidies and the Columbia Basin Project.


Completion of the Columbia Basin Project was also halted because of impacts on Columbia River salmon, several species of which were listed as endangered in the 1990s.  Low river flows and reservoir slackwater contribute to the decline of salmon populations.  Expansion of the CBP to serve the Odessa Subarea would require additional withdrawals of water from the Columbia to the detriment of endangered fish.


Although Odessa-area irrigators frequently claim they were deprived of CBP water, not all of the Odessa is within the original boundaries of the project.  As the CBP boundary map indicates, even if the Project had been built to original boundaries, it would serve only about one-half of the Odessa Subarea.













 
Contents Odessa Summary Points Introduction The Odessa Aquifers Columbia Basin Project 1971 WSU Study Cascading Wells Impacts on Crab Creek Odessa Economics Solutions Home.htmlIntroduction.htmlOdessa_Aquifers.html1971_WSU_Study.htmlCascading_Wells.htmlCrab_Creek.htmlOdessa_Economics.html../solutions/Odessa_Solutions.htmlshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3shapeimage_2_link_4shapeimage_2_link_5shapeimage_2_link_6shapeimage_2_link_7shapeimage_2_link_8

click on map to enlarge

 The CBP is the largest federally-run irrigation project in the United States. Massive subsidies are required to pump water to CBP irrigators, including taxpayer support for the cost of the project and Bonneville Power ratepayer subsidies for the energy it takes to pump water from Lake Roosevelt into Banks Lake. The following graph shows a breakdown of CBP subsidies in 1990 dollars. Table: Columbia Basin Project subsidies and who pays. (Source: Whittlesey, N.K., W.R. Butcher and M.E. Marts,”Water Project Subsidies: How They Develop and Grow” (“Illahee”, Vol. 11, Nos. 1&2, Spring-Summer 1995) http://www.waterplanet.ws/pdf/wpoa20061101.pdfhttp://www.waterplanet.ws/pdf/wpoa20061101.pdfshapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1

Chinook Salmon  (source: NOAA)



Map below:  CBP boundaries and the Odessa subarea (source:  Bureau of Reclamation).