Agreement gives city more active role in group that is examining water resource management on West Plains; city well repairs continue
By RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
Airway Heights' City Council signed an agreement last week that will expand the city's inclusion in discussions of the Lower Spokane Watershed, which covers 883 square miles of Eastern Washington, including parts of the West Plains.
City Manager Albert Tripp said the agreement gives the city an active roll in the development of a detailed implementation plan for water resource inventory area 54 (WRIA 54). Airway Heights is one of 10 jurisdictions taking part in the process, along with the city of Spokane, Fairchild Air Force Base, Spokane, Stevens and Lincoln counties, the Spokane Tribe, the Department of Ecology and conservation districts in Stevens and Spokane counties.
Over the next several months, the multi-agency group will finalize the draft plan, which aims to manage local water rights, efficiency, quality and future needs. As required by Washington's 1998 Watershed Planning Act, the plan has been in development over the past several years. Spokane County water resources specialist Mike Hermanson, who has overseen the process, said completing the plan qualifies the group for additional watershed planning grants that could be used to fund its implementation.
The plan establishes Airway Heights as the lead agency on two tasks – water supply coordination and developing a hydrogeologic study. The city will also be one of several local agencies developing strategies to better conserve water.
As part of the water supply coordination task, Airway Heights will convene a forum of interested water purveyors to outline a cooperative effort of providing water for West Plains needs. According to the plan, the forum might be used to advise local elected leaders who have the authority to enter into agreements and commitments regarding water supply. Tripp said no forum date has been determined at this time.
The city's second assignment, developing a hydrogeologic study, will be carried out in conjunction with Spokane County and will build on previous and ongoing research. For the past several years Airway Heights has been pursuing grant funding for a large scale study of the West Plains aquifer, which could be incorporated into the WRIA 54 plan.
Tripp recently met with Mike and Linda McCollum, two geologists from Eastern Washington University who have expressed interest in helping with the city's proposed study of the West Plains aquifer. Tripp said he is open to their participation and that the study might provide teaching opportunities for university students, but that “the challenge is to pull their research and other research together into a cohesive picture that we can make decisions from.”
Hermanson said the WRIA 54 group is scheduled to meet for further discussion on Sept. 22.
In other Airway Heights business, Tripp said emergency repair work on a collapsed city well was anticipated to wrap up by this week. Crews replaced a burned out pump and drilled through the collapsed portion of Well 8, which collapsed late last month near 21 Avenue and Garfield Road. To date the repairs have cost more than $50,000, Tripp said, adding that re-sleeving the well further down should prevent a similar event in the future.
The city's public works crews are continuing to monitor the Park West well, located a few miles south of Airway Heights on Craig Road, and trying to determine the cause of a slowdown there. That well was producing more than 1,000 gallons per minute but lately has been yielding a fairly steady 40 gallons per minute. Tripp said he has no timeline of when production problems might be solved there, but that there are no immediate plans to drill the well deeper unless it is part of the repair.
Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].
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