[Federal Register Volume 73, Number 163 (Thursday, August 21, 2008)]
[Notices]
[Pages 49487-49489]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E8-19376]


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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Bureau of Reclamation


Odessa Subarea Special Study; Adams, Franklin, Grant, Lincoln and 
Walla Walla Counties, WA

AGENCY: Bureau of Reclamation, Interior.

ACTION: Notice of Intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement.

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SUMMARY: Pursuant to section 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental 
Policy Act of 1969, as amended, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) 
proposes to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the 
Odessa Subarea Special Study. The Washington Department of Ecology 
(Ecology) is a joint lead with Reclamation in the preparation of this 
Environmental Impact Statement which will also be used to comply with 
requirements of the Washington State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA).
    The purpose of Reclamation's Odessa Subarea Special Study is to 
evaluate alternatives that would deliver project water from the 
Columbia Basin Project (CBP) to lands currently using groundwater for 
irrigation in the Odessa Ground Water Management Subarea. The Study is 
needed to fulfill the obligation Reclamation made in a Memorandum of 
Agreement between the State of Washington (State) and the Project 
irrigation districts in December 2004, which included cooperating on a 
study to explore opportunities for delivery of Columbia Basin Project 
water to existing groundwater-irrigated lands within the Odessa 
Subarea.
    Action is needed to avoid significant economic loss, in the near 
term, to the region's agricultural sector because of resource 
conditions associated with continued decline of the aquifers in the 
Odessa Subarea. Groundwater in the Odessa Subarea is currently being 
depleted to such an extent that water must be pumped from great depths. 
Pumping depths are 750 feet in some areas, and well depths are as great 
as 2,100-2,400 feet. Well drilling costs and pumping water from this 
depth have resulted in expensive power costs and water quality concerns 
such as high water temperatures and high sodium concentrations.
    The ability of farmers to irrigate their crops is at risk. 
Domestic, commercial, municipal, and industrial uses and water quality 
are also affected. Those irrigating with wells of lesser depth live 
with uncertainty about future well production.
    Washington State University conducted a regional economic impact

[[Page 49488]]

study assessing the effects of lost potato production and processing in 
Adams, Franklin, Grant, and Lincoln counties from continued aquifer 
decline. Assuming that all potato production and processing is lost 
from the region, the analysis estimated the regional economic impact 
would be a loss of about $630 million dollars annually in regional 
sales, a loss of 3,600 jobs, and a loss of $211 million in regional 
income (Bhattacharjee and Holland 2005).

DATES: Scoping meetings will be held on September 10, 2008 and Sept 11, 
2008, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the locations indicated under the ADDRESSES 
section. Written comments will be accepted through September 19, 2008, 
for inclusion in the scoping summary document. Requests for sign 
language interpretation for the hearing impaired or other special 
assistance needs should be submitted to Ellen Berggren as indicated 
under the FOR FUTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section by August 27, 2008.

ADDRESSES: Meetings will be held at:
    <bullet> Town of Coulee Dam Town Hall, 300 Lincoln Avenue, Coulee 
Dam, WA 99116 (September 10, 2008);
    <bullet> The Advanced Technologies Education Center (ATEC), Big 
Bend Community College, 7611 Bolling Street, NE., Moses Lake, WA 98837 
(September 11, 2008).
The meeting facilities are physically accessible to people with 
disabilities.
    Comments and requests to be added to the mailing list may be 
submitted to Bureau of Reclamation, Pacific Northwest Regional Office, 
Attention: Ellen Berggren, Activity Manager, 1150 N. Curtis Rd., Suite 
100, Boise, ID 83706. Comments may also be submitted electronically to 
<a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#45163130213c08242b2422203705352b6b303627376b222a33"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="6a391e1f0e13270b040b0d0f182a1a04441f190818440d051c">[email protected]</span></a>.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Contact Ellen Berggren, Activity 
Manager, Telephone (208) 378-5090. TTY users in Washington may dial the 
following numbers to obtain a toll free TTY relay: 800-833-6384(V); for 
the hearing impaired 800-833-6388(T); for the deaf.
    Information on this project can also be found at: http://www.usbr.gov/pn/programs/ucao_misc/odessa/index.html.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Columbia Basin Project is a multipurpose 
water development project in the central part of the State of 
Washington (State). The Grand Coulee Dam Project was authorized for 
construction by the Act of August 30, 1935, and reauthorized and 
renamed in the Columbia Basin Project Act of March 10, 1943. Congress 
authorized the CBP to irrigate a total of 1,029,000 acres; about 
671,000 acres are currently irrigated.
    Section 9(a) of the Reclamation Project Act of 1939 gave authority 
to the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) to approve a finding of 
feasibility and thereby authorize construction of a project upon 
submitting a report to the President and the Congress. The Secretary 
approved a plan of development for the Columbia Basin Project, known as 
House Document No. 172 in 1945. House Document No. 172 anticipated that 
development of the Columbia Basin Project would occur in phases over a 
70-year period. Reclamation is authorized to implement additional 
development phases as long as the Secretary finds it to be economically 
justified and financially feasible. The Odessa Subarea Special Study is 
conducted under the authority of the Columbia Basin Project Act of 
1943, as amended, and the Reclamation Act of 1939.
    In response to the public's concern about the declining aquifer and 
associated economic and other effects, Congress has funded Reclamation 
to investigate this problem. The State of Washington has partnered with 
Reclamation by providing funding and collaborating on various technical 
studies.
    The State, Reclamation, and irrigation districts signed the 
Columbia River Initiative Memorandum of Understanding (CRI MOU) in 
December 2004, to promote a cooperative process for implementing 
activities to improve Columbia River water management and water 
management within the Columbia Basin Project. The Odessa Subarea 
Special Study implements Section 15 of the CRI MOU, which states in 
part that, ``The parties will cooperate to explore opportunities for 
delivery of water to additional existing agricultural lands within the 
Odessa Subarea.'' In February 2006, the State legislature passed the 
Columbia River Water Resource Management Act (HB 2860) that directs 
Ecology to aggressively pursue development of water benefiting both 
instream and out-of-stream uses through storage, conservation, and 
voluntary regional water management agreements. Among the activities 
identified in the legislation, Ecology is directed to focus on 
``development of alternatives to ground water for agricultural users in 
the Odessa subarea aquifer.'' Ecology is participating in the Odessa 
Subarea Special Study to provide support for state and local agency 
permit decisions that will likely be necessary to implement a water 
delivery project.
    Reclamation is developing alternatives to replace the current and 
increasingly unreliable groundwater supplies used for irrigation with a 
surface supply as part of continued phased development of the Columbia 
Basin Project. Reclamation can only deliver water to lands authorized 
to receive Columbia Basin Project water. An estimated 170,000 acres 
within the Odessa Subarea are now being irrigated with groundwater with 
an estimated 140,000 of these acres eligible to receive Project surface 
water. Reclamation is considering alternatives that would provide a 
replacement surface water supply for up to 140,000 groundwater-
irrigated acres within the Study area. Alternatives include two main 
components.
    <bullet> Water conveyance; this component consists of 
infrastructure such as canals, pumping plants and laterals to deliver 
surface water to groundwater-irrigated lands. These could include 
building a new East High canal system and reregulating reservoir in 
Black Rock Coulee north of Interstate 90 and/or expanding the capacity 
of the existing East Low Canal system and building a 2.3 mile 
extension.
    <bullet> Water supply; this component consists of storage 
facilities that could store the replacement surface water supply for 
later use in the Odessa Subarea. These involve modifying operations at 
Banks Lake and/or constructing a new reservoir in Rocky Coulee.
    Alternatives would involve various combinations and configurations 
of these water conveyance and water supply components.

Public Involvement

    Reclamation will conduct public scoping meetings to solicit 
comments on the alternatives developed to address the concerns in the 
Odessa Subarea and to identify potential issues and impacts associated 
with those alternatives. Reclamation will summarize comments received 
during the scoping meetings and from letters of comment received during 
the scoping period, identified under the DATES section, into a scoping 
summary document that will be made available to those who have provided 
comments. It will also be available to others upon request.
    If you wish to comment, you may mail us your comments as indicated 
under the ADDRESSES section. Our practice is to make comments, 
including names, home addresses, home phone numbers, and e-mail 
addresses of respondents, available for public

[[Page 49489]]

review. Individual respondents may request that we withhold their names 
and/or home addresses, etc., but if you wish us to consider withholding 
this information you must state this prominently at the beginning of 
your comments. In addition, you must present a rationale for 
withholding this information. This rationale must demonstrate that 
disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. 
Unsupported assertions will not meet this burden. In the absence of 
exceptional, documentable circumstances, this information will be 
released. We will always make submissions from organizations or 
businesses, and from individuals identifying themselves as 
representatives or officials of organizations or businesses, available 
for public inspection in their entirety.

J. William McDonald,
Regional Director, Pacific Northwest Region.
[FR Doc. E8-19376 Filed 8-20-08; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4310-MN-P


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