WARDEN — A massive project to replace irrigation wells with Columbia Basin Project water is moving along, moving plenty of dirt as it goes.

The irrigation wells dot the landscape east of Moses Lake, Warden and Othello all the way to Franklin County. They pump water to about 102,000 acres of farmland, said Mike Schwisow, government relations director for the Columbia Basin Development League.

The problem is the aquifer providing the water isn’t big enough to provide that water forever, and it’s starting to run low. It’s been in use since the late 1960s, Schwisow said, and the original drilling permits were issued with the expectation the wells would be converted to Columbia Basin Project water as development continued. But project development stalled in the mid-1980s, he said, and the switch was never made.

With the aquifer getting low, state and federal officials started working on a project to convert the irrigators to CBP water. It’s not a little project – the environmental studies took seven years and cost $13.6 million.

The project was granted water rights for 87,700 acres, Schwisow said, including water conservation. The project is only replacing wells with CBP water, he said; no new acreage is being irrigated. “It’s basically groundwater replacement.”

Construction is underway, and has been underway for about five years. “We’re right on the verge of building the first distribution system,” Schwisow said. The first new pumping station is being designed by engineers from the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District. The district will be in charge of most of the project, designing and building the water delivery systems, and in charge of operations and maintenance.

There’s no timeline for completing the project, but with all the federal and state studies complete the construction might move more quickly, he said.

A second siphon has been added to the East Low Canal to pump water south of I-90, and more feed lines have been added at the Potholes Reservoir. The expanded system will be using the East Low Canal, so it has be expanded too; crews have widened 13 miles of the canal to date.

Two additional siphons are under construction near Warden.

The project is being paid for with a combination of federal and state funding, Schwisow said, along with bonds issued by the irrigation district.