OTHELLO — The Bureau of Reclamation has granted $750,000 for the design of a pumping plant and pipeline delivery system for the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program.

The money is part of a federal appropriation of nearly $2 million for irrigation projects in the Columbia Basin, which includes money for a supplemental feed route from Potholes Reservoir and money for Ephrata and Pasco pump lateral projects.

The Groundwater Replacement Program is designed to replace irrigation wells with irrigation canals in a section of Adams, Grant and Lincoln counties. The plan is to convert irrigation for about 87,700 acres from wells to irrigation through the canal system (called surface water).

That takes pressure off the groundwater source, which also provides drinking water for cities in the area.

The project area is part of the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District. The irrigation district and its partners have been working to switch the area from groundwater to surface water for more than a decade.

Water use along the Columbia is carefully managed, and irrigation water is subject to the same management. Water for part of the project will come through “coordinated conservation,” Simpson said. Three irrigation districts, the ECBID, the Quincy-Columbia Basin and South Columbia Basin, have saved enough water to irrigate 7,700 acres.

Water for the remaining 80,000 acres comes from a pair of allocations from state and federal water managers, designed to meet the ecological concerns and keep the farms in business.

Water comes south through the East Low Canal, among other arteries, and it’s the east canal that’s being rebuilt to accommodate farmers converting from groundwater.