RITZVILLE — Adams County officials are scheduled to start work this fall on the first of six bridges that will be rebuilt to accommodate the widening of the East Low Canal.

Adams County Engineer Scott Yaeger wrote in an email that the county has received funding from the federal government to rebuild the bridge at Sackman Road northeast of Warden. The work is scheduled for winter 2024-25.

The total project cost, including design and engineering, is about $4.52 million. Actual construction will cost about $3.8 million. Yaeger wrote the county received about $3.88 million from the federal government for the project, and about $924,500 from the state transportation budget. 

“At this time Adams County has not provided any additional funding,” he wrote. 

The remaining five bridges are along the canal northeast of Othello on Providence Road, Herman Road, Booker Road, Foley Road and Cunningham Road. 

The Booker Road project received about $3.98 million for construction, with the help of Representative Cathy McMorris-Rodgers. Funding for engineering and design costs for Booker Road and the four remaining bridges was obtained with the help of U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. The design project received about $1.7 million. 

Yaeger said the Booker Road bridge funding has been announced, but county officials don’t know when it will be allocated, so the construction timeline for that project is uncertain. 

“My best guess would be the winter of 2026-27,” he wrote.

The bridge rebuilding is connected with the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Project, which involves Adams and Grant counties, the Columbia Basin Development League, other organizations and federal and state agencies. Sara Higgins, CBDL president, said the goal is to end the reliance on groundwater wells for irrigation in the Odessa area of the Columbia Basin Project. Irrigators in that section have been using groundwater wells since the 1960s when the development of the overall project stopped.  

“Farmers within the project boundary kind of took a look at the development schedule, and in some areas of the project, they acknowledged that they were not going to be receiving water probably for several decades,” Higgins said. “So they appealed to the state of Washington for groundwater, the ability to dig deep wells on their property and make use of groundwater to irrigate their lands while they waited for the Columbia Basin Project surface water.”

Those permits were granted and farmers have been using those wells, but the wells draw from the same aquifer that provides water for towns and cities and other uses throughout the Columbia Basin, and groups like the CBDL and local, state and federal entities are looking for ways to reduce pressure on the aquifer and save water. Ultimately the project is designed to transfer the source of irrigation water for up to 87,000 acres.

Farmers now using groundwater wells will eventually transfer over to surface water provided through the East Low Canal. The canal had to be widened to accommodate the extra demand, and Higgins said that phase was completed, except for the bridges.

“So we have these series of bridges in Adams and Grant counties that needed to be either entirely removed or replaced, or lengthened, in order for the East Low Canal to function in its new widened state,” Higgins said.

Once that’s done the project will require some new laterals to get the water to individual properties, and equipment on individual farms to use the new system, Higgins said.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached via email at [email protected]. 

    The five bridges pinned in the Google Earth image above are set to be reworked to accommodate the widening of the East Low Canal to facilitate additional water moving through the irrigation infrastructure.