John Trumbo – Owners of the Barker Ranch in West Richland found a better way to manage their wetlands and put thousands of acre-feet of water back into the Yakima River.
State officials and representatives of the private hunting preserve near Horn Rapids will break ground today on a three-mile project to enclose open earthen ditches with 63-inch-diameter pipe.
A $5.6 million grant from the Washington Department of Ecology is helping pay for the cost, with a goal of saving up to 6,400 acre-feet of water a year. Piping the ditch will reduce water loss through seepage and evaporation, said Tom Tebb, Department of Ecology’s regional director for Central Washington, in a statement issued Monday.
The project will make it possible to reduce the ranch’s diversion at a point above the Yakima River’s confluence with the Columbia River.
“The Barker Ranch project represents the kind of conservation we need in the Greater Columbia Basin to best make use of a finite resource,” Tebb said.
“This project puts a large amount of water back into a critical reach of the Yakima River in perpetuity and is an example of how we can retool our existing systems to better manage water resources in the years to come.” he said.
As a protected, private hunting property, the Barker Ranch provides habitat for 175 different species of birds, members of the Audubon Society noted in recent surveys.
The habitat mix on the ranch includes wetland, riparian, tall upland grass and shrub-steppe environments.
The ranch is under a permanent Wetland Restoration Program easement administered by the Natural Resource Conservation Service, or NRCS.
Michael Crowder, general manager of the ranch and an adjunct professor at Washington State University Tri-Cities, said the project fits well with the ranch owners’ mission of wetland restoration and wildlife management.
The ranch’s wetland helps recharge ground water supplies, filter nutrients and sediments out of the water and aid in flood water retention.
“The Barker Ranch is a very unique wetland system for Eastern Washington. This project allows more water to stay in the rivers to support fisheries and aquatic habitats,” said Leigh Nelson, state irrigation engineer for the NRCS, in a release.
