The $100-Acre Price of Water: Palouse Project Engineers Reveal the True Cost of Irrigation
Local engineers surveying the Washougal Coulee warn that diverting water to arid Benton County lands will cost close to $100 per acre, a staggering sum for early 20th-century farmers.
The cost of putting the water upon the land under the Palouse project will be close upon $100 an acre says Engineer H. A. Treadwell, who was here Monday with a party of engineers surveying the proposed canal through Washougal coulee, says the Pasco Express.
Under the original plan of the Palouse project, it was the intention to use the entire coulee from Kahlotus to Connell for storage purposes. These reservoir sites were the cause of the original project being turned down by the government and now the plans are to construct a canal along the side of the coulee high enough to get over the high lands at Council.
This portion of the work will be expensive and the engineers are anxious to get an estimate on it.
In 1914, the struggle for water rights in the Tri-Cities area was defined by massive infrastructure costs and federal rejection. Today, as Kennewick faces droughts and the ongoing debates over the Columbia River's flow versus agricultural needs, the tension between expensive engineering solutions and environmental/economic feasibility remains a central theme of regional development.
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