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Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association
STATEMENT OF NO ACCEPTANCE
For The “Normative” Financing Plan
For Delivery of Surface Water to the Odessa Subarea
TO: Mr. Estevan Lopez, Commissioner, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; Ms. Lorri Lee, PNWO Regional
Director, USBR; Board of Directors, East Columbia Basin Irrigation District
As key land owners, along with our financial/technical representatives, working to build surface water
distribution systems from the East Low Canal, for Systems North/South of I-90, we convey to the USBR and ECBID
managers a Statement of No Acceptance for the Irrigation District’s “normative” financial plan for new surface
water delivery.
The normative financial plan by the District has now led to development time delays and will increase costs to
the irrigators, thus eroding the objective of transferring as much irrigated acreage as possible from groundwater
wells to surface water; while diminishing the financial resources already allocated by Ecology and the USBR to
expedite source water conversions.
The District’s financial “plan” retains several flaws:
The District’s financial proposal does not “add irrigated acres,” but distributes higher costs across more acres
regardless of location to the Canal; increasing system(s) costs across for more irrigators. The end effect is to
discourage more irrigators from participation.
Without accepting legally authorized state water spreading, total system costs cannot be overcome by
”normative cost zoning” (everyone pays for everything). The configuration and normative cost scheme affects
irrigators’ willingness-to-pay and an ability to aggregate individual farm acreages at a sufficient level to pay for
system(s) costs.
The District’s revenue bonding strategy, where the District is not obligated for the new system(s) debt, is:
1) unproven and speculative; 2) does not offer any annualized cost advantage, if attainable; and 3) does substantially
increase total debt service. Whereas private sector development and financing is more cost-effective.
But the Irrigators’ private sector financing agreement is a proven tool to build large-scale irrigation systems; the
pre-construction engineering is completed, and financing is secured. These are turn-key projects, where
operational control is transferred to the District with construction completion.
The Irrigators’ private sector economic model stands in stark contrast to the District’s approach, where system
configuration is determined by individual irrigators paying for their own marginal system costs; and where the
Private Irrigators have already secured $42 milion in financing to initiate project construction. Up to $100 million
is available now, if the USBR would release the new water service contracts.
The USBR and District should stop acting as an impediment to real development. The wells are running dry, while
the District and USBR fiddle away dollars and time.
Columbia/Snake River Irrigators Association • CSRIA.or
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