SEQUIM — A city pilot project to pump reclaimed water into Bell Creek will provide additional irrigation for a local farm in periods of drought, with other farms potentially benefitting in the future if the move is a success.
In this pilot phase, the additional flow provides water to Maple View Dairy Farm for pasture irrigation.
“If it works for everybody, I am really hopeful we can turn the pilot into a project and expand it to serve more farms,” said David Garlington, Sequim Public Works director.
The city recently installed a pump and constructed approximately 800 feet of pipe and an energy dissipating waterfall to channel the water directly into the creek just to the west of Washington Harbor.
The reclaimed water — purified sewage water — enters Bell Creek after being treated at the Sequim Water Reclamation Facility at 247 Schmuck Road.
The new pipeline ejects water into the creek about 500 feet upstream from Maple View Dairy Farm’s agricultural intake pump.
Last week, about 220 gallons of water was entering the creek through the pipeline every minute, Garlington said.
“Coincidentally, that is almost exactly what [Maple View Dairy Farm] was pumping out to get the irrigation needed” for their operations, he said.
The increased flows also will benefit the lower Bell Creek riparian area, Garlington said.
It is expected that the increased flow to Bell Creek will continue at least through October.
Eventually, “we want to have the capacity of putting as much as 450 gallons per minute in the creek, but we will have to modify the pump to get that kind of capacity,” Garlington said.
The increased water flow “has guaranteed that there is enough flow in Bell Creek that we will be able to continue to irrigate a portion of the farm,” said Ben Smith, Maple View Dairy Farm co-owner.
Bell Creek is used to irrigate about 35 acres of land used to produce animal feed for livestock at the farm, Smith said.
If there was not enough water in the creek to provide irrigation, the farm would have to purchase feed from other farms — an expensive endeavor, Smith said.
“Anytime we have to purchase outside of town, it at least doubles our feed expense on the dairy. Our long-term viability is dependent on us being able to grow enough feed here locally to be able to make ends meet,” he said.
The increased flows may reduce the amount of water the farm pulls from the Dungeness River in future years, which would be beneficial to flows during drought seasons, Smith said.
The pilot project was initiated by the drought emergency declared for the east Olympic watersheds by Gov. Jay Inslee in March and then the statewide emergency declaration in May.
The move came after the city received recent approval from the state departments of Ecology, Health and Fish and Wildlife to start a pilot project to increase Class “A” reclaimed water flows to Bell Creek.
“The sewage is all collected and taken down to the Water Reclamation Facility and it is processed there,” Garlington said.
“What we are doing down there is producing a product called Class ‘A’ reclaimed water that is not potable but can be used for crop irrigation.”
Class “A” reclaimed water has the highest level of treatment and quality designated by the state.
Treatment includes oxidation, coagulation, filtration and disinfection, resulting in a median number of total coliform organisms not to exceed 2.2 per 100 milliliters in seven consecutive daily samples, with no sample exceeding 23 per 100 milliliters, according to Washington Water Reclamation and Reuse Standards.
Coliform organisms are a group of bacteria that inhabit the intestinal tract of animals and can cause disease.
Their presence in water is an indicator of fecal pollution.
The reclaimed water produced by the city “is just a cut below what would be potable water,” Garlington said. “Currently, we use it in town for irrigation.”
The city has previously pumped reclaimed water from the facility into Bell Creek at the Water Reuse Demonstration Park, located at 563 N. Rhodefer Road west of the reclamation facility.
“We use it every year to augment Bell Creek in the parks during the summer time; otherwise the creek would be entirely dry,” Garlington said.
“But this is the first year when we have essentially taken it outside the park and are putting it in Bell Creek outside the park itself.”
The creek will now have more water in it even while some is diverted by the farm, which is good “because it can get very low in late summer,” Garlington said.
The pilot program has the potential to increase the use of Class “A” reclaimed water for agricultural irrigation in the future, Garlington said.
The key will be “getting the reclaimed water to where it is being used,” Garlington said.
“It is great in the summer time. We can utilize this water and essentially all of the reclaimed water that we produce.”
But “when you are outside the growing season, that is when it gets tough, so looking at the project long term, what we would like to do is develop some storage capacity so the water can be stored in the wintertime and then utilized for agriculture in the summertime,” Garlington said.
“[Storage] is a detail that we haven’t gotten to that point in the process yet. And, storage is not cheap, so you have to look at the economics of it all.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.