County will not appeal Moscow’s well proposal

Despite a water rights fight that left a proposed mall at the stateline in jeopardy, Whitman County commissioners have decided not to protest a new well being proposed by the city of Moscow at the state line.

“I don’t think they should have had standing across state lines, so I don’t think we should have standing in their state,” Commissioner Greg Partch said Monday.

Moscow has applied to the state of Idaho’s Department of Environmental Quality for more than $5 million to drill the new well, which would supplement the city’s drinking water supply.

Moscow Public Works Director Les MacDonald told the Gazette the new well would be drilled 1,300 feet deep and would pump 2,300 gallons per minute.

The well would be 600 feet deeper than those drilled by Boise-based Hawkins Companies at their proposed development just across the state line from the city’s planned well.

The well was one of a laundry list of reasons Moscow appealed the Hawkins development. City officials also decried the development for tapping too much groundwater from the shared aquifer beneath the area.

Partch said he spoke with Jeff DeVoe, manager of the project for Boise-based Hawkins, after hearing about Moscow’s well plan last week.

Hawkins announced three years ago its plans to build a 714,000 square foot shopping center on the Pullman-Moscow Highway at the state line.

Under a Washington Department of Ecology-arbitrated agreement on the city’s appeal of the Hawkins water plan, the company is forbidden from appealing the new well.

Partch said DeVoe advised him to let the city drill its well.

“Obviously we’re going to do what he feels is best,” said Partch.

DeVoe said in July last year the city’s appeal delayed the shopping center construction.

“If we would have not had the big water fight, that center would be open right now,” he told the Gazette at that time.

That delay pushed the time frame of the development into the national recession, which left retailers less willing to expand into new markets and tightened the willingness of banks to finance commercial developers.

In July, DeVoe said the development would not proceed until the economy recovers. He expected that could happen as soon as this summer, but the slow recovery has not allowed construction to ensue.

“It’s not going to happen this year,” Partch said Monday. “We know that.”

Partch said he was waiting for the federal government to lean on banks to lend more of the federal money plugged into their balance sheets in 2008.