Area towns pump 2.6 million gallons, up 3.1%

Municipal pumpers pulled more water out of area aquifers last year, but pumping remains well below levels of 20 years ago.

Steve Robischon, director of the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee, reported at the Palouse Basin Water Summit last week that 2.6 million gallons of water werepumped out of the shallow Wanapum and deeper Grand Ronde aquifers in 2011.

That’s enough to fill an area the size of four football fields as tall as the Lewiston Grade, Robischon told the crowd at the University Inn-Best Western in Moscow.

That total pumped by the municipal water systems in Colfax, Palouse, Pullman, Mo...