Moses Lake grapples with contamination, and a dwindling water supply, to secure its economic future.
By Jennifer Krazit
As the nation’s largest potato producer, Moses Lake’s economy and identity remain firmly rooted in agriculture. But the city’s access to inexpensive hydroelectric power, the availability of reasonably priced land, and its proximity to international ports via rail and air have attracted an influx of industrial investment over the last few decades.
Today, Moses Lake is home to three large chemical companies, a carbon fiber plant, an aviation fuel company, an algae producer, and a steel manufacturer. By 2025, Moses Lake will be firmly at the center of the state’s clean-tech revolution when Sila Nanotechnologies and Group14 begin producing cutting-edge battery materials for cell phones and electric vehicles. The Moses Lake facility will be one of the world’s two largest such factories currently under construction, and once the factory is up and running, hundreds of new employees will need a place to live.
“We are building as rapidly as we can,” says City Manager Kevin Fuhr, who estimates the city adds 250 to 300 new homes a year to its inventory. “We have developments going in all over the city.”
Surrounded by the largest body of fresh water in Grant County, Moses Lake is running low on water. Since 2010, Moses Lake’s population has increased by more than 27 percent, to nearly 26,000. Every year, levels in its ancient, deep-water wells decline. In addition, the East Low Canal, which was intended to bring irrigation water to farms in eastern Grant County and western Adams County, lost funding and was never completely built out, according to Fuhr. As a result, many farmers drilled deeper wells to irrigate crops, depleting the city’s aquifer.
“The more straws and more people you have pulling water out of the aquifers, the quicker it’s going to deplete,” says Fuhr. Further exacerbating the problem, the discovery of PFAS (aka forever chemicals) in the water forced the city to shut down two of its wells.
Moses Lake is working to address the issue in several ways, starting with conservation. In March, the city council added a $250 surcharge for households using more than 10,000 cubic of water in a billing cycle and implemented a citywide lawn-watering schedule. They also plan to encourage homeowners to try xeriscaping to conserve water. By 2025, the city hopes to have a water tower built and filtration systems installed that will allow it to address the contaminants and restart the closed wells, increasing supply.
To meet future demand, Moses Lake envisions building an updated filtration system and adding water lines to process about 10 million gallons of surface water a day from the local canal system, which will require as much as $100 million and up to a decade to complete. The city has applied for funding from the Bureau of Reclamation and is working with congressional representatives to explore additional federal funding options. With the recent EPA announcement of new maximum contaminant levels for PFAS, that funding will be even more vital.
“It’s critical that we provide the homes that are necessary for all this industry coming in,” says Fuhr. “We’ve got to solve this.”
The city’s future, and Moses Lake’s status as a clean-tech industrial hub, depends on it.
For more information: cityofml.com.