How Watertronics Is Helping With Master Planning in Rapidly Urbanizing Central Washington

A housing developments and manufacturing pop up rapidly in former farm fields, how does an irrigation district or company manage that change? In this interview, Irrigation Leader speaks with Kirk Ratbbun, the owner and manager of the Lewis and Clark Irrigation Company (LCIC) and the president of the board of Kennewick Irrigation District (KID), about how that transition is occurring in the Tri-Cities, an area that in the past decade has seen more population growth than any other part of Washington State. One thing that has helped, Mr. Rathbun explains, is working with pump company Watertronics to consolidate pump stations and engage in master planning to adapt to changing land use.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Kirk Rathbun: I grew up on a family farm in the Columbia basin of Washington State. In 2004, I purchased a farm that included a housing development as part of it. Until 2015, I farmed and also developed and operated a municipal water company, LCIC, which delivers domestic and irrigation water and is located in West Richland, Washington. In 2015, I reduced my farming activity to focus on developing and operating LCIC. I am also the president of the KID board. I’ve been on the board since 2010 and have served as board president three times.

Irrigation Leader: What effects has urbanization in your area had on pumping and water conveyance infrastructure?

Kirk Rathbun: Over the course of the past decades, practically every new housing or commercial development got its own irrigation pond or pump station. The result is a hodgepodge of hundreds of separate ponds and pump stations. Water deliveries to urbanized areas are different from those of irrigated agriculture, too. In irrigated ag, the demand and deliveries are consistent. In an agricultural environment, the initial demand is usually several hundred gallons a minute, and that rarely varies. If it does vary, that change happens every 24 hours, so you have time to adjust and plan for it. But urbanized irrigation deliveries have a lot of variability within each 24-hour period, and the water provider doesn’t get to control the demand curve; the customers do. The demand curve changes all the time, and you have to be able to accommodate that and adjust your supply accordingly. In an urbanized environment, the initial demand may be no bigger than a garden hose, so instead of starting a midsize or large pump first, you need to start the smallest pump and then reverse the programming logic. To accommodate the different demand curve in an urban environment, your pumps need to perform differently.

Irrigation Leader: What effects has this had on local irrigation districts and water providers?

Kirk Rathbun: Many newer districts that are being encroached on by urbanization are recognizing that it’s important to do master planning early. You want to end up with fewer ponds and pump stations and with stations that will serve larger areas and are expandable. Master planning involves more costs up front—for engineering, surveying, and planning—but provides benefits later. You have to consider questions such as, “What is this 5,000‑acre service area going to look like in 25 years, when it is fully developed? What kind of telemetry, SCADA, and programmable logic control will we need?”

Irrigation Leader: Through LCIC, you have worked with Milwaukee-based company Watertronics to consolidate pump stations. Please tell us about your experience with the company.

Kirk Rathbun: Watertronics’ systems come with advantages, especially for pump consolidation. You don’t need 10 little ponds and 10 little pumps—just one combined pond and pump station that can provide irrigation water to a much larger service area. Fewer ponds and pump stations mean reduced liability and maintenance. Watertronics’ panels, variable drives, soft starts, and logic controls all help urbanized irrigation systems consolidate. Watertronics can install a system that has maybe three pumps of varying sizes. In an agricultural environment, it runs the logic from that demand, and if the environment changes, you don’t have to change any panels or other equipment. You just flip the switch, and with a few hours of logic programming, you’re set up and ready to provide water for irrigated residential areas. Watertronics can also help provide a seamless transition from one setup to the other.

Having Watertronics to consult with on these issues up front has been instrumental in my personal development planning for LCIC. We realized that KID projects from the 1960s through the 1980s involved very little master planning. To be fair, technology has changed, and we have more options now than we did 50 years ago. Now, it’s just a matter of putting a program together, finding the funding, and fixing some of these issues. With the help of companies such as Watertronics, you can put a system in place that will still serve the needs of your district in 40 years.

When any municipal entity is doing master planning for a large residential area, it is thinking about many layers. It is planning to provide drinking water, power, gas, and sewer services and plotting traffic flow and storm runoff. To add the irrigation piece is a natural progression. Some areas don’t have the option of irrigation master planning because they don’t have a separate irrigation water supply. However, having a separate irrigation supply brings down costs, since irrigation water doesn’t have to be treated, monitored, and maintained the way that drinking water does. If you can put a small irrigation supply system into your city streets, it can reduce your costs.

Irrigation Leader: What else did the Watertronics team do to help LCIC manage the transition to an urbanized customer base?

Kirk Rathbun: LCIC had a pump station that was being operated to provide 95 percent of its water supply to irrigated ag and the other 5 percent to residential areas. We already had the Watertronics system in place—a three-panel system of three pumps all on variable-frequency drives. At the end of one season, the landowner eliminated all the irrigated ag. The next year, we only had residential areas to serve—all the irrigated ag areas had been left idle and dry until they were developed. (That is common during a transitional period. The irrigated ag section gets too small, and the dust, noise, and other aspects of farming are not compatible with residents.)

The transition the following year was seamless: Watertronics reprogrammed our entire pump station remotely from Milwaukee, changing it from an irrigated ag pumping scenario to an urbanized, small-residential-pump scenario. Whereas we used to initiate our startup with a 100‑horsepower turbine pump, we now initiate startup with a 15‑horsepower centrifugal pump. We didn’t have to change any pumps or panels. We just changed the logic in the system.

From a master planning standpoint, LCIC has also been in discussions with Watertronics about some larger service areas. LCIC is planning for the full buildout of its service area, which is going to be 7,000–10,000 acres. It’s just now getting started, with about 350 of those acres developed into a residential area. The other acres are still being farmed and will slowly transition over the years.

LCIC is doing a multiyear master plan and bringing Watertronics into those discussions. Watertronics’ engineers understand what the project looks like today and what it will look like 50 years from now. We know that in 15 years, we are probably going to need to build a pond. We know where our conveyance features, canals, and pipelines are now, and we’re planning for where we need to relocate them in the future.

We’re asking questions such as, “How many zones are we going to divide this area into? Are we going to feed it from the top down or the bottom up? Are we going to use pressure-reducing valves or booster stations?” We are trying to think about these things up front. What we’re attempting to do with this system is to locate our ponds at the highest points that we can find and to use pressure-reducing valves instead of booster stations because they require less power. We have conversations with Watertronics every few months to update everyone on our master planning.