USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s plan to adopt the 2012 Odessa Subarea Special Study’s final environmental impact statement for groundwater replacement will save time and money, stakeholders say.

NRCS will publish its notice of availability on the plan in the Federal Register Dec. 8. Public comments may be submitted for 30 days.

The Columbia Basin Project has been a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project, historically funded by the bureau, said Sara Higgins, executive director of the Columbia Basin Development League.

“As soon as you bring in NRCS, we’re talking about an entirely different department — the USDA,” she said. “They’ve got their own set of criteria, their own hoops to jump through in order to access funding programs.”

That meant the project had to go through the same process as it did through the bureau to prove the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program was “worthy” of funding, she said.

Adoption of the original EIS saves time, money and will probably move up development of the watershed plan by more than a year, said Mike Schwisow, league director of government relations.

“This is a really good deal,” Schwisow said. “It sure looked like it was doable … but you never know what’s going to come up when you open these things up and look under the hood. You never know until you get there.”

The original study was co-authored by the bureau and Washington State Department of Ecology’s Office of the Columbia River to identify a preferred alternative to implement the Odessa program, including an environmental impact statement, Schwisow said.

The goal of the project is to bring Columbia River water to the area because irrigation wells were running low.

That original process took seven years to complete.

The new NRCS funding opportunity, the Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations Program, required development of a watershed plan to be eligible to apply for and receive grants, including an EIS.

The Farmers Conservation Alliance, which was contracted to develop the watershed plan, found the original impact statement meets all USDA criteria.

Schwisow said stakeholders had to determine whether there were any new listings of threatened or endangered species since the original EIS.

The White Bluffs bladderpod, a native plant, was a new listing. The alliance and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service demonstrated that the project would not affect the bladderpod, Schwisow said.

Adopting the bureau’s impact statement doesn’t guarantee funding, but moves stakeholders “one step closer toward the potential to access NRCS funding,” Higgins said.

”This also serves to demonstrate what is possible when we have stakeholders coordinating and collaborating,” she said. “We are moving forward step-by-step with all of the partners involved and making very intentional progress. And it’s paying off.”

Roughly $400 million is needed for construction and $100 million is needed for on-farm construction buildout, she said. Of that, nearly $70 million in federal and state funding means the next three Odessa Subarea irrigation systems are fully funded.