Cowlitz County commissioners Tuesday OK’d moving ahead with a project to find an additional water source for when the creek supplying Ryderwood’s water runs low.
The commissioners approved the agreement with RH2 Engineering to determine a reliable supplemental water source for a maximum of $50,000 in American Rescue Plan Act pandemic relief funding.
Susan Eugenis, county engineer, said the retirement community’s main source of fresh incoming water, Campbell Creek, often gets close to running dry in the summer.
The project will include drilling a new well nearby the county’s old, inoperable well, testing and monitoring through the spring to see if it is an adequate source of water, Eugenis said. The testing will focus on water volume because the county knows the water quality meets standards, she said. Cowlitz County has water rights in the area.
Eugenis said the project includes monitoring upstream Campbell Creek using gauges to see if there is another potential well location.
Once the report is complete next year, the county will move into the design phase, Eugenis said.
In August 2018, the flow of water through Campbell Creek completely dried up for multiple days. The creek ran dry because of a major lack of precipitation in Cowlitz County at the time, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology. Residents relied solely on the town’s stored water reservoir until the next rainstorm.
The county was preparing to have water trucked over from Vader and poured into the Ryderwood reservoir during the 2018 shortage. Eugenis said the county has never had to truck in water, in part because Ryderwood residents have been good about conserving water when needed.
In 2021, the commissioners approved $150,000 for an investigation on the area’s infiltration gallery, which collects groundwater, but the project never moved forward, Eugenis said.
