Craig Simpson, East Columbia Basin Irrigation District
Irrigated agriculture near Othello in central Washington State.
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Irrigation Leader: How has the COVID‑19 pandemic affected your operations?
Irrigation Leader: Is there anything else that you’re doing to keep your customers and employees safe?
Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about yourself and about the district.
26 | IRRIGATION LEADER | JUNE 2020 - COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE
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PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT ASHWORTH.
Craig Simpson: I’ve been with ECBID since 1995 and took over as the manager in 2007. ECBID is the smallest of the three irrigation districts in the Columbia Basin Project. We currently serve about 160,000 irrigated acres and are authorized for 472,000 acres at full development. We are currently carrying out a project to develop about 90,000 additional acres of groundwater-replacement water supplies from the Columbia Basin Project. We have a staff of about 90 people, many of whom are currently associated with that development. We usually have about 75 standard employees.
Craig Simpson: It has caused significant change, but it hasn’t been crippling. Since we provide an essential service, we had to maintain most of our employees in their current statuses. The majority of an irrigation district’s employees work outside, which doesn’t allow for remote work. We were able to have five of our office employees work remotely, but our internet bandwidth capacity didn’t allow for anything more than that. In the office, we insist pretty vehemently on maintaining a minimum of 6 feet of distance between people at all times. We hold most of our meetings outside, with plenty of spacing. If we do have an indoor meeting, it’s in a room large enough to allow for appropriate distancing. We’ve also been disinfecting on a regular basis. We’ve shut down our offices to all outside entities. We’re doing everything for the startup of the season by phone, including payments, clearances, and water orders. The paperwork is dropped off in a dropbox. It’s gone better than we expected it would. Our landowners have embraced the change. Many of us are not necessarily pleased with the changes, but we understand the rationale. The startup went pretty well as a result of the coordination with our landowners.
raig Simpson is the general manager of the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District (ECBID), which is part of the Columbia Basin Project. He has worked for ECBID for 25 years. ECBID has 160,000 acres and 88 employees. In this interview, Mr. Simpson tells Irrigation Leader about the precautions the district is taking to protect its employees during the COVID‑19 pandemic.
