THE INNOVATORS
Developing Weed-Resistant Concrete applying these products. We also have to pay for all the safety equipment, the training, and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits from the State of Washington. There are a lot of costs involved in all that. Currently, we’re using Bureau of Reclamation programs such as WaterSMART to line a lot of unlined canals and to repair and replace our aging infrastructure. I came up with the idea of inventing a new kind of concrete that we can use to line and repair our canals to reduce the amount of pesticides that we use in our district. We want to create a product that is environmentally friendly and fiscally responsible that also fits into our system improvement program. A canal being lined with concrete in Quincy-Columbia Basin’s system.
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ny irrigation district with open canals has to deal with weeds, algae, and moss. Removing these obstacles to water flow can be expensive, time-consuming, and environmentally hazardous. This is the problem that Craig Gyselinck, environmental assistant manager at Washington’s QuincyColumbia Basin Irrigation District, is seeking to solve with his research into weed-resistant concrete. In this interview, Mr. Gyselinck speaks with Irrigation Leader Managing Editor Joshua Dill about the research grant he recently received and what he aims to accomplish with it. Joshua Dill: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
32 | IRRIGATION LEADER
Craig Gyselinck: We’re located in central Washington. We serve water to a little over 255,000 acres of farmland. We have about 2,000 miles of flowing waterways, which include canals, laterals, drains, wasteways, and pipes. Joshua Dill: You recently received a grant to develop weed-resistant concrete. What is the problem that you are seeking to solve with this innovation? Craig Gyselinck: The majority of our waterways are open canals, not pipes, and we get quite a bit of weed, algae, and moss growth in them. Plants inside of canals take up capacity, meaning that they act like barriers to the water flowing downstream. That causes the water to stack up and rise in elevation. At our district, we spend around a million dollars a year in aquatic weed control using herbicides. Those are just the chemical costs. A lot of work goes into it, too. Our staff are out there
Craig Gyselinck: No. In this case, I reached out to Reclamation’s Technical Service Center in Denver, because I knew that it had some of the world’s experts on concrete—Reclamation has got a lot of canals and dams. I told them the idea, and they said that it sounded great, but that they’d need some money to work with me. I partnered with them and applied for a science and technology grant through Reclamation. We received a little over $200,000 to cover 3 years of research. I also reached out to partners including other irrigation districts and Reclamation offices and secured an additional $150,000, mostly in in-kind work, to help with this project. Joshua Dill: How would the weedresistant concrete work? Craig Gyselinck: There are a lot of unknowns at this point, but what we’re looking at is finding a product that we can incorporate into the mortar of the concrete. Perhaps we can put copper in the concrete when we mix it up. It might have some weed- and algae-resistant properties. The product could also fight
PHOTOS COURTESY OF CRAIG GYSELINCK.
Craig Gyselinck: I am the environmental assistant manager for the Quincy-Columbia Basin Irrigation District. I have a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s of business administration. I worked for about 3 years at a small environmental laboratory before moving on to a job as water quality manager at the irrigation district.
Joshua Dill: For those who might not know about it, would you give an overview of Quincy-Columbia Basin Irrigation District?
Joshua Dill: Was this grant also from the WaterSMART program?
