The Greater Wenatchee Irrigation District’s New Pump Unit
Jerry Larossa with the GWID’s new Watertronics pump.
T
he Greater Wenatchee Irrigation District (GWID) services 10,000 acres in north-central Washington State. Its fully piped and pressurized system provides water for farmers who grow apples, cherries, pears, and other crops, mainly using drip and microsprinkler irrigation. The GWID recently replaced one of its pumps with a new Watertronics pump unit that includes a motor, a variable-frequency drive (VFD), and a meter in an easy-to-install format. In this interview, GWID Manager Mike Miller tells Irrigation Leader about the advantages of the new pump. Irrigation Leader: How long have you been with the GWID, and how long have you been the manager? Mike Miller: I’ve been here for 29 years and have been the manager for the past 11 years.
Mike Miller: We had a pump that served a single farmer and that never quite did what it was supposed to do. A few years
30 | IRRIGATION LEADER | January 2021
Irrigation Leader: What about this situation required a specialized pump? Mike Miller: This is the highest delivery in the area, and it typically has low pressure. We have a VFD that feeds that area of our system, and we were turning up the pressure in the whole zone to try to get this customer water and breaking other people’s pipelines in the process. The new Watertronics pump was oversized and came with a VFD, so we could actually boost the pressure on the other side of the pump. The pressure was 40 pounds per square inch (psi) at his meter, but at the high spot, it was only 20 psi or so. The Watertronics pump takes the 40 psi pressure and boosts it to 60 psi, bringing the pressure at the high spot up to 40 psi. That allowed us to dial our pressure in that zone down so that we weren’t blowing other people’s pipes up. irrigationleadermagazine.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE GWID.
Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your recent pump upgrade.
back, we went on a tour of the Watertronics facilities. I was impressed with the way the company put its pumps together as a single pack. When this pump went bad and we needed to replace it, I wanted to try one of the Watertronics pumps.
