City of Yelm looks into water rights as development agreement with Blue Fern is created

As Blue Fern Development continues preparing to develop its 640-acre master planned community, the City of Yelm is doing the work now to ensure that the future community has enough water to last for years.

Brad Chatwood, Yelm’s projects and programs manager, told Yelm City Council during a study session meeting on Tuesday, July 7, that as Blue Fern Development begins to build out its 640-acre plot, the City of Yelm needs to figure out how to begin getting water to the area of development.

Chatwood also told Yelm City Councilors that he’ll be bringing forward an agreement for approval with RH2 to “get that ball rolling” with getting water to Blue Fern Development’s 640-acre region.

“We had RH2 put together a tech memo earlier this year, just kind of putting together where we are going to put this well, reservoir, treatment plan, and determining where our pressure zones are going to be,” Chatwood said. “Historically, Yelm has always been in one single pressure zone. We’re going to change. As we start going up in elevation, we’re going to have to change our pressure zones. It could involve some booster pump stations along the way.”

Chatwood added that there’s “a lot to this project.” He said one of the big topics of discussion with water in Blue Fern Development’s plot is groundwater exploration — which will begin immediately, according to Chatwood.

Additionally, Chatwood said a bid package will be put together for a well driller to come out and drill a two-inch well that is capable of descending 800-feet deep. This process will determine both the quality and the quantity of the water in the region.

“We expect to have very similar water as what we have in the southwest well currently,” Chatwood said. “We are in the same aquifer, but you never know. You’re aiming for the one that’s 800-feet to 1,000-feet down.”

Chatwood claimed that the southwest well is currently 660-feet deep. He noted if the well digger is able to reach a good quality and quantity of water at the same depth, the 800-to-1,000-foot depth wouldn’t be necessary.

While the City of Yelm currently has plenty of water rights, according to Chatwood, it needs to be thinking about water rights 20-years down the road as the city continues to develop. At the current rate of development Yelm is at, Chatwood predicts it’s going to need more water rights down the line.

With Yelm experiencing an abundance of water currently, Chatwood said that RH2 could transfer over some of the water rights into the new well. With that in mind, Chatwood said he’d like to see that process begin right now.

He claimed Yelm did the transfer of water rights previously with the southwest water well, and that the rights needed to be transferred previously in order to get the southwest location up and running.

“Groundwater exploration, water rights, groundwater modeling, groundwater mitigation plan update — there’s a lot of pieces to this,” Chatwood said. “This is going to be a multi-year and multi-phase project. No matter what happens with the development up there, we need to be thinking about this now.”

Mayor Joe DePinto asked Chatwood if after this new reservoir goes in, will there still be any more need for the future?

“Honestly, this is going to hold us for a lot of years,” Chatwood said. “You guys all know the reservoir we put over here is 1.55 million gallons. The minimum size we would put up here is 1.2 million with the potential of 2.1 (million gallons). We just need to figure all of that out. If it’s anything like the southwest well, it will produce anywhere between 15 to 2,000 gallons per-minute. After this is complete, we should be solid for a very long time. Water rights will come into play at some point.”