Association Members:  You are a member if you own a property parcel or lot in the Columbia View Terraces Plat or Subdivision (our neighborhood). Our neighborhood includes addresses on North Sunset Hwy, North Anne Ave, and North Aurora Ave with address numbers from 1601 to 1799 and on 18th from 1 to 50. Most members have a full parcel or lot but some have 1½, 2, or even 2½ parcels or lots. Members are registered with the Douglas County Treasurer’s Office as receiving irrigation water from the Wenatchee Reclamation District (WRD). The association was created when the subdivision was platted and covenants created in 1957. 

The irrigation system serving our neighborhood as currently installed (2021) was designed and installed in the spring of 1974. There was an earlier older metal system put in during the late 1950s that served the first houses in the subdivision but was abandoned when the existing PVC system was installed. Most of the houses in the neighborhood were built in the late 1950s and 1960s. The subdivision was platted in 1957. See the ‘System Diagrams’ section of the website for additional information.  Before it was platted, our neighborhood was partially a turkey farm and a sagebrush hillside. 

The CVTIA system starts at the Wenatchee Reclamation District’s (WRD) Headgate adjacent to their canal. Water for the canal is put into the WRD canal system at the WRD’s Wenatchee River diversion facilities in Dryden, WA up the Wenatchee River just above Cashmere. Yes, our irrigation water comes from the Wenatchee River, not the Columbia River. The Water travels from Dryden using canals or piping down the Wenatchee River Valley to Wenatchee, then through Wenatchee, then across the Columbia River on the Walking Bridge, then underground up East Wenatchee’s 9th Street to just below 9th and Eastmont where the underground pipe tees North and South under the roadway into the open North and South canals to feed the WRD system in East Wenatchee. The headgate that serves the CVTIA is on the West bank of the North canal between 15th Street and 19th Street. The headgate is numbered by WRD as #170. 

WRD water purchases and CVTIA system operating & maintenance costs have two assessments as follows:

  1. The first irrigation assessment to property owners is for water only and is annual and is collected from each property owner, just like property taxes, by the Douglas County Treasurer on behalf of the Wenatchee Reclamation District. The WRD provides the water, pipes, and canal to deliver the water to our neighborhood’s irrigation system at the canal headgate. The WRD’s responsibility and funding requirements end at their headgate. The CVTIA’s funding responsibilities start at the headgate. There are a couple of CVTIA property owners who pay WRD for water directly rather than through the Douglas County Treasurer; the reason is beyond the scope of this summary. 
  2. The second irrigation assessment is for operation and maintenance of the CVTIA facilities, headgate screens, system valves, and pipes from the canal headgate to each of our properties. This second assessment was only periodic, every few years, before 2021. Beginning in 2021, CVTIA began assessing members annually.  This was necessary to keep the funds in the association’s bank account high enough for meeting contingencies in addition to operating and maintenance expenses. If the association’s piping ruptured forcing us to dig up a street for its repair, it could cost us anywhere from $3000 to $5000 at a minimum (backhoe, asphalt, valves, pipes, etc.). This would drain our bank account and we would need to asses members quickly to pay for the deficit. The additional annual cost of purchasing additional water shares made available to us in 2020 needs additional annual funds as well. It is our responsibility to make sure we collect enough annual funds for CVTIA to stay financially healthy.

Documents such as maps, diagrams, photos, etc. of our neighborhood irrigation system including items from the Wenatchee Reclamation District where we get our water have been collected and put on this site. Hopefully  it is useful to you. The website is at the URL:  www.lubean.com/cvtia. The website is a work in progress and will be expanded as time permits to photograph and collect items of interest or importance. The website was created and is maintained by Hank LuBean.  If anyone has anything of a historical value or interest about our neighborhood irrigation system or our neighborhood in general let me know; it should be put on the website for posterity.   

Please don’t forget to send your assessment when billed as soon as you can. The association does have the right to shut water off until assessments are paid as well as to collect the assessment through conveyances such as leans just like taxes; this is covered in your property title covenant, a copy of which is on the website under Covenants. We haven’t had to do this in the past because we all want the same thing — the water we have paid for during the time we need it.