Kennewick Greenway Trail System

You’ve heard of “rail to trail” before. What if we did the same thing with an irrigation canal?

In the years before WWII and the Manhattan Project, the three cities that make up the Tri-Cities – Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland – were small towns with heavy agricultural roots. In Kennewick, there were many orchards strewn all across the area, (some of which can still be found in scattered pockets through the city today), largely thanks to the higher quality soil that was deposited as a result of the historic Lake Missoula floods. However, that soil was useless to growers unless they could water their plants. Though the Columbia River was literally right there, there was no mechanism to get that water away from the river and up to the orchards and crop fields. That’s where the canals came in. With the first one built in 1893 by the predecessors of the Columbia Irrigation District (the Kennewick Irrigation District started building their network in 1917), water was brought to the growers and profits flourished.

After WWII was ended (partly thanks to the efforts undertaken at Hanford, which produced the plutonium for the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki), the population of Kennewick and the rest of the Tri-Cities started to grow rapidly. Land once used as orchards and crop land were dug up and bulldozed over to make room for multiple subdivisions. All the while, the canals remained, and even today continue to remain in use. However, the demographics of the irrigation canal customers have changed in the modern age, as nearly the entirety of the land in both districts is residential in nature. They still remain in business, as most residences in the districts use the irrigation water to keep their yards as green as possible, while city water is used for everything else.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Car vs The Pedestrian

(Spoiler alert: It’s a pretty one-sided affair.)

Just in the last two days here in the Tri-Cities, there have been not one but two separate incidents of a car striking pedestrian(s).

Yesterday, a student walking home from Pasco High School was struck by a car at the corner of 12th Avenue and Sylvester Street. Initial reports indicate he may have been jaywalking, but there has been nothing to confirm that as of posting this.

Today, two students were struck while in a crosswalk immediately in front of Park Middle School (in Kennewick). The driver reportedly had been running late and thus had failed to adequately remove frost/ice from his windshield, so he was cited for “second-degree negligent driving.”

In yesterday’s incident, the student was transported to the hospital, but there was no indication if he suffered any serious injuries. The students from this morning’s incident had minor bruising but no major injuries.

The thing I really, really want to know is this: Why are these incidents still happening?

Read the rest of this entry »