Liquid asset: Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie aquifer – Sun, 07 Sep 2014 PST

Rupert Butler, who is retired and moved to the Inland Northwest last year from Texas, has a lush, green lawn. Butler lives in the Modern Water District. One of Moderns water towers loomsnearby. (Full-size photo)

On a corner lot in the center of Spokane Valley, Rupert Butler tends to his large lawn below one of Modern Electric Water Co.s conspicuous water towers. His grass is green and healthy, and Butler takes care to find the right mix of water and fertilizer to keep it that way all summerlong.

He sees plenty of wasteful watering, though, around his neighborhood: sprinklers left on for hours or running in the heat of the day, water splashing onto sidewalks and streets. For someone who has lived and worked in parched areas of Texas and California, he shakes his head at itall.

What kind of irritates me is somebody turning on a lawn sprinkler and just letting it run while they go to work all day, said Butler, who is retired from the USDA Farm ServiceAgency.

But whats to stop them? Water here is abundant and cheap, drawn from a massive aquifer under the valley floor and piped with little or no treatment to half a millionpeople.

Water rates in Spokane County are lower than in any other county in Washington, and just a fourth of what people pay in the Seattle area. All of a households daily consumption for cooking, bathing, washing clothes and dishes, even watering a lawn and garden costs less here than the retail price of a single bottle ofwater.

Water is one of our biggest assets in this area. Its huge, said Bryan St. Clair, superintendent of Moderns water department. Take it from a guy who came from NewMexico.

With enough water to fill Lake Coeur dAlene 13 times over, the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer nurses a greenbelt extending from southern Bonner County down through Coeur dAlene and Post Falls and west into Spokane Valley andSpokane.

It can be said that there is no city in the world that has a better water supply than Spokane, a city official boasted in 1909, and the claim rings truetoday.

It is without question one of the best sources of drinking water in the country, said Dan Kegley, the current director of the city of Spokane WaterDepartment.

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Liquid asset: Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie aquifer - Sun, 07 Sep 2014 PST