The Snake River Salmon Recovery Plan lists stream flows in the Walla Walla River as a high priority for the restoration of the Mid-Columbia Steelhead, and the restoration of spring Chinook. The Walla Walla County Conservation District has teamed up with the Gardena Farms Irrigation District #13 to utilize funding from the Bureau of Reclamation, WA Dept of Ecology and Bonneville Power Administration to replace leaky inefficient irrigation canals and ditiches with pipeline. Small sections of the system have already been piped under earlier projects and have increased instream flows and benefitted users with higher efficieny delivery. The objective of this project was to pipe the GFID #13's south and north laterals. The south lateral was completed in two phases with 2.01 miles being completed by GFID in 2006-2007. The second phase was completed in 2009 by the Walla Walla County Conservation District and included the placement of 4.25 miles of pipe. As a result of the south lateral piping 3.99 cfs of water were trusted into instream flows.

The north lateral completed in the spring of 2013 with 7.3 miles of earthen canal and laterals replaced with almost 35,000 feet of delivery piping and 20,000 feet of lateral piping. The new north lateral system had 35 pumping stations serving 2,900 acres either built or modified. An additional 5.95 cfs of water will be put into trust. The upper canal will be piped as funding allows. These projects will trust saved water to instream flows and in doing so improve river habitat for salmon and steelhead.