Chehalis Basin Watershed Management Plan Goals

General

• Foster a sense of the importance for watershed management and the opportunity to be a leader in watershed management planning and develop a format for others to follow.
• Obtain/approach consensus on goals/vision for the Plan, and get buy-in from all cities, counties, and people in the Basin as well as approval by tribal, state and federal government agencies.
• Keep in mind the overall Chehalis Basin Partnership goals and vision.
• Desire to work together to find solutions and build relationships.

Public Involvement

• Use public education and common sense to figure out what will and won't work.
• Include public outreach components along the way for buy-in and sign-off by citizens.

Participating Agencies

• Get buy-in along the way from local agencies that will eventually sanction the Plan.
• All agencies must participate, including federal agencies as well as anyone else who has a vested interest.
• Water is co-managed on a basin scale by responsible state agencies, tribes and local government.

Water Quantity

• Recognize that water is both a public and a private right
• Work toward ensuring that 1976 minimum flows are met.
• Protect senior water rights (particularly those established prior to 1976 minimum flows)
• Establish better groundwater aquifer data and information
• Balance ground water withdrawals with surface water minimum flows.
• Identify sub-basins where surface water and/or ground water are available for additional human use.
• Eliminate the existing water right application backlog and establish strategies for future allocation of available water.
• Where existing minimum flows are determined to be less than adequate to sustain healthy populations of native fish, restore flows to levels necessary for healthy populations (those minimum flows vary by species of fish and season of the year).
• Washington State laws and regulations need to ensure timely and effective water management on a basin scale.
• Establish better mainstream data and information
• Establish a water balance for the Basin
• Identify shortcomings in state law and regulations on water quantity concerns for this basin

Water Quality

No Water Quality Goals were recommended. CBP needs to see if it wants to add anything here, such as related to TMDL, specific limitations such as DO, Temperature, Fecal Coliform, or stormwater quality to name a few.

Habitat

• Avoid having any salmonid runs in the Basin put on the Endangered Species List
• Incorporate Salmon Recovery Plan into Watershed Management Plan
• Determine fish carrying capacity
• Use the plan as a major cornerstone for state and federal recovery plans for the Southwest Washington Coastal Region.

Plan Recommendations

• Focus on cost effective environmental improvements and efforts.
• Minimize new regulations and balance sustainable environment with economic development.
• To the extent possible, use cooperative, not regulatory approaches to watershed management. Use caution in recommending new regulations, since the Partnership will have to answer to citizens about the Plan.
• Recommended regulations and actions should include, where practical, cost benefit analysis processes to help in determining plan components. Define the benefits by establishing criteria that detail what is considered a benefit.
• Plan recommendations must correspond to the funds that are or that may be available to implement the plan.
• Encourage healthy, natural functioning processes/ecosystems working in conjunction with a strong, resource based economy and land use.
• Plan should be a living document that will produce a useful document, within limited resources, that will be implemented.
• Use best available science

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Send comments or questions to the: Chehalis River Council