A Progress Review of Water Quality Protection
in the Chehalis Basin
DRAFT for WQ Committee Review
D Rountry 1-10-08
Background and Purpose of this Report
This package summarizes information from a recent workshop about water quality protection work that numerous partners are doing throughout the Chehalis basin. A separate first-annual report on current water quality conditions in the Chehalis basin is also attached, in order to allow for a better understanding of activities and results.
Conducting this progress review is a commitment of the Chehalis Basin Partnership and the Department of Ecology.
The part of this review covering activities includes work done since the initial water quality study (Grays Harbor Fecal Coliform Bacteria TMDL ) was completed ten years ago. The attached report on current water quality covers sampling results from 2006-2007.
This is a first effort for a review of actions and water quality results on a Chehalis basin wide scale. For now, working with limited information, we can only infer a reasonable correlation between the effects of our work and changes in water quality. This review is not rigorous enough or intended to tell us whether a specific action resulted in a specific result at a precise location and time. There is a lot of evidence though, within and outside the Chehalis basin, that specific activities reported here do help measurably improve water quality.
At a minimum, this review helps begin to account for the implementation and results of the plans we committed to earlier.
This review report will hopefully help the participating organizations and the Partnership to reevaluate, reprioritize, and/or reaffirm their commitments to their plan activities.
Why Review Progress?
We have both a responsibility and a practical interest to track results of our work. The Chehalis Basin Partnership and their WQ Committee are known as forums for Planning. But the partners in those groups are not just planners. We’re doers too. We need to take stock in all the creative work that’s being done. We can be a lot more effective getting more support (i.e., financial, legislative, intergovernment policy, etc.) by showing we do much more than just write plans. We can account for the results of good investments being made. We can show our collective success in DOING what our PLANS say we will do. And we want to know the water quality results of that work so we can make informed choices about our next steps.
In plans written by the Partnership, several organizations committed to do specific things. Many actions aligning with the Chehalis Watershed Plan goals and strategies were written into the Chehalis/ Grays Harbor Watershed Detailed Cleanup Plan (TMDL). The Cleanup Plan says that progress reviews of implementation will occur routinely starting in 2005. The Plan says that reviews “will be co-managed by the Chehalis Basin Partnership and Ecology. The results of the reviews will be made available to the implementing organizations as well as members of the Chehalis basin Partnership.”
The workshop about implementation actions was sponsored by the Chehalis Basin Partnership’s Water Quality Committee. The Committee agreed to routinely review progress on actions of partners that implement “Water Quality Actions” in the Partnership’s Watershed Management Plan (2004). Progress reviews are also called for in a basin-wide Water Quality “TMDL” Cleanup Plan (2004) developed by the committee. TMDL implementation is an expectation described in the Watershed Plan too.
Equally important, the Partnership chose to also evaluate the results of the actions being implemented. Consequently, this implementation review summary is intended to be used in combination with a recent report on current water quality conditions in the basin. That Annual State-of-The-River Report (2006-2007) for the Chehalis Basin is available from the author Randy Lehr, Ph.D. at Grays Harbor College, or from the Department of Ecology.
These reviews help keep the plans alive. Our plans can then be updated or adapted on an informed level. Most importantly on a practical scale these reviews help us recognize the successes of our partners and build more momentum for more success.
Overview of the Partner’s Work
There has been a lot of good work happening that aligns with both the Watershed and TMDL plans. In the TMDL plan particularly, many partners projected what activities they expected to do to continue helping with water quality protection. What the workshop presentations showed however is that a lot of the work being done now wasn’t covered or even anticipated in the plan several years ago. Actions span a wide gamut, from legislatively mandated to voluntary actions. The work includes doing education and outreach, setting up and maintaining conservation easements, planting trees for habitat and shade, installing BMPs for land, livestock, or water recreation benefits, providing grants and loans for fixing failing on-site septic systems, building new treatment systems or completely new plants, developing new or better stormwater management measures, giving regulatory and technical assistance for conservation work.
This review report will hopefully help the participating organizations as well as the Partnership reviewers reevaluate, reprioritize, and/or reaffirm their commitments to the plan activities.
Whose work is Included in This Review?
Citizen organizations with a visible role in voluntary conservation and education work, and partner’s with a stated role in implementing actions in the TMDL cleanup plans reported their work. Several organizations unavailable for the meeting sent written reports for review, although several organizations who were invited to participate did not report. Five individual reports are attached as part of this review.
City of Cosmopolis (stormwater pollution management role)
Grays Harbor County (on-site septic management)
Department of Ecology (financial and technical support, and regulatory oversight)
Chehalis River Council (citizen water quality sampling and community education)
Heernet Foundation (Scatter Creek restoration)
Actions described by participants at the review session are summarized in the attached meeting minutes from Puget Sound Meeting Services, September 15, 2007.
Presenters at the workshop include:
Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Indian Nation
Washington State Department of Agriculture Pesticide Management Program
Washington State Department of Agriculture Dairy and Livestock Nutrient management Program
City of Centralia
Quinalt Indian Nation
Grays Harbor Community College
City of Chehalis
Chehalis River Basin Land Trust
Chehalis River Council
Capitol Land Trust
Audubon Society, Grays Harbor Chapter
Lewis County Conservation District
Chehalis Basin Education Consortium/ Education Service District 113
General Observations from the Review
It’s an understatement that participants were impressed with the quality and quantity of work that was reported in the workshop. Both the content and tone of the presentations show a lot of passion and commitment to water quality protection in the basin.
Unfortunately, lack of participation in the review process by several other partners leaves us unable to measure whether they are meeting their planned commitments.
There was demonstrated follow thru on commitments to the previous implementation plans by many partners. It would be unfair to list here a simple summary of the work that each partner has been performing. Their work deserves your full review and attention, in the attached minutes of the meeting covered by Puget Sound Meeting Services. Suffice to say that each partner who participated in the workshop review process serves an important leadership role in helping protect natural resources in the basin.
[Following is a short and incomplete attempt to begin summarizing contributions. However as mentioned above, this approach seems to provide an incomplete and unjust record of the work, especially when compared to what was recorded in the workshop minutes. My thought is to not include the material within these brackets. But in the interim, it’s retained below.
The Cities of Chehalis and Centralia for example, met rigid regulatory expectations for changes to their wastewater plants. But they also described many other voluntary improvements, and their collaboration with other groups on various community improvement projects that are benefiting the local economy and natural resources too.
The Chehalis Tribe reported on the breadth of their administrative programs and natural resource management work that are more progressive than many others in the basin.
Many actions of the Grays Harbor College were reported that weren’t even envisioned in our workplans several years ago. They’re an acknowledged leader for the Partnership on many fronts.
They are coordinating the comprehensive monitoring program and developing a GIS tool for water supply, habitat, and water quality, which shows their commitment to an applied education approach that involves partners in learning and acting on natural resource protection.
To be fair, more gratitudes and platitudes would need to follow for all the other partners…]
Recommendations for Followup
§ The Water Quality Committee should present the results of the progress review (water quality monitoring results and actions underway) to the Partnership.
§ The Committee should discuss and choose an appropriate way to communicate these results to the other Plan partners. Maybe the STC or Partnership could weigh-in on how to communicate with all partners. The desired outcome of this communication is to inform the partners about the good work that others are doing, and to implore the entire group of partners to fulfill their plan commitments. We want to protect the investments made in the development of the plans. We need to respect and honor the work of the partners who have fulfilled their commitments by encouraging all partners to do the same.
As one workshop participant put it, is this workplan a dream, or an expectation?
§ The Water Quality Committee should revisit the workplan (the TMDL cleanup plan , and the Water Quality Actions of the Watershed Plan) collectively with all partners. Plans should be updated to reflect current needs. Plan changes should be made collectively by the Partnership.