Saturday, May 29, 2004
By Brian Mittge bmittge@chronline.com, The Chronicle
ROCHESTER The first-ever Chehalis River watershed management plan received final approval Friday, but the future of the plan is as murky as the muddiest stretches of the river it pledges to protect.
Eleven county commissioners from four counties unanimously approved the plan in a morning meeting at the Lucky Eagle Casino.
The plan pulls together decades of studies about the Chehalis River Basin, which, despite flooding in the winter, runs nearly dry at places during the heat of summer.
Its goals are to ensure water is always available for people and fish habitats.
The plan makes general goals, but doesn't get into the heart of a tangled water rights allocation system that, on paper, would use up more water than runs in the river in August.
Members of the Chehalis Basin Partnership, which put together the plan, said it's a compromise that everyone from environmentalists to farmers and private landowners could sign off on.
"This plan doesn't do what everybody wants it to do, but it's something we can start with and work with," said Chehalis City Councilor Bob Spahr, also chairman of the partnership.
This is the second watershed plan approved in the state. The first, for the Nisqually watershed, was approved April 13.
Now, after hundreds of hours of meetings over four years to write the Chehalis watershed plan, the group of local officials and citizens need to decide whether to sign up for state funding to actually come up with schedule for how to implement it.
"This plan can be a vehicle for designing and establishing programs to protect our watershed resources while they are still in good shape," said Lee Napier, program manager for the partnership.
The effort would be an uphill battle.
Coming up with solid steps to clean up the Chehalis River system would be much more difficult and controversial than writing this conceptual plan, but the state would give much less money and impose a one-year deadline for the effort.
Rather than the $1.5 million spent studying the river and writing the plan that was approved Friday, the state would offer only $125,000 to come up with an implementation blueprint.
Napier said the Chehalis Basin Partnership will also look for outside grants if it decides to go forward with implementation steps.
As it stands now, the plan doesn't obligate any landowners or governments to take any actions, beyond existing state laws, to keep water in the rivers or to keep it clean.
That's fine with Lewis County Commissioner Richard Graham, one of many partnership members who pushed for a plan that was sensitive to private property rights.
"It's not going to affect those people with perfected water rights," Graham said. "I've said all along, water rights are going to be worth more than gold." Thurston County Commissioner Bob Macleod, who represents west Thurston County, including Grand Mound and Rochester, said the plan recognizes that river systems cross political boundaries, winding through Grays Harbor, Mason, Thurston and Lewis counties.
He said the plan, despite its imperfections, will encourage state leaders to give more money to the Department of Ecology to study which water rights are valid, and which have expired.
"In effect, we've called the Legislature's bluff," Macleod said.
Brian Mittge covers politics, the environment and Lewis County government for The Chronicle. He may be reached by e-mail at bmittge@chronline.com, or by telephoning 807-8237.
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