Watershed Council ending before meeting goal
YAKIMA, Wash. -- An organization formed four years ago to create a collective vision for meeting Yakima River Basin water needs will cease operations before achieving its goal.
The Yakima River Watershed Council doesn't have enough money to complete its comprehensive plan and will close its office July 31, council members voted last week.
Council supporters say the loss of the watershed council means a return to the litigation that marked the 1970s, when the Yakima Valley spent money on attorney fees, not solutions.
"The agriculture community will regret the day they let the Watershed Council go out of business. This is a terrible thing for them because they needed everyone at the table talking things through," said Bob Tuck, a council executive committee member and fisheries consultant to the Yakima Indian Nation. "That no longer exists. They are the ones who will suffer." Tuck said the loss of the Watershed Council seriously damages any hope for a solution. He blames irrigators for scuttling the council because they want a plan that emphasizes irrigation needs ahead of other uses. The ultimate result, Tuck said, will be lawsuits to require protection of fish.
The Watershed Council membership of more than 800 individuals is made up of a broad cross-section of interests, including agriculture, business, finance, environmental groups and governments, including participation by Yakima Indian Nation representatives.
Some of the organization's nearly 50 volunteer board members blame a newer basin organization -- the Tri-County Water Resource Agency -- made up of county and local governments, as being the force behind the Watershed Council's demise.
The two groups once worked together; the council was responsible for drafting a plan and the water resource agency, made up of county governments, had the authority to adopt the plan and seek state and federal funding to make it a reality.
The council's draft plan, now circulating among state agencies for comment, proposed to develop new water storage for irrigation and fisheries, improved water quality and habitat for fish, and more education of the public on basin water issues.
Max Benitz Jr., agency chairman and a Benton County commissioner, said the council's board will be invited to participate in the new planning effort.
"There has been a lot of good progress in the past four years, and I want to continue to see that effort through to completion and adoption by the boards of county commissioners. We are not going to start over," Benitz said.
The Watershed Council was created near the end of three consecutive years of drought from 1992 to 1994.
Three Central Washington county commissions formed Tri-County to put into effect the council's plan. The group has been expanded to meet the requirements of the 1998 state law that doled out $3.8 million for watershed planning throughout the state.
That law laid out how the basin water plans would be crafted, what elements had to be included, and the make-up of the group assigned the job of preparing the watershed plan.
In addition to the counties, the water resource agency now includes the largest cities and water-delivery companies in the three counties. The Yakima Indian Nation has been invited to join but has so far declined.