06/30/2009

By SHANNON DININNY  / Associated Press

In the first of likely many meetings, state and federal officials met Tuesday with tribal and local elected officials, conservation groups and irrigation districts on how best to improve the water supply in central Washington's arid Yakima Valley.

The meeting is hardly the first of its kind in Eastern Washington, where drought years mean low stream flows, dwindling fish runs and an interrupted supply of water for some irrigators and municipalities.

Similar groups have been brought together to hammer out water agreements in the Walla Walla River basin and the larger Columbia River basin.

But in the past 30 years, millions of dollars have been spent on dozens of studies in the Yakima River basin, with no consensus on how to improve water supplies for fish, irrigators and growing communities.

"Having a plan that is doable, that is broad-based, that meets all of the interests in this room — it wouldn't be nice, it wouldn't be good. It is the essence between success and failure," Jay Manning, director of the state Department of Ecology, said to members of the new work group brought together to discuss the issue.

"There's going to be value in it for everybody, or it won't work," Manning said.

The Yakima River basin stretches from Snoqualmie Pass to Richland, south of the Hanford nuclear reservation. The heavily irrigated region is home to thousands of acres of tree fruit, wine grapes, hops and other crops, but it has been susceptible to drought. In those lean years, fish suffer in low rivers and farmers and towns with newer water rights have their water supply rationed.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation for years has studied the potential for building new reservoirs, both in the Yakima and Columbia basins. One of the more recent studies ended with nothing resolved in April, when the bureau concluded that all three proposals for the Yakima basin would be too expensive and would fail to meet all of the criteria necessary for major federal water resource projects. The study lasted five years.

At least $18 million has been spent studying new water storage for the Yakima basin.

The price tag is high on water projects, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said the federal government cannot afford to invest in more than five big water projects across the country, said Bill McDonald, Pacific Northwest director for the Bureau of Reclamation.

That means competition for federal dollars will be great, particularly in areas where suffering from drought is greater, such as California, he said. Agreement on a plan going forward is essential.

"Nothing going to happen in this valley solely at the instigation of the federal government. It's your economy. It's your environment. It's the tribe's treaty trust resources," he said.

Manning and McDonald said they hoped a multi-pronged, long-term plan that includes new water storage, conservation and habitat improvements can be agreed upon in six to nine months.

Members of the new group seemed fairly open to considering all options.

Kittitas County Commissioner Mark McClain said he would like to see more storage at the river's headwaters, while Michael Garrity of American Rivers said he wants to make sure the group has a good grasp of demand so that supply needs aren't overstated.

"We will probably be more skeptical of new storage options, but we're willing to look at it," he said.

Scott Revell of the Kennewick Irrigation District, which serves hundreds of acres of irrigated crops as well as a majority urban customers, noted that he drove along the Yakima River en route to the meeting. That included an 11-mile stretch that gets perilously low above his group's diversion point on the river.

"Here it is, June, and you can already see the bottom of the Yakima River," he said.