River group has a thankless task
This Thanksgiving, before or after the turkey feast, treat yourself to a walk along the Spokane River. If you have out-of-town guests, ask them along. The 111-mile river, which begins at the outlet of Lake Coeur d’Alene, passes through communities large and small on its quest to reach the Columbia River.
The Spokane River is a regional masterpiece, unique in many ways, and something we can all be thankful for on this national day of thanks.
This day, too, let us thank the dozens of men and women who have been working diligently for almost a year to brainstorm the best way to clean up the Spokane River and make certain it stays that way in the coming decades. The group has a jargon-filled name – Spokane River TMDL Collaboration. But the name expresses the group’s biggest accomplishment – collaboration.
The group, which met in an all-day session Tuesday, includes wastewater dischargers, environmentalists, government officials and industry folks. Leading up to the big meeting, diverse group members worked together on smaller committees, examining every facet of the river’s health.
They have differing ideas on exactly how to clean the river and keep it healthy. They have different needs for the river. For instance, municipalities and industries need the river to assume some of its treated waste products. Environmentalists need the river to assume as much of its natural state as possible.
Yet the differing sides found some common ground. They understand that the river knows no geographical boundaries – it winds its way from Idaho to Washington and passes through different counties along the way. So staying entrenched in geographical perspectives, or ideological standpoints, won’t result in a cleanup plan that will work for the diverse-use river.
They also listened respectfully to one another’s presentations Tuesday. This provided a refreshing contrast to the shouting matches that take place daily on talk radio and cable television news.
The river collaboration group deserves thanks, too, for doing detailed, sometimes mind-numbing work, away from the media spotlight. The meeting Tuesday did not make for many sound bites, because of the technical nature of the presentations.
In a few months, when the Washington State Department of Ecology outlines the cleanup steps necessary for the river’s long-term health, the media will be all over the story. But Tuesday’s participants labored away without much outside attention, and they did it during a busy holiday week, too.
When your family walks the Spokane River on Thanksgiving 20 years from now, and the river is healthy and well, the thanks will belong, in large part, to this group with a technical name and a fairly thankless task.